ABSTRACT
The Portuguese party system, in particular, is extremely conditioned by national factors. The enlargement of the national bodies of the party, so that the quota of women would be fulfilled, strengthened Guterres' position. Portuguese politics is becoming Americanized, similar to what is happening in Spain, Italy, Greece, and the UK, while the European dimension is being fully integrated and filtered through the national partisan lenses. The People's Party is anxious to be accepted by some main parties and tends to support policies of European integration, inspite of the fact that it fights elections with a nationalist opportunistic tone. A reconstruction of the membership of the different parties can only be obtained from different sources. The party system change is not only a social realignment due to tertiarization, individualization, and adjustment to electoral market hehavior, but also, intrinsically, a response to the European integration and the modernization agenda of the main parties.
