Parishes' political and administrative power in Portugal (19th and 20th century)

Abstract

Although Portuguese 19th and 20th-century historical studies have dedicated some attention to the role of administrative constituencies, such as Districts and Municipalities, the same cannot be said about Parishes. Indeed, in order to understand the links between the Church and political and administrative power, as well as within the latter, between the centre and the outskirts, one must analyse the problems resulting from the secularisation of Parishes, which acquired a civil status and were granted powers. The purpose of such analysis is to discover how panoptism of the centralist State - a structure which extended throughout the several relevant political regimes (Constitutional Monarchy, Republic, New State) - acted at the most "microscopic" scale and, more specifically, how it "policed" the populations.