Exclusive Statism, Institutional Keyholders and Structural Asymmetries: The Resilience of Policy Capture in Portugal

When institutions are formally restructured under the force of common and homogenizing external pressure
as happens in the case of the European Union and, less evidently, in other regional markets,
what happens with the pre-existing informal incorporation of economic interests in the national policy
sphere?
What are the mechanisms that explain continuities and breaks in patterns of policy capture and
power relations at times of formal institutional reform? Finding adequate answers to these questions
increases our capacity to understand the conditions that affect adjustment in integrating markets,
and the success of state and international intervention in response to major economic crises.
The paper develops a longitudinal account of state-economy relations in Portugal, tracing the
continuity of core elements of statism along major economic and political change in the course of
regional economic integration.
The study claims that the character of informal network ties that developed between political
party elites, business groups and public administrators in the early days of economic liberalization
has kept the logic of economic governance static and conditioned the outcomes of policy intervention
and institutional reform, explaining persistent failures.