The rise and fall of industrial self‐management in Portugal: A historical institutionalist perspective

Abstract

In the aftermath of the 1974 democratic revolution, Portugal witnessed a massive wave of worker occupations and factory takeovers. Following this period of exponential growth, industrial self‐management entered a phase of stagnation, eventually slipping into an unstoppable path of decay. Drawing on historical institutional theory, this paper explores the causes of this evolutionary trend. The climate of political and economic uncertainty that followed the military coup is conceptualized as a critical juncture. For a relatively short period of time, long‐established institutional constraints on worker entrepreneurship relaxed, opening a window of opportunity for the development of a hitherto neglected form of organizing industrial production. At such a crucial moment, however, the Portuguese workers failed to form a political coalition with the power to bring about essential legal and policy reforms. In a rather hostile institutional environment, some factories were returned to their former owners, while others struggled to become economically self‐sufficient and eventually disappeared.