Huntington, Samuel P. "After Twenty Years: The Future of the Third Wave." Journal of Democracy v. 8, n. 4 (1997): 3-12.

Some five hundred years ago a small group of Portuguese leaders and thinkers — including King John II, Prince Henry the Navigator, Bartholomew Dias, and Vasco da Gama — acting with courage, determination, and imagination, inaugurated a new phase in human history, the age of discovery. They set an example that Spain, France, Britain, and the Netherlands were to follow. Slightly more than two decades ago, Mário Soares and his colleagues, acting with comparable courage, determination, and imagination, inaugurated a new phase in human history, the age of democracy. They too set an example that Spain, Greece, Brazil, and many other countries have followed.

This result, however, was not foreordained. Chaos and conflict existed in Portugal in the months following the military’s overthrow of the dictatorship in April 1974. At that time the prospects for democracy did not seem bright, and many thought that Portugal’s Stalinist communist party would come to power. This pessimism was shared by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. When Mário Soares, then foreign minister in the provisional government, visited Kissinger, the latter berated him and his government for not taking a stronger line against the communists.

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