ABSTRACT
Local government in Portugal is an excellent laboratory for an investigation of the direction of causality between political culture and structure because it constitutes a "crucial experiment" in regime change which makes possible the determination of cultural as well as structural change. The policymaking process at the local level was highly centralized and the decisional flow was from the top down. The data gleaned by the survey suggest that the political culture of Portugal's counties is a "subject" one. That is, the administrative aspect of the local political system is generally more salient than the political policymaking aspect and orientations toward the self as active political actors are quite low. The analysis of local political structure and culture shows that not only does a prior set of attitudes and orientations persist but many structural elements and roles persist as well, despite efforts by Portugal's new democratic elite to transform them.
