Comparative Candidate Survey Portugal, national elections 2024, with Fieldwork and database preparation for FORS - Swiss Social Science Data Bank, 2024-2026.    This project is a member of the Comparative Candidate Survey https://www.comparativecandidates.org/    https://www.comparativecandidates.org/members?page=1   &   Member of the National Research Infrastructure APIS (with ESS, PNES, etc.), and of the European Research Infrastructure (in preparation): MDem – Monitoring Electoral Democracy:https://medem.eu/      

Comparative Candidate Survey Portugal, national elections 2022, with Fieldwork and database preparation for FORS - Swiss Social Science Data Bank, 2022-2024.  This project is a member of the Comparative Candidate Survey https://www.comparativecandidates.org/  https://www.comparativecandidates.org/members?page=1 & Member of the National Research Infrastructure APIS (with ESS, PNES, etc.), and of the European Research Infrastructure (in preparation): MDem – Monitoring Electoral Democracy: https://medem.eu/   

Comparative Candidate Survey Portugal, national elections 2019, with Fieldwork and database preparation for FORS - Swiss Social Science Data Bank, 2019-2022 (already delivered to FORS, late 2022).  This project is a member of the Comparative Candidate Survey https://www.comparativecandidates.org/ https://www.comparativecandidates.org/members?page=1 & Is also a Member of the National Research Infrastructure APIS (with ESS, PNES, etc.), and of the European Research Infrastructure (in preparation) : MDem – Monitoring Electoral Democracy: https://medem.eu/   

Roughly until the 2008 international financial and economic crisis and the sovereign debt crisis and austerity policies that followed, scholars studying the Southern European democracies (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) either focused on democratic consolidation or on the quality of democracy (see, for example, Morlino 1998; Gunter, Diamandouros and Phule 1995). However, the Southern European democracies have been experiencing profound changes since the emergence of the global economic and financial crises. As Matthijs (2014) noted, ‘there is already ample evidence that the strength of liberal democracy in Southern Europe has diminished since 2010, as seen in a weakening of civil and political rights, the rule of law and the functioning of government’. Clearly, there are significant changes in the functioning of contemporary democracies, especially those that haveendured painful austerity policies.The aim of this project is to examine these changes by analysing the case of Portugal, one of the countries affected most severely by the crisis, from both a longitudinal and a comparative perspective. Although it is still too early to definitely assess the impact of the economic crisis on the evolution of contemporary democracies, it is clear there are different responses to these externalchallenges and distinct trajectories of adaptation. Portugal can be considered a good example of one of the most important difficulties many contemporary democracies must face: the people’s loss of faith in the ability of democratic institutions — particularly legislatures, parties and the political elite — to solve problems and realise collective goals.

This project has two main objectives:1)    Developing research projects aimed at comparing Portugal and Brazil's political systems. This includes the study of their political institutions, of the political attitudes and behaviors of their masses, and of the nexus between representatives and voters). These projects will both produce new data and make use of existing ones.2)    Promote academic training of graduate students (Masters and Doctoral students) of both ISCTE-IUL and IPOL-UnB by having them spend some time at both institutions. This exchange will allow graduate students to do short courses at either institution and receive advising from professor of ISCTE-IUL and IPOL-UnB. This project also promotes short visits of faculty at both institutions to present research results and provide specific graduate training.

This project is set to study the following questions: 1) What are the factors behind the growing dissatisfaction of the citizenry with the ruling class? 2) Is this dissatisfaction also addressed towards the institutions of representation? 3) How does the phenomenon of political representation function at the parliamentary level? 4) Does it make sense to speak of a ‘crisis of representation’? In order to answer these questions, the project will develop six strategies. First, it will update the existing databases containing biographical data of the Portuguese MPs (Freire 2001). Second, it will enlarge and deepen the existing knowledge regarding the role of the parties in the process of parliamentary recruitment (Freire 2001) through interviews with party leaders and MPs, as well as content analysis of party documents and press releases. Third, it will compare policy orientations of candidates (and MPs) vis-à-vis their voters (relying on surveys targeted at each of these groups). Remarkably, such a comparative analysis between elite and non-elite attitudes has never been done in Portugal, and it will allow the study of its political representation. Fourth, it will study the participation of civil society in the law-making process through an in-depth analysis of citizens’ and organized interests’ hearings in parliament. Fifth, based on a mass survey and on focus groups, it will study citizens’ attitudes towards the political elites and the institutions. Sixth, a crucial innovation of this project is its embeddedness into two international networks of research: the Candidate Survey and the PARENEL project (see references). Such a framework will allow us to insert our study in a broader comparative context and to relate the Parliament’s institutional characteristics to the whole process of political representation.

The proposed project enquires into the role of religion in relation to emerging and increasing public reluctance towards European integration. There are two ways in which religion can be related to Euro-skepticism. First of all, religious people may be guided in their (political) choices by their religious convictions, and they may be influenced by institutional expectations, elites and representatives from their churches. This is an influence of religiosity itself. Secondly, secular people may have negative feelings towards religion, and religious people may have negative feelings towards secularism as well as other religions. This is an influence of attitudes towards religion. We will study the role of religion in both ways: as a socio-structural precondition for behavior, but also as an attitudinal variable.

This project will involve the new problems associated with political and social participation, such as the rising trend in electoral abstention, political disaffection, the new forms of participation and the broadening of the democratic deliberation process. It will involve empirical EXPERIMENTATION in Portugal but we shall try to contextualize these questions within the European sphere, giving special attention to a comparison with Spain (an agreement exists with the researchers in CAES at Complutense University). Let us examine the different research lines: 1. The rising trend of electoral abstention in Portugal and other European countries. The explanations provided by the literature on the subject indicate the disappearance of political anchors (party and ?left/right? identities), the lack of interest in politics, growing individualism and, on the other hand, narrowing social and political divergences. It is useful to examine these explanations in depth, particularly the lack of interest in politics, and to explore others: globalization and withdrawal of the state from intervention, which has a tendency to neutralize the play in politics; the political parties? difficulties in transposing social problems to the political arena; and the way the parties themselves operate on an internal level and in their relations with the citizens and the media. It is also of interest to consider the cases of female political participation and the youth. 2. An analysis of the involvement of the agents in the voluntary associations and its democratic effects. The hypothesis to be tested: to ascertain if the different effects of association involvement (civic virtues, participative capacities, social trust, political integration) depend on the type of association in question. 3. An analysis of the change in political values and the implications: for the political behaviour of individuals and, possibly, the orientation of the parties. Have new security threats affected attitudes to...