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R A FF A E L L A Y . N A N E T T I w i t h
HELENA RATO and MIGUEL RODRIGUES
In this regard the comparative scope of the ADAPT research project, which
centres on the strategically important EU regional policy and on which this
article is based, fills an important void. Essential lessons can be learned
from the experience of a member state such as Portugal, whose starting
point was the aftermath of a convulsive adjustment following the fall of a
dictatorship and the loss of the empire. The purpose of this article is to
analyse how the centralized decision-making process in Portugal has
changed as a consequence of the country’s accession into the EU in 1986
and its engagement with the EU’s regional policy. The analysis emphasizes
Portugal’s reluctance to decentralize its political and administrative structures
while at the same time it underscores learning and adaptive patterns on the
part of the country’s centralized institutions as well as of its civil society.
The Lisbon and Tagus Valley Region, encompassing the Lisbon Metropolitan
Area, has been chosen for in-depth fieldwork to illustrate the modalities of
change. Beginning with a contextual analysis of Portugal before accession
the article moves on to investigate and assess how the country’s institutions
were impacted by and adapted to the exigencies of EU membership and its
incoming regional policy.
Adaptational Pressures
The influence of the EU regional policy has been paramount in Portugal’s
adoption of institutional and administrative reforms to undertake programmes
of regional development (Pires, 1998). The rules to access resources devised
by the 1988 Reform of the EU Structural Funds, and strengthened by the 1993
second Delors Package, effectively obliged Portugal to create a complex and
wide-ranging planning process, centred on the new Department of Planning
and Regional Development of the Ministry of Planning and Territorial
Administration. The main output of this process was the elaboration of the
Major Planning Options for 1989 –93, incorporating strategic guidelines for
the Regional Development Plan and the first CSF. Key to this success was
the cadre of INA-trained young administrators, experts in the very tradition
and logic of planning underwriting the EU mandate. They constituted the
technical core of the Department’s bureaucracy and were supported by the
senior staff with years of management experience who had also been assigned
to the new Department. They all shared a strong sense of urgency and the need
to ‘catch up’ with other EU member states (Nanetti, 1992).
Another way in which the EU regional policy induced a positive pressure
for change was the greater visibility acquired by the development decisions
made by the autonomous governments of Portugal’s island regions. Their
interaction with and influence over the Ministry increased, as they drew
attention to the issues of intra-island development disparities and to the
contribution that the tourism industry could make in filling the gap (Nanetti,
1992). In a similar mode, Municipalities newly empowered by the Consti-
tution with development functions played a mostly positive role in orientating
the central government towards local development issues, although at times
engaging in debate over differing regional priorities than those defined
by central government. The impact of these pressure points and the EU
critique of the first CSF as a top-down process led to significant changes in
the formulation of the second CSF (1994 –99). Business Associations, Trade
Unions, Local Civic Associations, the Association of Municipal Authorities
and individual experts participated in a consultative process that was directed
by the Ministry of Planning and preceded the Regional Development Plan.
PORTUGAL 409
In line with the stricter mandate of the Funds, including the new Cohesion
Fund, to target resources so as to reduce development gaps, the Association
of Municipal Authorities was attributed responsibility in managing invest-
ments of regional significance.
Resistance to Change
Notwithstanding the technical capacity shown by central government to
conform to the norms and procedures of the EU regional policy, significant
points of political resistance emerged. The major success of the resistance
to change was the scuttling of the attempt to create Administrative Regions
in the mainland with functions of public service management and coordination
and support of municipal activities, in spite of the provision of the 1976
Constitution. In 1991, Parliament approved a law to institutionalize the
Regions and identify their boundaries and powers, subject to a popular
referendum. The issue of regionalization was at the centre of a highly
charged national political debate that involved not only political parties
and opinion makers but also up to 25 civic movements which emerged in
support and against the proposal, a plurality of them organized by political
parties and gaining public exposure (Freire and Baun, 2001). Held in 1998,
the referendum posed two questions regarding the creation of the sub-national
regional system and the acceptance of the specific Region in the voter’s area.
With a high abstention rate of 52% the result was a 60% vote against both
questions.
The no vote saw a convergence of interests resisting change. With import-
ant individual exceptions, the government itself, national political parties
and Municipalities, and business lobbied against the proposal for a variety
of reasons. The government remained in favour of national development
priorities and feared the loss of power to regions; national political parties
feared the loss of their local power based on Municipalities; Municipalities
saw the Regions as potential competitors and not reflective of their interests;
and the business lobbies – whose activities were linked to the decisions of the
Regional Coordination Commissions – saw their interests in danger. A matter
that played against the Administrative Regions was the provision in the law
by which their boundaries did not overlap with the areas of intervention of
the Regional Development Commissions. The apathy among the public at
large is to be ascribed not only to the general low level of civic participation
but also to the sense of powerlessness in the face of a strongly paternalistic
system and the realization that the system remained attuned to elite rather
than popular interests. In spite of a decade of EU-prompted regional develop-
ment strategies to reduce regional disparities, the message of regionalization
was still not fully convincing due to the continued growth of the coastal
and urban areas in Portugal compared with the remote and inland areas.
410 REGIONAL a nd FEDERAL S TUDIES
The Portuguese core areas continued to benefit from regional policies whose
official objective was to reduce socio-economic disparities (Cabral, 1997).
FIGURE 1
NUTS II REGIONS IN PORTUGAL
activities and land use and provide the policy frameworks for the preparation
of Municipal Plans that were also to be approved by the Ministry. At the
sub-national level of governance the RCCs were chaired by the Director
General of the Ministry’s Department of Planning and Regional Development,
while their work was integrated into that of national agencies with technical
responsibilities for EU funds, such as the general inspectors of the Ministries
responsible for the other EU funded policies and Community initiatives.
At the local level the reorganization had spawned the creation of manage-
ment units that were in charge of operational programmes, but under the aegis
412 REGIONAL a nd FEDERAL S TUDIES
of central government (see Fig. 2). In fact for the regional programmes the
management units were presided over by the five RCCs. Municipal authorities
and regional business associations participated in the management units when
regional programmes impacted on their territory. This complex governance
structure also produced an advisory process that was particularly significant
in the phase of plan formulation. Unofficial participants in the process were
well-known politicians and business people. External consultants often
played an important role in plan preparation. The creation of the CSF
FIGURE 2
PORTUGAL 413
The Civic Culture, Social Capital and the Role of Civil Society at Large
Civic culture as a concept in modern societies draws on patterns of behaviour
that emphasize citizenship rights and duties (Cruz, 2003). Social capital is a
three-dimensional concept, entailing trust in institutions and in social actors,
sharing of solidarity norms, and the propensity on the part of citizens to act
associationally on those norms to produce public goods (Leonardi, 1995;
Putnam, Leonardi and Nanetti, 1992). Portugal’s civic culture continues to
be assessed as weak in its political participatory forms, save for the immediate
aftermath of the revolution of 1974, when spontaneous mass demonstrations
occurred and organized rallies and other forms of public engagement saw
the participation of many citizens in public activities. Since then, most of
this elan has waned. Numerous structural factors explain why in Portugal a
strong civic culture to date lacks the capacity to sustain itself. Foremost
among these is the long-lasting colonial dictatorship under which civic and
political associations were clandestine (Cruz, 1995). But they also include
the country’s history of hierarchical and paternalistic political conduits, the
disparities in economic opportunities and educational resources across
social groups, and the clear gender gap whereby even more limited resources
are available to women (Cabral, 1997). To date civil society shows a limited
level of autonomy vis-à-vis the state.
Relatedly, the stock of social capital in Portugal, although it has not been
specifically measured in its three dimensions, is estimated to be quite low.
Studies over the last two decades have indicated a ‘power gap’ between
citizens and political power in Portugal twice or more the size of those
in Holland and Denmark (Hofstede, 1994; Cabral, 1997), with women
showing an even higher gap. Other research documents how the membership
in existing cultural and sport associations is only one third female (INE, 2002).
PORTUGAL 415
new forms of urban poverty and social exclusion, and the multiple problems
associated with de-industrialization and the decline of traditional agriculture
and fishing activities. The disparities are reflected in social indicators that
show that growth within the Region has occurred at the expense of social
and economic cohesion (Bruto da Costa et al., 1999). Acknowledging this
negative trend, the Territorial Organization law of 1999 articulated the LTV
Region into three distinct planning sub-regions: the Lisbon Metropolitan
Area (LMA), the West, and the Tagus Valley (see Fig. 3).
FIGURE 3
SUB-REGIONS OF LTV REGION
PORTUGAL 417
The LMA has been impacted the most by the tremendous investment in
transport infrastructure – mostly highways – that has characterized Portu-
gal over the past 15 years through the use of EU funds. On the one hand,
territorial dynamics with positive and negative impacts were induced by the
massive change in mobility. Thus, in suburban locations housing construc-
tion has been on the rise due to very high demand from families moving
out of Lisbon and to increasing immigration, but it has also concentrated
on the supply of higher-cost dwellings, including second homes, while
the construction of affordable units has occurred often in the absence of
planning schemes and standards. While immigration has countered the
LMA’s drop in population, spatial segmentation has accentuated the con-
centration of social groups exposed to exclusion risks into degraded
inner city areas, where unemployment is high and social problems more
pervasive. On the other hand, the transport revolution has supported the
service transformation of the LMA’s economic base, so that the service
sector now accounts for about 70% of the regional GDP and employment.
The sector itself has expanded from its former dependence on the public
administration and financial services to larger shares of advanced services
to companies, R&D activities, management of national infrastructures,
trade and tourism.
The West sub-region, where the main activity was traditionally agricul-
ture, has seen urbanization and has experience substantial population
growth along the new highway corridor, but it remains characterized by a
low-skill labour force and great quality-of-life disparities between its urban
and rural areas. The Tagus Valley sub-region, spatially the largest of the
three, boasts very fertile land and a productive agricultural and cattle-breeding
economy. The new transport improvements have made its location the coun-
try’s crossroads to Europe and have provided great advantages to the area.
Notwithstanding these improvements in transport infrastructure, the Tagus
Valley faces challenges of international competition for its products and
upgrading its inadequate social infrastructure.
Development Problems
Historically the LTV Region was highly heterogeneous, but significant
growth has made it more so. It is now experiencing development problems
associated with such patterns of growth. Large demographic increases are
still occurring in Lisbon’s immediate periphery and in Setubal, where
housing demand remains strong but where the housing supply is less afford-
able. Areas in the West and Tagus Valley continue to show GDP per capita
much below the regional average, at times less than half. New forms of
social vulnerability beset groups of residents who find that their limited
skills are obsolete and that they are excluded from opportunities provided
418 REGIONAL a nd FEDERAL S TUDIES
Governance Institutional
level sector Actor Role
National Public Ministry of Planning Definition and national coordination of regional policies
Regional Development Directorate-General Responsible for drafting and executing regional development policy, for
coordinating and monitoring implementation of community-funded projects
National Municipalities Association Co-ordinates municipalities’ common interests
Private National Business Association (AEP) Global association of private companies; defends its interests (with an
important lobbying power)
NGOs CGTP Union, defends the workers’ rights and interests
UGT
Regional Public Regional Coordination Commission – Lisbon Responsible for the execution of relational planning and development policies
and Tagus Valley
Lezı́ria do Tejo Municipality Association
Setúbal Municipalities Association Coordinate common interests of municipalities in the region
Medium Tagus Municipality Association
West Municipalities Association
Lisbon Metropolitan Area (authority) Coordinates transversal issues to the metropolitan area
Private Lisbon Region Business Association
Setúbal Region Business Association
Leiria Region Business Association Associations of private companies; defends their associates interests
Portalegre Region Business Association
Santarém Region Business Association
Local Public Oeiras municipality
Nazaré municipality
Ourém municipality
Palmela municipality
Management of local public interests
Santarém municipality
Chamusca municipality
Abrantes municipality
Caldas da Raı́nha municipality
PORTUGAL 421
TABLE 2
FREEMAN’S DEGREE CENTRALITY MEASURES
No Symmetric
Diagonal valid
Model: 1 Degree 2 NrmDegree
FIGURE 4
STRUCTURAL EQUIVALENCE OF POLICY NETWORK ACTORS
PORTUGAL 423
Qualitative Analysis
The qualitative information gathered from the interviews supports the SNA
findings and contributes further insights into the process of adaptation to
European regional policy-making norms and procedures in the LTV Region.
Both the dialogue and the negotiations among regional and local actors are
reported to be directly influenced by the central government’s priorities
and strategy for regional development, even when the actor is the Lisbon
Metropolitan Authority that intervenes as a go-between when the regional
Business Associations are prompted into action. An example of the political
importance of Lisbon is the fact that its former mayor became the country’s
President. Yet, the sectoral rather than regional accent of the central
government’s development priorities is seen as creating difficulties in the dia-
logue with Lisbon and the other Municipalities. A clear trend identified by the
respondents is the activism of the entrepreneurial associations, aiming to
develop lobbying strength to better influence national decision-makers.
FIGURE 5
POLICY NETWORK PORTUGAL: METRIC MULTIDIMENSIONAL SCALING (MDS)
424 REGIONAL a nd FEDERAL S TUDIES
Patterns of Adaptation
The EU regional policy has been a highly motivational factor for Portugal’s
institutional actors to familiarize themselves and to work with the opportu-
nities that the implementation of the policy afforded. In particular, the possi-
bilities to access financial resources and to form institutional partnerships
in promoting development stand out. Policy adaptation became the means
through which these aims could be achieved. At the national level it meant
to transpose EU directives and regulations into national laws and admini-
strative practices, at the same time to participate in and maintain control
PORTUGAL 425
over the process. At the local level it meant to acknowledge and pursue new
tasks, at the same time to participate in and maximize the benefits from the
process. It has been indeed a case of reluctant decentralization from the top,
which up until now has seen Portugal’s national level of government in the
winner’s seat.
Much of the evidence of adaptation is found in the extensive institution
building that has taken place as a result. The urge has been to restructure
the central government in order to give it the capacity to formulate regional
policy and to coordinate and manage its territorial implementation. The
core of the renewed institutional system are the Directorate-General for
Regional Development in the Ministry of Planning and the Ministry’s
Regional Coordination Commissions. But the restructuring did not stop at
the formal creation of institutions. A second important feature of the change
in Portugal has been the realization of the need to show to the EU the admini-
strative capacity to deliver results. As a consequence, a skill and meritocracy-
based approach to the staffing of the new policy-making institutions was
adopted early on in the process, a feature that may not have been expected
in a country whose other institutions, political and cultural for example,
reflect a pervasive paternalistic and hierarchical approach. Drawing on a
pool of trained young planners and the experience of former colonial admini-
strators, Portugal was in a position to boast of being the first Objective 1
country to submit on time to Brussels the Regional Development Plan that
constituted the basis for the second CSF, even ahead of Ireland.
But the most difficult and less successful adaptive change has been regard-
ing the dimension of territorial implementation of the regional policy. The
failure of the popular referendum to approve the creation of the administrative
regions has brought out the contradictions built into a system that is charged
with the elaboration and delivery of a regional policy to address highly differ-
entiated territorial needs, while at the same time it remains centrally controlled
and structured. At the local level the contradiction has surfaced more often
because over the years, and since the second CSF, the EU has required a
substantive participatory process in regional policy formulation and
implementation together with greater territorial targeting of Structural funds
resources. Central government control over the content of the regional
policy agenda is increasingly challenged, and the local actors point to
the limitations of a process which is only consultative in the formulation
stage and still needs Ministerial approval for local cooperative efforts in the
implementation stage.
reason is that the changes in the country’s institutional structure have not been
bold enough, the failure to create administrative regions being the most sig-
nificant example and the option to form Municipal Associations being an
insufficient step in filling the participatory gap. Consequently, the pre-con-
dition of power redistribution from the central level of government to the
regional and local levels that underlines the paradigm of greater and
sustained engagement of civil society in policy-making has yet to be realized
in Portugal, notwithstanding the prompts provided by EU regional policy.
Such a reality explains a yet low learning performance.
However, within this constraining institutional structure, something has
changed in the direction of greater civil society engagement. A very active
party is the Business Associations which are responding to the solicitation
on the part of the Ministry to be more involved. They are assessing the eco-
nomic gains to come from being active as regional participants in the policy,
including the co-financing of projects. Trade unions, potentially very import-
ant players, are keeping a national profile through their participation in the
consultative councils on the regional policy but are failing to be relevant
regional actors. This attitude limits their broader engagement with the
policy, reinforces the top-down approach, and confines their role to sectoral
issues. Other potentially important players, such as professional associations
and NGOs, also maintain mainly a national profile by sitting on the consulta-
tive councils.
CONCLUSIONS
Portugal began to participate in the EU regional policy and benefit from its
allocation of resources shortly after its accession. It was spurred on by the
urgency to catch up with the development of the rest of Europe and making
up for lost time. In many ways it was a new challenge for Portugal, given
its history of highly centralized institutions, deep territorial and social
cleavages, and weak civil society, against European norms and procedures
that required multi-level governance, geographical targeting of resources,
and accountability. Extensive adaptation and change were inevitable in formu-
lating an appropriate development policy and coordinating and managing
the EU funded programmes. A complex and broad ranging planning process
was elaborated that would incorporate the principles of the 1988 reform
of the Structural Funds. It first centred on the creation of new Ministerial
institutions at the national and regional levels and incrementally it expanded
an advisory policy process to local institutional and civil society actors. The
process of change benefited from the availability of highly skilled ministerial
officials who were assigned to the new institution.
The European requirement of monitoring Structural fund expenditures
and of measuring their effectiveness in terms of territorial impact has led to
incremental improvements in the technical capacity of local institutions.
Over time, while maintaining its characteristic of a national system, Portugal’s
governance structure came to rely more on its local government institutions,
the Municipalities, by allowing them to create formal and management
types of Associations to improve the effectiveness of the implementation of
regional programmes. New institutional attitudes and types of behaviour
have no doubt emerged. Examples of public – private partnerships have been
experimented with in facilitating the construction of major projects and
beginning to coordinate spatial decisions regarding industrial and service
park infrastructures with the interest of private companies to locate there.
Awareness of developmental choices and priorities among social groups
and the public at large has been increased by the consultative process and
the publicity it receives, although these voices are far from being a determin-
ing factors in decision-making.
The latter conclusion is related to the failure of Portugal to create admin-
istrative regions, a major drawback also because of the way in which it
happened. The aftermath of the negative vote in the referendum on regions
428 REGIONAL a nd FEDERAL S TUDIES
was to perpetuate the acrimonious political debate that had preceded it, and the
hardening of positions. It does not appear realistic to think that regions will
soon be on the horizon soon in Portugal. Yet, their very absence explains
better than anything else the constraints on performance of the regional
policy, foremost the persistent inter and intra-regional development disparities
in the country. Projects are by and large decided at the national level, accord-
ing to a predominant sectorial logic and they are regionalized a posteriori. The
rather efficient Ministry-based institutional structure, including its regional
Commissions, is no substitute for regional autonomy and a bottom up and
pro-active, integrated approach to development strategies which would be
territorially specific because it would be designed and carried out by regional
and local institutional actors. This is the main lesson that remains to be learned
in Portugal and consigned to the actors involved in the process of regional
development for 2000– 06 and beyond.
NOTES
1. The field work comprised of semi-structured interviews with key institutional actors in
policy making in the Region during the period of transition between the second CSF and the
beginning of the third, and was supported by the analysis of an extensive body of documentary
material.
2. The mapping of the institutional actors engaged with the regional policy in the LTV Region
provided a total of 25 actors who were targeted for the semi-structured interviews. Ultimately,
it was possible to gather quantitative interview data, for purposes of the SNA, from only 11
respondents representing ten institutions. Three other respondents representing agricultural
development associations were interviewed later in the research, but only qualitative
information was produced by those interviews to be incorporated in the qualitative analysis.
Notwithstanding repeated attempts, trade union representatives did not allow themselves to
be interviewed, while among the actors no NGO specifically orientated to the regional
policy had been identified. The interviewees represented the Ministry of Planning and the
Regional Development Directorate-General; the Regional Coordination Commission for
LTV, Leziria do Tejo Association of Municipalities and the Lisbon Metropolitan Area
authority; two regional Business Associations for Leiria and Portalegre; and three individual
Municipalities of Oeiras, Ourem, and Abrantes.
3. Using Freeman’s degree of centrality method the adjacency matrix identifies more properly
actors with more connections, independent of strength, while the valued matrix takes the
strengths of connections into account to evaluate how central the actors are.
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