Political Opportunity Structure in Authoritarian Contexts: The Case of the Students’ Movement under the Portuguese Estado Novo (1962-1974)

The Political Opportunity Structures (POS) concept is often used to study how the state reacts to social movements. Originally deployed to analyse democratic contexts, it has been applied more recently to examine non-democratic regimes, which also experience phases of opening or closure, as when there are intra-elite divisions (see, for example, Dorronsoro 2005). The POS concept has proved useful in the analysis of the management of contentious politics, or what is called protest policing in the literature of the sociology of social movements. According to della Porta and Reiter (2003: 22-43), the reaction of the state to social movements, including police activity, is shaped “by the opportunities that the political system gives to challengers.” Along similar lines, some authors highlight that levels of state violence depends more on the degree of regime consolidation than on the nature of the regime itself (Davenport, 2007). Based on these premises, this article aims to examine the reciprocal influences between the student movement and the POS during the last decade of the New State regime between 1962 and 1974, with a particular focus on the following dimensions: as regards state institutions, their role in public order management and legislation, protest policing, and educational policy; and as regards the student movement, mobilizing issues, repertoire of actions, diffusion and radicalization. Finally, the article aims, on the one hand, to test the hypothesis, based on a reformulation of the POS theory, that “opportunities are forged continuously through the relationship with movements” (Fillieule, 1997: 97); and, on the other hand, to test the efficacy of the POS concept as it applies to authoritarian contexts.