A natureza do sistema de governo na constituição portuguesa de 1911

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Portuguese government system adopted under the aegis of the Constitution of 1911, based on its dual aspect: from the formal Constitution, or official, and from institutional practices. What is observed is a double contradiction, not only in the formal or internal, but even in the correlation between this last and the constitutional practice. With regard to the provisions of the letter, they showed themselves wavering, sometimes indicating a executive unitary, and sometimes showing a dualistic executive. It is highlighted that this ambiguity has resulted in a letter full of gaps, vague and confused dispositions. Although parliamentary obvious characteristics, such as the fact that the president be elected by an electoral college and its acts to be subject to a referendum of the ministers, such issues do not come to dedicate a typical parliamentary system, because the President did politically respond to Parliament. With regard to the constitutional practice, it is clear the protagonism of customary norms in the design of its institutional architecture, some of them patently "against legem," had strengthened the executive dualistic model, overcoming the model which in the beggining was dualistic.