In the context of its autonomisation as a political sector, the organisational structure of the entities under the central supervision of the Ministry of Culture in Portugal has been reconfigured through several legislative reforms that have affected their formal autonomy. The compilation of the legal diplomas (organic laws) that shaped these organisations during the democratic period in Portugal, and their graphic conversion into chronologies, allows for a longitudinal analysis of this sector’s central state administration. We consider the evolution that occurred during this timeframe, evaluating the causes of the reforms and problematising their impact on the autonomy of organisations (Verhoest et al 2004) and cultural policy implementation. Starting from Ramos' (2009) compilation of data on the evolution of this government sector in Portugal, we systematize this legislative panorama using a comprehensive research design and incorporating phenomena that have occurred in the meantime, into an integrative and innovative longitudinal comparison of the entities supervised by the Portuguese Ministry of Culture. This is operationalised through an exploratory research methodology focused on the Portuguese Official Gazette (Diário da República), covering the democratic period (1974-2022). We compile a database and graphically systematise it in subsets corresponding to different cultural areas. This graphical overview, complemented by a content analysis of the legislative documents, allows an intuitive and systemic reading of the legislative panorama, identifying phenomena and trends in organisational evolution, as well as possible explanatory variables that impacted the reforms. The phenomena and trends identified in the studied case include organic concentration and deconcentration, the prevalence of different legal statutes in distinct timeframes, the transfer of competences and legislative instability. Some of the reforms can be explained by the evolution of the Portuguese public administration (Araújo 2002, Corte-Real 2008), but some changes require alternative explanations. From the gathered data, we consider other possible causes of their evolution and discuss a set of inductively designed hypotheses about the implications for the autonomy of the organisations. The analysis of the statutes of these public administration bodies can contribute to cultural policy and influence future reforms and legislative designs. The graphical approach adopted in this article allows for a more intuitive detection of the phenomena observed and the comparison of these cultural public organisations' organic evolution. The method can be replicated by other researchers focusing on alternative governmental sectors or other national legislative contexts, providing the basis for future comparative analyses. This paper is a preliminary stage in the doctoral research being carried out by the first author of this communication (supervised by the second author), on the relationship between the government's authority for culture and the organisations it oversees.

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cultural policy,cultural organisations,public administration reforms,organisational autonomy,Ministry of Culture,Portugal