This article examines institution building in the course of the transition to the authoritarian regime of the New State (Estado Novo) in Portugal. The special interest of the Portuguese experience derives from the fact that cartelization and corporatism were combined under the same policy and governed by the same legal framework. The first part of the article reconstructs the historical path from the micro perspective of the introduction of cartelization in the canning industry, which constituted the prototype for future developments in economic policy. Next is emphasized the way the accumulation of spontaneous and discrete individual adjustments of producers to regulation generated a series of unexpected consequences, i.e. consequences that were not in the initial plans of the regulators. The development of ‘bureaucratic corporatism’ then appears as the historical consequence of the State's overhauling of contradictory policies, its correction of the distortions brought about by economic regulation and the need to preserve ever larger mechanisms for the consultation of interests, without lessening State control.

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Authoritarian regimes,Bureaucracy,Economic regulation,Industrial policy,Property rights

• History and Archeology - Humanities