ABSTRACT
The extent to which Portugal's particular pattern of development has created institutional conditions which have confined breakthrough attempts by new elites is apparent in the analysis of regime change. The experience of Portugal with authoritarianism suggests clearly that previous assumptions about the power and durability of authoritarian regimes are illusory. Regime change in Portugal has never been the result of the mobilization of broad sectors of society in a revolutionary movement, and it was not on April 25, 1974. A stable democratic future depends upon the ability of Portugal's new political elite to eliminate the asymmetry in the polity by reducing the power and authority of the administrative infrastructure and increasing that of the political infrastructure. The future of Portuguese democracy depends upon the ability of Portugal's new political elite to successfully fill the institutional void between themselves and the ordinary citizen in ways consistent with democratic policymaking.
