Ordens honoríficas e semipresidencialismo : a Ordem da Liberdade e os Presidentes da República Portuguesa (1976-2017)

Abstract

This article analyses the way in which the Presidents of the Portuguese Republic have been using the Order of Freedom, an honorific order created after the break down of the dictator ship to honor those who fought for freedom and democracy, based on the 501 decorations awarded between 1977 and July 2017. The question that this article ask sis: Is the Order of Freedom used as a political reward or merely symbolically? The results show that the symbolic dimension prevails but the analysis of the profile of the decorated and of the presidential mandates reveals patterns that do not allow us to abandon the hypothesis of the instrumentalization of the order.