A study by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, coordinated by researchers António Costa Pinto and Marcelo Camerlo, analyzed the profiles of all Portuguese ministers between 1976 and 2025, comparing Portugal with Spain, Italy, and Greece. The main conclusion is that Portuguese governing officials present higher levels of specialization than their Southern European counterparts. The study "Who Governs Portugal? Ministerial Profiles in Comparative Perspective" reveals that Portugal developed a recruitment model that combines political experience and technical competence, with the hybrid profile of "political-specialist" representing more than 38% of ministers and the country standing out for having the highest percentage of experts among the four countries analyzed, at 31%.
Parties continue to be decisive in ministerial recruitment, but they increasingly choose qualified and technical profiles. Approximately 70% of affiliated ministers held leadership positions in their respective parties, and although 36% are formally independent, 40% of these are classified as "semi-independent," maintaining informal links to parties. The authors describe this model as "endogenous technocratism," in which parties maintain control over recruitment while integrating politically close specialists. António Costa Pinto noted that accession to the European Union in 1986 was one of the drivers that demanded greater specialization from governing officials.
The study also identifies differences between men and women in access to Government. Among female ministers, political-specialist and expert profiles represent 78% of cases, while among men they represent 62%, suggesting that technical specialization functions as an additional requirement for women's access to Government. Experts and political-specialists remain, on average, longer in office and are more likely to complete their terms, while ministers with exclusively political profiles show higher turnover. Portugal appears in an intermediate position among the compared countries: it has more technical profiles than Spain, is less politicized than Greece, and presents a more stable model than Italy.
The study also revealed differences between PS and PSD in the selection of governing officials. Socialists tended to include more specialists in their executives, while PSD showed a greater tendency toward "experienced political cadres." The ministerial career in Portugal has a relatively short duration, with a Portuguese minister remaining in office for an average of approximately 600 days, below the averages of some European countries. In more sensitive portfolios, such as Foreign Affairs, parties maintain control through political appointments, while portfolios such as Energy, Environment, or Transport tend to have more experts.
