Democratic breakdown and transitions to democracy in Portugal

This article has very modest aspirations: We will utilize elementary game theory in two versions in order to illuminate how this type of thinking may make more explicit the analysis of two of Portugal's most important political events in modern times: the breakdown of democracy in 1926 and the transition to democracy in 1974. The first process we will also link to one type of framework – ‘funnel of causality’ ’ as a means of organizing the theoretical understanding of the process. As the reader will understand, we thus pay special attention to pedagogical instruction and analytical clarity, rather than an extensive empirical test and methodological sophistication. In order to give the analysis a comparative relevance, we shall use concepts of modern breakdown and transition theory when commenting on the decisions made by the main actors.