ROOTED IN THE PAST: HISTORICAL
LEGACIES AND MEMORY POLICY DEBATES
IN POST-AUTHORITARIAN PORTUGAL

I. INTRODUCTION[Up]

This article focuses on how memory issues are debated in national parliaments. Our main argument is that, to explain opposition and support for memory issues, particularly transitional justice bills, one must consider the historical roots of political elites and parties represented in parliament, namely their connections to the authoritarian regime. Authoritarian successor parties (‍‍Loxton, 2015), as they have been defined in the literature, are present in most post-authoritarian and post-communist democracies, and this is expected to impact politics and political competition. So far, we know little about how their presence or absence in parliament affects transitional justice issues.

To examine this topic, it is crucial to consider the various types of connections that political parties may have with a previous authoritarian regime. The existing literature has extensively explored the pathways and transformations of authoritarian successor parties, emphasizing the non-linear and complex nature of their historical roots and political trajectories. Ishiyama (‍‍1995) examines how former communist parties in post-Soviet and post-communist democracies often redefine themselves ideologically to appeal to new constituencies while navigating their authoritarian legacies. Loxton (‍‍2015, ‍‍2018) has expanded this idea to cover all types of authoritarian legacies beyond the post-communist world. Tavits and Letki (‍‍2009) explore how these legacies influence party competition and voter alignment, particularly in the early stages of democratization. Additionally, Haughton and Deegan-Krause (‍‍2015) provide insights into how these parties negotiate their identities, often oscillating between continuity and transformation. In a similar line, Grzymala-Busse (‍‍2002) discusses how these parties often adapt through rebranding or ideological shifts to remain politically viable in new democratic contexts. Nalepa (‍‍2010) highlights how these parties’ connections to the previous regime can result in internal vulnerabilities, such as being susceptible to blackmail due to unresolved scandals or “skeletons in the closet”, which in turn shape their behavior and policy positions. The resistance or willingness of these parties to confront their authoritarian past, as well as their strategic decisions regarding memory policies and transitional justice, reflect broader struggles over legitimacy and political realignment.

These works collectively underscore that the historical roots of parties and elites are shaped by a dynamic interplay of adaptation, stigmatization, and institutional constraints. Whether parties resist condemning the past, embrace transitional justice measures, or seek to reframe their historical narratives, their stances on memory policies are profoundly influenced by these legacies. This intricate relationship between historical continuities and political realignments makes the study of authoritarian successor parties a key area for understanding transitional justice and memory politics.

What happens when there are no authoritarian successor parties? Even in contexts where such parties are absent, it is likely that political parties aligned with the ideological spectrum of the former regime will emerge. These parties may or may not have absorbed segments of the previous elite, even at lower levels and remain associated with the legacy of the old regime. This raises critical questions: Should we expect these parties to experience an “authoritarian stigma” due to their perceived proximity to the former regime? And how might this stigma influence their stance on transitional justice and memory debates? In this article, we address this often-overlooked category of parties, whose role in shaping memory politics has received limited scholarly attention.

While we emphasize the importance of historical roots in explaining the receptivity or rejection of memory policy proposals, we also acknowledge the significance of other factors, particularly those rooted in contemporary politics and overlapping legacies. These dynamics may include evolving party strategies, public opinion, and the broader political environment, which interact with historical legacies in complex ways.

Our core question is: How is transitional justice debated in parliament when no authoritarian successor parties are present? We hypothesize that parties ideologically aligned with the previous regime, while not formal successor parties, may nonetheless bear the weight of authoritarian stigma. Yet due to the lack or low impact of links to the previous regime, these parties might prefer to support transitional justice bills, even when such support contradicts their ideological preferences, as a strategic move to distance themselves from the authoritarian past. This dynamic highlights the interplay between historical legacies and contemporary political calculations, shedding light on the behavior of an underexplored group of political actors in transitional justice debates.

In order to examine this question, we qualitatively analyze the bills discussed at the Portuguese parliament since 1976. Portugal is a rare example among post-authoritarian democracies where no authoritarian successor party exists and where a strong authoritarian stigma arose during the transition. We first offer an overview of how transitional justice bills performed in parliament and then include examples of debates that occurred during the discussion and approval of those bills. The arguments used by the deputies and the voting patterns of the parties demonstrate that despite not being authoritarian successor parties, right-wing parties usually choose not to oppose transitional justice bills. In addition, another type of stigma emerged during the debates that offer an interesting dimension to the analysis that should be considered in the future.

The next section of the article examines the historical roots of the main Portuguese political parties. We then present the empirical analysis, starting with a longitudinal overview of transitional justice bills and laws passed in the parliament and then focusing on the discursive strategies used by the four main parties, two on the right and two on the left during the debate. We conclude with some ideas for future research.

II. THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF PORTUGUESE PARTIES[Up]

In Portugal, there has never been a strong authoritarian legacy within the parliamentary elite. The Estado Novo, the dictatorship created by Oliveira Salazar in 1930 and inherited by Marcello Caetano in 1968, was long-lasting but ended abruptly. On April 25, 1974, a coup orchestrated by military captains led to the immediate dissolution of the regime and triggered a process of strong rejection of the Estado Novo’s legacies. That very day, the rupture began. For the opposition to the Estado Novo —a politically engaged segment of the population— the dictatorship’s image was unquestionably negative, and the need to start anew was obvious. These were people for whom Salazarist indoctrination had not taken hold. Although socialized under the Estado Novo, they embraced opposing ideas. They were communists, anarcho-syndicalists, Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyists, progressive Catholics, socialists and republicans; they defended ideals that stood in stark contrast to those of the Estado Novo and fought for them for decades. They were imprisoned, tortured, subjected to forced labor, dismissed from jobs, expelled from universities, forced into clandestinity and exile (‍‍Pinto and Raimundo, 2016). For much of the general population, on whom Salazarist indoctrination was more effective, the negative image of the dictatorship did not arise spontaneously. It was gradually constructed after the coup by the military captains. Up until the founding elections of democracy on April 25, 1975, and even beyond that, television, newspapers, and radio worked hard to create an unequivocally negative image of the dictatorship. This image would not have emerged with such intensity spontaneously, as the less politically engaged population, geographically more distant from the major cities, was less exposed to the repressive nature of the dictatorship. To combat this lack of awareness, the military also engaged in a campaign, traveling across the country from north to south with a clear message: fascism was bad, and there were political forces that wanted to bring it back, which must be fought against (‍‍Almeida, 2008; ‍‍Raimundo et al., 2021).

From the intent to create a democratic political culture that categorically rejected any new political projects resembling the one that had shaped the country for more than four decades, an “authoritarian stigma” was born. In this process, the entire ideological right was stigmatized and marked by a negative connotation, even though, unlike in most other democracies, there was no heir party to Salazarism or Marcelism in either an organizational or ideological sense. The single party created by Salazar, which in 1974 was called the National Popular Action (Acção Nacional Popular), was dissolved on the very day of April 25 and the few attempts to form new parties were halted in the first months following the captains’ coup (‍‍Marchi and Alves, 2023). Hence, for nearly half a century of democracy, more than half of the Portuguese parliament has been dominated, first and foremost, by elites and political parties with ties to the opposition or semi-opposition to the Estado Novo, the authoritarian regime that ruled Portugal from 1930 to 1974. These connections with the opposition or semi-opposition were concentrated in three parties: the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), the oldest party, founded in 1921 before the 1926 military coup that gave rise to the authoritarian regime; a Marxist-Leninist orthodox party whose members were severely persecuted by the regime (‍‍Lisi, 2011), its parliamentary group has ranged from a maximum of 44 deputies to a minimum of 5. The Socialist Party (PS), the second oldest party and one of the two largest Portuguese parties, was created in 1973 by opposition members in exile and is a center-left party; its parliamentary group has never had fewer than 57 deputies and has reached up to 121. The Social Democratic Party (PSD), a center-right party created weeks after the Carnation Revolution by members of the so-called semi-opposition, is the other major party, with a parliamentary group ranging from no fewer than 73 to as many as 148 deputies. Despite its name, it is not a left-wing party. The story of this party is more complex as apart from the semi-opposition, it accepted former Estado Novo ministers but also antifascists (‍‍Paris and Silveira, 2021).

Those three parties dominated the Portuguese parliament during four decade together with the CDS (Centro Democrático Social), originally composed of right-wing sectors with some ties to the Estado Novo elite, even though they were not representatives of the regime’s hardline or Salazarists in an organizational sense (‍‍Paris et al., 2019). At the party’s core was a group of individuals linked to one of the reformist wings of Marcelism, specifically the informal political group (more technocratic than political in nature) that revolved around Diogo Freitas do Amaral and Adelino Amaro da Costa in the final years of the Estado Novo. Although some individuals associated with this current decided to remain out of politics after April 25, the CDS did have within its ranks a group labeled by Expresso as the “new Marcelist right”, composed of young figures who collaborated with Marcello Caetano’s governments and, on the eve of the regime’s collapse, included close collaborators of two rising young ministers, Silva Pinto and Veiga Simão (‍‍Paris et al., 2019).

Consequently, the Right represented in the Portuguese parliament has neither been heir to the Estado Novo nor nostalgic for it, although a part of the Salazarist and Marcelist elite that accepted the democratic game, particularly at the local level, did concentrate within the two main right-wing parties that dominated political life until 2022^‍[1]. However, the right was keen to distance itself from these ties and present itself as fully democratic, especially to avoid being successfully associated with the previous regime.

These historical roots, however relevant, represents just a small share of the main parties’ identity. Another important share of their identity was formed during the transition to democracy (‍‍Jalali, 2007). The coup led to a state crisis, the subsequent dilution of authority, and abuses committed by political actors who considered themselves legitimized by a supposed “revolutionary legitimacy”. This resulted in a division between those who aligned with this legitimacy and those who rejected it. The political parties that have dominated the parliament for nearly five decades all have historical roots in the democratic transition and carry the legacy of that period. While the PCP and PS clearly and unequivocally share antifascist roots, the same cannot be said of their transition legacies. This era saw the nationalization of key industries, the expropriation of private property, land occupations, and instances of violence, events that led some individuals and families to go into exile. The turbulent period of 1974-‍75 was marked by multiple coup attempts, widespread collective action, and significant social upheaval (‍‍Palacios Cerezales, 2003). Purges were established within businesses independently of the unions, and the PCP shared control of these bodies with the parties of the extreme Left. These commissions implemented the great majority of ‘wild’ purges, which the PCP often did not control (‍‍Pinto, 2006). But the party has ever since been accused of having attempted to hijack the democratization process. In the battle between revolutionary and democratic forces, the PCP was isolated by an anti-communist alliance formed by the PS, PSD, and CDS (Centro Democrático e Social). PSD and CDS are unquestionably on the opposite side, frequently claiming that the PCP attempted to impose a new type of dictatorship in the country, while the PS struggles to know whether to align with their former anti-communist allies or with the antifascists. This represented a dual legacy (‍‍Pinto, 2006).

After April 25, 1974, the widespread dissemination of a negative image of the Salazar and Caetano dictatorship, identified as right-wing, caused the right that entered parliament in the first elections to frequently deviate from its true beliefs, fearing it would not survive in the politically radicalized environment, particularly concerning the handling of the Estado Novo’s legacy. This deviation was particularly intense during the months following April 25 until November 25, 1975, but it extended well beyond that period, with repercussions within the parliament, first elected in 1976. In 1979, when the right first won the elections, its management of the authoritarian stigma changed, leading to a gradual shift in discourse and a progressive willingness to counterattack the left from a rhetorical standpoint.

As we will show in the following section, the discursive strategy of right-wing parties in most cases did not find parallel in their voting patterns.

III. DEBATING AND VOTING MEMORY BILLS IN THE PORTUGUESE PARLIAMENT[Up]

In 50 years of democracy, legislative proposals on the memory of the authoritarian regime and transitional justice in Portugal have covered various areas. These include the punishment of former agents of the dictatorship’s political police (PIDE-DGS), the granting of pensions to former regime opponents and their immediate family members, the restoration of professional and pension rights lost due to opposition to the dictatorship, the management of the Estado Novo archives, the construction of new museums, and the honoring of figures from the opposition (‍‍Raimundo and Morais, 2024).

Table 1 shows the number of transitional justice laws and resolutions approved since 1976, including their origin (party/parties that sponsored it), voting (how it was voted at final vote), number, and summary. The table shows that around half of these laws and resolutions, which are highly symbolic, were approved unanimously, regardless of their origin.

Between 1976 and 2023, 82 % of the resolutions submitted to the Portuguese Parliament were scheduled, debated, and approved^‍[2]. It is important to note that parliamentary resolutions are merely recommendations to the government^‍[3]; they do not have the force of law, although they carry symbolic power. Since they do not have legal force, they are easier for parties to approve compared to law “projects” and “proposals”^‍[4], which had a much lower approval rate of only 37 %. In 55 % of the cases, these proposals expired at the end of the legislative session, due to a lack of political opportunity, inability to gather sufficient political support, or even because the proposal was abandoned or replaced by another. Few bills that were scheduled for debate and voting were rejected in general (12 %). Portuguese parties seem to prefer not to schedule their proposals unless they are sure they have the necessary support for approval.

This level of consensus can be explained in part due to the absence of authoritarian successor parties and the presence of a strong authoritarian stigma. Due to the strong presence of Left and extreme-Left groups in the first years of the transition, and the overwhelming demand for a clear break with the past, the centre of the political spectrum was deviated to the left, and right-wing parties did not dare present themselves before the electorate with their real ideology (‍‍Raimundo, 2023). This left a strong imprint in Portuguese politics that endured for many years and affected how transitional justice bills were debated. As we shall see below, the political-economic context, the composition of the government and parliament, party leaderships, the language of the proposals, and the political skill of negotiators help explain the level of tension in debates and whether the “authoritarian stigma” was mobilized, but not necessarily the approval of the initiatives. Often, securing the necessary support meant obtaining abstentions from the right. Ultimately, there has been very little opposition to proposals presented by the left, and even significant levels of consensus around memory policy projects (‍‍Raimundo, 2021). By this we mean the absence of blocks that would prevent the approval of proposed measures. In other words, on several occasions, the right refrained from using veto powers, allowed for unanimous approval, and generally limited itself to presenting legal (and rarely political) arguments to justify its reservations. In other cases, the “authoritarian stigma” was not strong enough to influence the right-wing’s parliamentary actions, leading them to employ alternative strategies to resist it. In general, the left, represented by both the PCP and the PS, has sought to repair and commemorate its struggle for democracy, and the right, represented by the PSD and by the conservative party Centro Democrático e Social (CDS), the fourth oldest party in Portuguese democracy, has rarely opposed this, preferring instead to counter with the legacy of the transition. The survival strategy used by the right was to mobilize the memory of the democratic transition as a political weapon against part of the left, thus inverting the authoritarian stigma against them. The right primarily adopted this inverse legitimization strategy against the communist left, accusing it of attempting to establish a “dictatorship of the opposite sign” during the transition, and the center-left of not sufficiently distancing itself from that period and those actions. They did so persistently, in an effort to reclaim their legitimacy, highlighting their own role in the events that, on a single day, put Portugal back on the path of European liberal democracies: November 25, 1975. In the next section, we illustrate this idea with examples from bills that aimed to introduce reparation or acknowledgement.

IV. CONCLUSION[Up]

This article has examined the role of parties’ historical roots in shaping debates about memory policies in post-authoritarian Portugal. The literature highlights authoritarian successor parties as a distinct type, suggesting that there is something specific about their historical baggage that influences their behavior.

In Portugal, the right-wing parties, although having some ties to the Estado Novo, cannot be defined as direct successors of the authoritarian regime. This has allowed them to avoid the authoritarian stigma and facilitated their participation in memory policy debates. Moreover, the Portuguese right has generally been willing to let the left’s narrative about the authoritarian period dominate memory policies, recognizing that challenging it too directly could be politically costly. However, they have often employed a strategy of reverse legitimization, particularly by invoking the memory of the democratic transition and the turmoil of the 1974-‍75 period to counterbalance the left’s focus on the authoritarian past.

Despite occasional discursive tensions, accusations, and provocations, memory policies have rarely been blocked in Portugal’s parliament. This is largely due to the fact that neither side benefits politically from vetoing such initiatives, leading to broad, if sometimes grudging, consensus. These dynamics reflect the dual legacies of both the authoritarian regime and the democratic transition, which continue to shape the Portuguese political landscape.

Yet most studies tend to focus narrowly on the links with the authoritarian period, overlooking the significant role the democratic transition plays in shaping collective memory and parties’ positions towards that memory. Through this analysis we were able to demonstrate that the transition to democracy not only builds upon but also amplifies the legacies and memories of the authoritarian past. Transitions from authoritarianism to democracy are often periods of intense political confrontation, as various parties and elites seek to influence the direction of the new political order. During these transitions, political actors frequently advance divergent and sometimes competing projects for the country’s future. Theories of democratic transition highlight that such periods are characterized by a struggle between different political forces, some of which advocate for radical transformations, while others push for more moderate or conservative reforms (‍‍O’Donnell and Schmitter, 1986; ‍‍Linz and Stepan, 1996). These competing projects reflect underlying ideological divides, social cleavages, and strategic calculations about the future of the political system. Over time, certain actors will emerge as “winners” of the transition —those whose political vision and policy preferences shape the new democratic order— while others will perceive themselves as “losers”, having failed to achieve their goals or having been forced into compromises that undermine their original objectives. The “winners” of the transition often seek to institutionalize their vision, shaping key political institutions, laws, and norms. Conversely, the “losers” may retain resentment and use this sense of historical injustice to frame future political battles, including those related to memory policies and transitional justice. These dynamics are essential to understanding post-authoritarian politics, as transitions are rarely seen as neutral or equitable processes by all participants.

In new democracies, political parties and elites often have roots in both periods. This may become a long-lasting feature of democratic regimes or change quickly, depending on the level of institutionalization of the party system. Those varied historical roots create a complex landscape of political allegiances and strategies in post-authoritarian democracies, influencing how parties and elites engage with memory policies, navigate the legacy of the authoritarian past, and position themselves in the new democratic order.