В Португалии к моменту установления салазаровской диктатуры с экономикой было совсем хреново.
"Portugal was indeed twice declared bankrupt in the final decades of monarchy – on 14 June 1892, and again on 10 May 1902...Under the sixteen-year parliamentary regime of the republic (1910-1926), with its forty-five governments, growing fiscal deficits, financed by money creation and foreign borrowing, climaxed in hyper-inflation and a moratorium on Portugal's external debt service. Although some headway was made toward increasing the level of literacy, 68.1 percent of Portugal's population was still classified as illiterate by the 1930 census."
Салазар, надо сказать, ситуацию улучшил:
"By restoring equilibrium, both in the fiscal budget and in the balance of international payments, Salazar succeeded in restoring Portugal's credit worthiness at home and abroad. Because Portugal's fiscal accounts from the 1930s until the early 1960s almost always had a surplus in the current account, the state had the wherewithal to finance public infrastructure projects without resorting either to inflationary financing or borrowing abroad.
In 1960, at the initiation of Salazar's more outward-looking economic policy, Portugal's per capita GDP was only 38 percent of the European Community (EC-12) average; by the end of the Salazar period, in 1968, it had risen to 48 percent, and by 1973, under the leadership of Marcelo Caetano, Portugal's per capita GDP had reached 56.4 percent of the EC-12 average."
no subject
"Portugal was indeed twice declared bankrupt in the final decades of monarchy – on 14 June 1892, and again on 10 May 1902...Under the sixteen-year parliamentary regime of the republic (1910-1926), with its forty-five governments, growing fiscal deficits, financed by money creation and foreign borrowing, climaxed in hyper-inflation and a moratorium on Portugal's external debt service. Although some headway was made toward increasing the level of literacy, 68.1 percent of Portugal's population was still classified as illiterate by the 1930 census."
Салазар, надо сказать, ситуацию улучшил:
"By restoring equilibrium, both in the fiscal budget and in the balance of international payments, Salazar succeeded in restoring Portugal's credit worthiness at home and abroad. Because Portugal's fiscal accounts from the 1930s until the early 1960s almost always had a surplus in the current account, the state had the wherewithal to finance public infrastructure projects without resorting either to inflationary financing or borrowing abroad.
In 1960, at the initiation of Salazar's more outward-looking economic policy, Portugal's per capita GDP was only 38 percent of the European Community (EC-12) average; by the end of the Salazar period, in 1968, it had risen to 48 percent, and by 1973, under the leadership of Marcelo Caetano, Portugal's per capita GDP had reached 56.4 percent of the EC-12 average."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Portugal
А выборов при Салазаре, в нормальном смысле этого слова, вообще не было.