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...

Southern Europe is suffering a prolonged economic crisis that is being transformed into a social and thus a regime crisis. The studies on the crisis of democracy have developed around two major stages. The first, around the specific/diffuse support cleavage, and the second relative to the cleavage between three different attitudes: disaffection, dissatisfaction and illegitimacy. The two approaches appear to be based on the assumption that the only cleavage is between democracy and authoritarianism. We would argue that it is necessary to add a further level to this analysis, where the alternative to representative and liberal democracy is not exclusively authoritarianism but direct democracy, in other words, less liberal (separation of powers) and less representative (with more instruments of direct participation). Therefore, the study seeks to relate these three levels of research, while still maintaining the focus on the cleavage between representative, authoritarian and direct democracy.

O estudo dos Sistemas Políticos na Europa do último século são o fulcro principal do trabalho de investigação do candidato. Emergência, evolução, crise e transição são fases que as Nações europeias têm vivido ciclicamente de uma forma mais ou menos violenta e podem-se remeter para, pelos menos, três diferentes grandes famílias políticas: liberalismo, autoritarismo/totalitarismo e democracia. As questões à volta das quais mais se formou a especialização do candidato e se delinearam os seus horizontes de estudo são, portanto, em relação com estas perguntas, que orientaram a pesquisa nos últimos anos: porque os regimes são por sua natureza instáveis? Existem indicadores que possam realçar o estado de “bem-estar” ou, pelo, contrário, a iminente crise de um regime? Quais são as diferenças entre crise “no” Sistema Político e crise “do” Sistema Político? Na mudança dos Sistemas Políticos, como mudam as elites?  

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.