ABSTRACT
Caetano initiated his public life in the early 1920s as an activist of the youth branch of the Integralismo Lusitano (Portuguese Integralism) movement. By 1929 he was a collaborator of Salazar as a lawyer for the Ministry of Finances. In 1931 he was one of the youngest members of the Executive Committee of the National Union party and played a major role in writing the 1933 constitution. During the 1930s he pursued a prestigious career at the University of Lisbon as professor of law, institutions, and administration and as a major theorist of corporativism. During the same period he was in charge of the reform of the Portuguese Administrative Code along a centralist, authoritarian line.
