Part III of the Constitution is titled Organisation of political power and runs from Article 108 to Article 276.
- Sub-paragraph (d) of Article 6(1) of Law 37/81 requires knowledge of the political organisation of the Portuguese State.
- The Constitution has Part I, Fundamental rights and duties, and Part III, Organisation of political power.
- Part III runs from Article 108 to Article 276.
- The law does not ask for the State's administrative organisation: no list of ministries, no social security, no public institutes.
- What the law asks for is political power: who holds it, how someone gets there, and who they answer to.
Source: Constituição da República Portuguesa, Parte III (Organização do poder político), artigos 108.º a 276.º
Article 110(1) lists four organs of sovereignty and requires them to observe separation and interdependence.
- Article 110(1) says: the organs of sovereignty are the President of the Republic, the Assembly of the Republic, the Government and the Courts.
- There are four organs, not three: the three-branches formula is a different idea and not the one the Portuguese Constitution uses.
- The organs of sovereignty must observe the separation and the interdependence established in the Constitution.
- Interdependence explains why the President appoints the Prime Minister, parliament can dismiss the Government, and the President can dissolve parliament.
Source: Constituição da República Portuguesa, artigo 110.º, n.º 1
The Prime Minister is appointed by the President of the Republic, and the Government answers to two bodies at once.
- Article 187(1) says the Prime Minister is appointed by the President of the Republic, after hearing the parties represented in the Assembly of the Republic.
- The President appoints taking the election results into account, but is not bound to any particular name.
- Legislative elections elect members of parliament, not a head of government.
- The other members of the Government are appointed by the President on the Prime Minister's proposal.
- The Government is answerable to the President of the Republic and to the Assembly of the Republic.
Source: Constituição da República Portuguesa, artigo 187.º, n.º 1
The Constitution names three categories of legislative act, with three different authors.
- The legislative acts are leis, decretos-leis and decretos legislativos regionais.
- Leis come from the Assembly of the Republic, which may legislate on any matter except those the Constitution reserves to the Government.
- Decretos-leis come from the Government, which legislates on matters not reserved to parliament, or under an authorisation from it.
- Decretos legislativos regionais come from the Legislative Assemblies of the Azores and Madeira.
Source: Constituição da República Portuguesa, Parte III (Organização do poder político), artigos 108.º a 276.º
The Constitution fixes no election dates: it fixes how long terms last and the rules for calling each election.
- The President of the Republic serves a 5-year term and may not serve a third consecutive term.
- The President is elected in the 60 days before the previous term ends, by absolute majority; without one, a run-off follows within 21 days.
- Parliament runs for at most 4 legislative sessions, and the President may dissolve it; the dissolution itself calls the election, within the next 60 days.
- It is always the President of the Republic who sets the day for presidential, parliamentary, European and regional assembly elections.
- Votes become seats by proportional representation, using the d'Hondt highest-average method, and no political office may be held for life.
Source: Constituição da República Portuguesa, Parte III (Organização do poder político), artigos 108.º a 276.º
Portugal is a unitary State that respects the autonomy of the Azores and Madeira and that of local authorities.
- The Constitution says that the State is unitary and requires it to respect island autonomy and the autonomy of local authorities.
- The archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira are autonomous regions, with their own political-administrative statutes and organs of government.
- Portugal is neither a federal State nor a simply centralised one.
- Each autonomous region has two organs of its own: the Legislative Assembly, elected by universal proportional suffrage, and the Regional Government.
- The Regional Government answers politically to the Legislative Assembly, and its president is appointed by the Representative of the Republic, taking election results into account.
Source: Constituição da República Portuguesa, artigo 6.º
The Constitution names three categories of local authority on the mainland, but one of them exists only after a law and a referendum.
- The Constitution names three categories of local authority on the mainland: parishes, municipalities and administrative regions.
- The autonomous regions have parishes and municipalities.
- Creating the administrative regions depends on a statute and on a favourable vote by a majority of electors in a nationwide direct consultation.
- Every local authority has an elected assembly with deliberative powers and a collegial executive body answerable to it.
- The Constitution does not fix how long local mandates run: that is a matter for electoral law.
Source: Constituição da República Portuguesa, Parte III (Organização do poder político), artigos 108.º a 276.º
The courts administer justice in the name of the people, are independent, and answer politically to nobody.
- The Constitution says that the courts are the organs of sovereignty with competence to administer justice in the name of the people.
- It also says that the courts are independent and subject only to the law.
- The Government is not elected but answers politically to two bodies; the courts are not elected and answer politically to nobody.
- Besides the Constitutional Court there are the Supreme Court of Justice and the judicial courts, and the Supreme Administrative Court with the administrative and tax courts.
- There is also the Court of Auditors, and the Constitutional Court deals with justice in matters of a constitutional-legal nature.
Source: Constituição da República Portuguesa, Parte III (Organização do poder político), artigos 108.º a 276.º
Article 288 lists what a constitutional revision must respect, and several of its sub-paragraphs concern the organisation of the State.
- Article 288 lists the material limits on constitutional revision: what any revising law must respect.
- Sub-paragraph (j) protects the separation and interdependence of the organs of sovereignty.
- Sub-paragraph (h) protects universal, direct, secret and periodic suffrage for elective office-holders of the organs of sovereignty, the autonomous regions and local government.
- The same sub-paragraph (h) protects the system of proportional representation.
- Sub-paragraph (m) protects the independence of the courts, (n) the autonomy of local authorities and (o) the political-administrative autonomy of the Azores and Madeira.
Source: Constituição da República Portuguesa, artigo 288.º