Stanley Payne argues that CEDA was neither fascist nor democratic. Payne argues that CEDA's goal was to win power through legal means and to then enact a constitutional revision that would protect property and religion and alter the basic political system. They would create neither a fascist state nor an absolute monarchy but a Catholic, corporative republic. While this would entail the limitation of direct democratic rights, it would not be a state in the style of Hitler or Mussolini's but probably closer to the neighbouring Portuguese Estado Novo.