ABSTRACT
This article analyses the relationship between living costs management and the New State’s decisions regarding the improvement of the social and economic standing of civil servants. It concludes that some of the New State’s decisions regarding civil servants’ financial benefits - such as social security system, administrative reform or salaries policy - were influenced by the need to maintain a balance between wages, prices and budgetary stability, which was at the heart of the New State’s legitimacy. In the center of this strategy was, therefore, the regime’s desire to maintain power through the preservation of social peace and the protection of the tenuous balances that sustained it. This article is based on a specialized bibliography about the Portuguese inflationary process and the social movements that occurred during the New State, as well as printed sources, parliamentary debates, legislation and documentation from the Contemporary Archive of the Ministry of Finance and the Portuguese Radio and Television Archive.
Keywords:
Portugal; New State; Civil Servants; Cost of Living; Administrative Reform