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 external challenges 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. We believe that by revisiting the concept of ‘democratic consolidation’ and by exploring aspects of a possible process of ‘democratic deconsolidation’ we can shed light on some of the changes recently experienced in European countries since the2008 crisis. The use of this concept here is not related to the consensus on the ‘rules of...

The cooperation aims at expanding the institutional and scientific cooperation between Portugal and Brazil by stimulating the exchange of lecturers, researchers and students around expounding the problem and understanding of modes of political participation with an emphasis on forms of protest and institutionalized citizen participation in participatory budgeting processes in Portugal and Brazil.Specific objectives: 1) to identify tendencies and determinants of participation in protests and participatory budgeting processes; 2) to identify patterns of political engagement according to participant profiles (gender, age, race, socioeconomicand cultural factors); 3) to integrate the patterns of political interactions of the various forms into a general understanding of the national contexts and to changes in the models of citizen participation in occidental democracies.

Framing the Rights of the Poor – Transnational Cooperation between Portuguese and Brazilian Civil Society Actors