ABSTRACT
Portugal, Spain, Greece and southern Italy form the underdeveloped periphery of the continent and share a host of common economic, political and social problems. Political scientists who study West European politics have traditionally focused their attention on the major powers--Great Britain, France, West Germany, and Italy--and neglected the smaller countries of the region. Lately, however, some scholars have begun to turn their attention toward West Europe's smaller democracies. The inclusion of Portugal within the tradition of comparative scholarship adds one more case to the universe of pluralist democracies and can aid our understanding of the West European political experience generally. The central organizing concept of the analyses was "corporatism." It was argued that corporatism was a unique and distinctive feature of Iberian political systems which had been transferred to Latin America during the colonial epoch. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
