The internal organization of the Republican Nationalist Party (1923‑1935)

Abstract

The Republican Nationalist Party (RNP) had a statute and an organizational structure similar to other Portuguese republican parties. The Directory was the supreme governing organism, assisted by the Administrative Commission, the body in charge of the bureaucracy. At the central level there was the Advisory Board and the Parliamentary Group. Regionally the RNP was organized according to the country’s administrative structure.
The party network was comprehensive, but distant from the main party of the regime – the Portuguese Republican Party, known as Democratic Party. The RNP had a simple organizational apparatus, typical of cadre parties, still without the list of employees that characterized the mass parties rising in Europe. The organization was based on a large number of notables and local political leaders, linked by kinship ties and clienteles. In short,  although some elements of modernization began to emerge, the RNP went on having a deficient, irregular, intermittent and poorly structured organization.

https://doi.org/10.14195/1645-2259_16_16