THE CRISIS OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY IN PORTUGAL AND SALAZAR''S NEW STATE
This article outlines the basic features of the longest dictatorship in twentieth-century European history. First, it retraces the long crisis of the liberal political system which resulted in the Portuguese coup of May 1926. Then it turns attention to the internal dynamics of the dictatorship and the stabilization of the authoritarian regime in the early 1930s. The article then outlines the basic characteristics of the Salazar regime, starting with the new authoritarian-corporate constitution of 1933. Moreover, a separate section is devoted to the historiography of the Estado Novo, interpreting the work of some of the most important Portuguese historians. The essay concludes with a section devoted to a brief personal analysis by the author, formulated according to comparative methodologies which allows us to better contextualize the Portuguese case in what was also called the "age of fascisms".