The aim of this study is to create a system of indicators for the minimum income scheme in Portugal (Rendimento Social de Inserção), serving as a basis for the creation of a model for evaluating the service provision of this policy by local authorities. The research question that will guide our work is to what extent does the decentralisation of competences to the local level contribute to alleviating the causes of poverty and improving the quality of the services provided? The decentralisation of competences has been seen as a mechanism for combating poverty. Several international organisations, such as the World Bank, the OECD and the European Union, refer to the potential of decentralisation to enable local authorities to develop sustainable development processes. Several authors such as Von Braun and Groot (2000) and Crawford and Hartmann (2008) argue in favour of decentralisation, pointing out that local governments are better informed about the needs of their populations than the central state. Proximity makes it easier to monitor the citizen-beneficiary and can also allow for easier and more effective evaluation of social workers. However, some questions arise, namely the fact that these positive impacts of decentralisation depend on two factors, namely the resources that are made available to local authorities (Jütting e Corsi, 2005 and Harris and Posner, 2022) and also how local authorities themselves implement programmes (Harris and Posner, 2022). In the Netherlands, for example, during the process of decentralisation of competences (2003 and 2015), the problem that emerged was related to the way social workers acted in the execution and monitoring of social assistance recipients, who adopted a welfare philosophy. And it was through the initiative of the municipalities that they were open to changing the paradigm of the social intervention model (Oliveira, 2024). In Portugal, there were those who opposed decentralisation on the grounds that local authoriti...

  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/      

Athena Project aims to develop the digital skills of university professors, reinforcing their response to the challenges that universities face today and in the future. The project seeks to foster cooperative learning environments, making them transformative and inclusive through the adoption of new technologies, such as e-learning, gaming platforms, virtual and augmented reality, systematically modeled to activate key competences in digital learning. The project will create models that teachers can adopt and adapt to their classes, using different pedagogical approaches.

This projects is co-funded by FAMI (Fund for the asilum, migration and integration) and addresses the general thematic "Female migrants and refugees", responding to the recent arrival of refugees to Portugal. By focusing on refugee women, the project aims at understanding the specificities of the experiences of refugee women in Portugal in relation to their trajectories, considering social class, sex, religion, nationality, access to education, health, and learning a new language, as well as their expectations, from a gender and intersectional perspective. We want to unveil what are the challenges and vulnerabilities experienced by them and what are the hosting and integration policies and practices offered by the Portuguese system. The methodology is qualitative, including in-depth interviews, action research and the national, regional and local policies and practices.  

Project structure / summary 1. The Concept of Welfare State a) Causes for the emergence of the Welfare State b) Different approaches to the conceptual definition of the Welfare State today 2. Evolution of Public Employment in Portugal a) The period from 1974 to 2000 b) The beginning of the 21st century: shifters and causes c) Public employment in the EU: a comparative perspective 3. Consequences of the reduction and aging of public employment in the Welfare State as an actor providing services to citizens 4. Public employment and provision of public services: health and education a) Public employment in the Health field - evolution of medical and nursing careers - number of employees / per capita - the demographic problem / more elderly population in need of more health care - representations/perceptions of institutional actors, health professionals and citizens about the provision of health care and the adequacy in quantity and quality of the human resources assigned to it (questionnaires / interviews) b) Public employment in the Education field - evolution of staff (teachers, auxiliaries, special education teachers, psychologists, etc.) - representations/perceptions of institutional actors, education professionals and citizens about the provision of education services and the adequacy in quantity and quality of the human resources assigned to it (questionnaires / interviews) Objective and methodology The present study aims at discussing the concept of the Welfare State today, as well as the evaluation of public employment and its evolution over the last decades. Based on a definition of a Social State that preserves its universalist nature, the research will seek to discuss the public employment necessary (both quantity and quality) to ensure that the Portuguese State is able to maintain the solidarity and universalism in an appropriate way. After conducting a discussion on the conceptual definition of the Welfare State in the present day and characterizing and qu...

The HEATHDOX Project investigates the current political determinants and policy consequences of post-1989 European health reforms. The end of the cold war was a turning point for many European health systems, with many post-socialist transition countries privatizing their state-run health systems, and many West and Southern European health systems experimenting with new public management and other market-oriented health reforms. The aim of the project is to document the policy changes that have taken place over the course of the 1990s and through the first decade and a half of the 21st century, and to evaluate the consequences of these reforms for health care provision, especially how these changes in the public-private mix in health affect individual attitudes towards the health system. HEALTHDOX comprises seven country teams in six countries (Estonia, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden) and has established a cooperative network comprised of researchers from all 28 European Union nations, as well as selected neighboring and accession candidate countries. Each researcher (some of whom are actually stakeholders in their health system) is preparing a data table that lists all reforms undertaken in their country, and codes the provisions of these policy changes. In addition, they are in the process of preparing narrative chapters that describe the politics of reform and their consequences. These chapters will be published as a reference work (Health Politics in Europe: A Handbook); the data set will be made open access within a year after its completion. This combination of qualitative and quantitative data comprises the basis for the macro-, micro-, and multi-level analyses that we use to tackle the fundamental problem of controlling for endogeneity in analyzing welfare state attitudes. In brief, endogeneity refers to the chicken-and-egg problem of welfare state research: do we have generous welfare states in some countries because the public prefers...