António de Oliveira Salazar

Salazar's Estado Novo gave dictatorship a constitutional and administrative framework, with a National Assembly and corporatist institutions alongside concentrated executive authority. Formal institutions did not create free political competition. Censorship, political policing and punitive courts restricted opposition, while the PIDE monitored and pursued critics. His case shows how an authoritarian state can preserve the appearance and routines of legality while preventing citizens from using those routines to replace its leadership freely.