The main goal of the curricular unit is to provide students a broad view on the formation and the building of local power in its relationship with the political centre in Portugal throughout time since the Middle Ages up to the modern world and at the same time a broad view on the role of local elites within that dynamic.
1. Generic skills:
1.1. Organization and fluency of oral and written expression.
1.2. Capacity of analysis and synthesis.
1.3. Capacity to cope with complex and contradictory information.
1.4. Capacity to conceptualize and to question.
2. Specific skills:
1.1. Generic knowledge on central problems and dynamics regarding local power institutions.
2.2. Capacity to think and to debate on solid ground the building of local power in its relationship with the political centre in Portugal throughout time.
The history of local power and of municipalism: an “alternative” history of Portugal as seen from the peripheries?
1. In the origins of local power: interpretations and realities.
2. Local power in the Ancien Régime: the time of “liberties”.
3. The liberal watershed and the municipalities’ loss of autonomy.
4. Local power in the 20th century: from the I Republic to democracy.
5. A sociology of local elites in Portugal and in the empire.
Conclusion:
An institution for the 21rst century?
1. In the curricular unit the teaching methodologies will be of two kinds: magistral and student-centered active methodologies (oral presentation and debates).
2. The teacher’s magistral presentation will focus mainly on the theoretic issues and on the presentation of the broad lines of the formation and the building of local power in its relationship with the political centre in Portugal throughout time.
3. Students will read and debate in class texts related with the central problems that are studied in the curricular unit. This will show if the concepts and the historical situations were correctly understood. Thus, students will participate in teaching in a way that we believe will improve the integration of teaching and learning.
COELHO, Maria Helena da Cruz; MAGALHÃES, Joaquim Romero, O Poder Concelhio. Das origens às Cortes Constituintes, Coimbra, Centro de Estudos e Formação Autárquica, 1986; 2ª edição, 2009.
CUNHA, Mafalda Soares da; FONSECA, Teresa (ed.), Os Municípios no Portugal Moderno: dos forais manuelinos às reformas liberais, Lisboa, Edições Colibri-CIDEHUS/UE, 2005.
FONSECA, Fernando Taveira da (coord.), O poder local em tempo de globalização: uma história e um futuro.
Comunicações, Braga-Coimbra, Palimage Editores-Centro de História da Sociedade e da Cultura, 2005.
O Município no Mundo Português, Seminário Internacional, Funchal, 26 a 30 de Outubro de 1998, Funchal, Centro de Estudos de História do Atlântico, Secretaria Regional do Turismo e Cultura, 1998.
OLIVEIRA, César (dir.), História dos Municípios e do Poder Local [dos finais da Idade Média à União Europeia], Lisboa, Círculo de Leitores, 1996.
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