The State in Nineteenth Century Portugal: Liberalism between Dream and Reason

Abstract

In Portugal, since the first constitutional experience (1820-1823), the Liberal State was the promoter and builder of a new political project, based on representation, territorial reform and economic reorganization and standardisation. Its power apparatuses established the principles of citizenship and suffrage, integrated the peripheries and shaped a new national economic space. Stressing the tension between utopian political imagination and pragmatic processes, this article analyses each of these three main changes, which often faced strong debate, adjustments and the creation of forms of negotiation between the central administration and local political networks and agents. The imaginary that was behind liberal governance was not a tyranny of concepts; it combined doctrinal principles, political agendas and practices of power. The construction of the Portuguese Liberal State was hence based on moderation and compromise under an adaptive reformism guided by oligarchic networks. These tensions influenced the liberal institutions that were actually created and generated disenchantment, and gradually, affected the regime’s legitimacy. For Progressives, new institutions stayed short in relation to their political imagination; for Conservatives they had raised too high the «rebellion of the individual against society» and overdeveloped centralisation and the subordination of society and customs of the peoples to the State.