Public Policy Forum analyzes democracy 50 years after April 25

50 years after 25 April, Iscte's Public Policy Forum 2024 analysed how the three "D's": Democratize, Decolonize, Develop, have been fulfilled with a vast programme.

"It is freedom that changes everything, and that allows everything that has happened in Portugal in these almost 50 years of democratic life," says Maria de Lurdes Rodrigues, Rector of Iscte and speaker at the opening session. "There are reforms that could only be made in freedom, with democracy, such as those in education and higher education, which involved the election of rectors or heads of schools. The welfare state that the country has built, with social action and social protection policies, also needed freedom and democracy to develop successfully, despite the problems and shortcomings that still exist and that everyone recognizes."

The initiative took place throughout the day, March 22, 2024, in Iscte's Grand Auditorium. It featured speeches by the governor of the Bank of Portugal, Mário Centeno, the president of the Portuguese Parliament, Augusto Santos Silva, and historian José Pacheco Pereira, among other academics, politicians and former government officials.

The Forum's program also included a series of panels and round tables made up of academics, political decision-makers and members of civil society. CIES researcher and coordinator of the Emigration Observatory, Rui Pena Pires, took part in the panel "Decolonization (and National Identity)".

At the same time, and as part of the Forum's programme, there was also the launch of the "Representations of Work" exhibition, organized from materials in the Ephemera Archive and associated archives, which is available to visit until the end of June, in Iscte Building 4. CIES researcher Luísa Tiago Oliveira took part in the organization and official presentation of the exhibition, along with historian José Pacheco Pereira.

Photographs by Hugo Alexandre Cruz

The Public Policy Forum is an initiative that has been held annually since 2012, organized by CIES and IPPS-Iscte. Its general objectives are to promote the debate of ideas, knowledge and information on public policies and to contribute to improving the quality of the processes of designing, implementing, regulating and evaluating public policies in Portugal.

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