Social Democratic Party (Portugal) - Factions

Factions

The PSD is frequently referred to as a party that is not ideology-based but rather a "power party" ("partido do poder"). It frequently adopts a functional big tent party strategy to win elections. Due to this strategy, which most trace to Cavaco Silva's leadership, the party is made up of many factions, mostly centre-right (including liberal democrats, Christian democrats and neoconservatives) as well as quasi-social-democrats and former Communists:

• Portuguese social democrats: the main faction when the party was created, throughout the party's history rightist politicians joined them to have a greater chance of gaining power and influencing the country's politics (see Liberals, Conservatives, Right-wing populists and Neoliberals). They don't follow traditional social democracy but "Portuguese social democracy" as defined by Sá Carneiro's actions and writings, which includes a degree of centrist and leftist populism. They followed a kind of anti-class struggle party/cross-class party strategy. All the other members of the party claim to follow this line. Among its representatives were most of the leaders between Francisco Sá Carneiro and Cavaco Silva, Alberto João Jardim (also a founding member and an anti-neoliberal) and to an extent Luís Filipe Menezes (who called the PSD the "moderate left party", identified himself with a centre-left matrix and a united left strategy and defended a more open party on issues like abortion.) José Mendes Bota is another left-wing populist. The Portuguese social-democrats are centered around the Grupo da Boavista (Boavista Group).
• European-style social-democrats: follow traditional social democracy. They share with the Portuguese social democrats their presence at the creation of the party and "a non-Marxist progressivist line". Many of them (former party leader António Sousa Franco, party co-founder Magalhães Mota, writer and feminist Natália Correia) supported the Opções Inadiáveis (Pressing Options) manifesto, and then left to create the Independent Social Democrat Association (Associação Social Democrata Independente, ASDI) and the Social Democrat Movement (Movimento Social Democrata, MSD), forming electoral coalitions (later fusioning to) the Socialist Party during the 1970s–1980s. Some took part in the Democratic Renovator Party. A later example of a European-style Social democrat leaving the party for the Socialists is activist and politician Helena Roseta. The ones still in the party adapted to its current right-wing outlook or Portuguese social democracy. They today include former communists-turned centre-leftists, like Zita Seabra. Durão Barroso might have moved from Thatcherism to social democracy. Ironically, both Social Democrat factions were represented in the 2008 party elections by Manuela Ferreira Leite, economically neoliberal and socially conservative (often compared to Thatcher).
• Agrarianism: the other main faction at creation. The PSD was always more successful in the Northern and rural areas of the country. When Sousa Franco and his SPD-inspired social democrats started their break with the rest of the party he referred to a division between "a rural wing, led by Sá Carneiro, and an urban wing, more moderate and truly social democratic, close to the positions of Helmut Schmidt" Due to the electoral influence of ruralism on the PSD's politics they may be seen inside of or influencing most factions.
• Liberals (Classical and Social): due to the Salazarist connotation of the term “right-wing” (and all terms connected: “liberal”, “conservative”, etc.) after the Carnation Revolution, the little atractiveness of economic liberalism in European politics, no specific Liberal or Conservative parties were formed in post-1974 Portugal, except the experiences of the Catholic Action-monarchist Liberal Party in 1974 and the centrist liberal Democratic Renovator Party, so they started working inside the PSD. This strategy of joining “socialism and liberalism under the same hat” was especially successful during Cavaco Silva’s leadership, when the party gave up its candidacy to the Socialist International and became member of the Liberal International and the European Liberal party and Liberal and Democratic Reformist Group, leaving the international and the European party and group in 1996 to join the Christian Democrat International (today Centrist Democrat International), the European People's Party and the European People's Party-European Democrats. Since then the Liberal-Social democrat rift (or even the Liberal-Conservative-Populist-Social democrat rift) has plagued the party’s cohesion and actions. Durão Barroso (a former revolutionary Maoist who switched sides in the 1980s) is sometimes referred to as the most pure liberal of the party. In terms of social liberals, some try to link both social democracy and social liberalism to the PSD, to refer to the early PSD as liberal or partly social liberal party, and social liberalism is sometimes identified with the social market economy tradition the party traditionally supported. Even members of the Social Liberal Movement admit the traditional and current presence of social liberals (and other liberals) on the PSD.
• Christian democrats and Social Christians: some claim the PSD as the party from Christian democracy and Social Christianity from the beginning, or having these currents as part of its legacy. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is one of the main preachers of Social Christianity inside the PSD. As is Paulo Rangel.
• Right-wing Populists: Distinct from Radical right-wing populists, the populist centre and centre-left social democrats (like João Jardim and Sá Carneiro), the populist overlapers (like Cavaco Silva), and the euro-skeptic populists of the Democratic and Social Centre–People’s Party (CDS-PP). They are social-economic liberal conservative/conservative liberal and moderate, culturally religious conservatives and internationalist national conservatives. Their main representative is Pedro Santana Lopes. Though the main right-wing populists were present at the founding of the party (like Santana Lopes), they were clearly right-wing, recruited when their abilities were noticed in educated circles and universities, with minor agreements with Sá Carneiro's philosophy. Frequently, as the PSD is a bipartisanship party, right-wing populists from the CDS-PP join the party. Luís Filipe Meneses is frequently described as a populist but he tried to lead the party back to a “left” line, and doesn’t identify or act like the liberal conservative/conservative liberal populists.
• Conservatives: with the post-revolutionary opposition to the right (see above in liberal) no specific Conservative party was founded in Portugal; conservatives acted inside the CDS-PP and the PSD. Frequently linked with the Neoliberals, pure conservatives are rare in the party, as the usual partisan or politician of the party is economically moderate but socially conservative. One of the rare exceptions of a pure conservative in this party was former party member and MP Vasco Pulido Valente, who is highly elitist and a cultural purist (unlike most of the party's partisans, who have various degrees of populism or meritocratism), highly conservative and traditionalist.
• Neoconservatives: mostly former communists and leftists who supported the policies of the Bush Administration and defend similar views in Portuguese politics. The main example is José Pacheco Pereira (though his support of the Bush doctrine on the Invasion of Iraq is sometimes challenged. They are frequently referred to as "Cavaco-ists" due to their support of cavacoism's legacy and candidates representative of it, like Cavaco Silva himself and Ferreira Leite, defending the position that they should take a hard stance on the Left and its social liberalism).
• Neoliberals: Neoliberal tendencies were introduced in Portuguese economy by Cavaco Silva, removing socialism from the constitution and finishing the de-collectivization of the economy started with Sá Carneiro. Cavaco (a self-described Neo-Keynesian) never employed a totally Reaganite or Thatcherite strategy, maintaining a social democrat matrix and many (right and left-wing) populist and neo-Keynesian policies. Alberto João Jardim described the inconsistent neoliberalism of the PSD: “those Chicago Boys have some funny ideas, but when election time arrives the old Keynesianism is still what counts”. Cavaco Silva and Durão Barroso are both sometimes referred to as the closest to neo-liberal leaders of the party. The main pure representative of the streak is Manuela Ferreira Leite, but even she called herself a «social democrat» and explained «I'm not certainly liberal, I'm also not populist» and lead the social democratic factions during internal party rifts, though she accepts the nickname "Portuguese iron lady" and comparisons to Thatcher if « means (...) an enormous intransigence on values and in principles, of not abdicating from these values and from these principles and of continuing my way independently of the popularity of my actions and the effects on my image». The main group (officially non-partisan) associated with the neoliberal faction of the PSD is the Projecto Farol (Lighthouse Project).
• Overlappers: the average PSD voter and partisan since Cavaco Silva’s leadership. Cavaco himself, though a self-described Neo-Keynesian, an early member of the party since its centre-left days and a man with social liberal and centrist populist economic policy tendencies, he is personally a conservative (opposing same-sex marriage and abortion) and a practicing Catholic. As such Cavacoism should be considered a "hybrid" or a political syncretism. A similar case is Vasco Graça Moura, who claims to be an economic social democrat but opposes gay people serving in the military and is a self-described "centre-left reactionary". The overlappers are mainly represented in the forums gathered by the District of Oporto section of the party, which during the 2009 European elections tried to gather the ideas of all factions.
• Centrists: not to be confused with overlapers. Still indecisive between (traditional or Portuguese) social democracy, social liberalism or any other kind of centrism.
• Transversalists: are pragmatic and not strict on ideological issues. Although open to privatization and civil society alternatives to the social state, in speech they move closer to the centre-left origins of the party and proud of them. The main representative of this faction is Pedro Passos Coelho, who claims to be neither left nor right but that "the real issues are between old and new", though his opponents identified him as a liberal (in the conservative-liberal or neo-liberal European senses) since the 2008 party election, though he recalled the many meanings of liberal and recalled the Left liberalism of the United States Democratic Party, being even called "PSD's Obama" by supporters. Centrists and transversalists inside the party share the think tank Construir Ideias (Building Ideas), which Passos Coelho founded and leads. They mix (like the closely allied centrists) calls to privatization with others to more social justice, government regulation and arbitration and strategic governmental involvement in the economy. This faction is in constant rift with the more socially right-wing ones (who have been leading the party for a long time) and also with the overlappers whose hybridness they refuse, over the future of the party and its future ideological and philosophical alignments.