The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world in unforeseen and unprecedented ways. Apart from the obvious consequences on public health, the pandemic is responsible for an unprecedented shock in the global economy, causing the most significant recession in the history of the European Union (EU) (Verwey and Monks, 2021). The rapid spread of the virus and its high lethality have forced governments to adopt strong restrictive measures, many of which limited fundamental democratic principles (Guasti, 2020). As a result, policy makers were faced with the dilemma of juggling between public health objectives and democratic norms, rights, and freedoms. This trade-off occurred mainly at two levels. First, the need for rapid reaction created strong incentives to concentrate power on national executives, weakening other political institutions and reducing mechanisms of horizontal accountability (Petrov, 2020). Second, measures implemented to contain the spread of the virus, by imposing physical and social distancing, forced the restriction of fundamental rights and freedoms, such as the freedom of movement or assembly, and for many the legitimacy of such measures was seen as questionable (Edgell et al., 2021). This study analyses the impact of the pandemic in various dimensions of the Portuguese political system, especially in the behaviour of political parties and in the political attitudes and opinions of the Portuguese. Six topics are considered: support for the democratic regime, the political decision-making process, Euroscepticism, populist rhetoric, polarisation, and political inequality. This study relies on quantitative data on the opinions and attitudes of the Portuguese towards the pandemic, collected through a panel survey conducted in two waves in April/May and September/October 2021: the COVID-19 Pandemic in Portugal Survey. This representative survey of the Portuguese population was administered by telephone and online. In the first wave, 435 telephone interviews and 721 online surveys were conducted, totalling 1156 respondents; in the second wave, 305 telephone interviews and 239 online surveys were carried out, adding to a total of 544 of respondents . The fieldwork for the first wave took place between 9 April and 19 May 2021, while for the second wave data collection took place between 6 September and 25 October 2021. These dates correspond, respectively, to the moment after the end of the second wave of the pandemic in the country (the most severe in terms of mortality rate) and to the end of the fourth wave, after a summer and early autumn in which the number of new cases remained relatively low and the lethality rate decreased very significantly due to the success of the vaccination campaign. Additionally, to assess the evolution of populist rhetoric and Euroscepticism, a content analysis of electoral manifestos and parliamentary debates between late 2019 and April 2021 was carried out. For the analysis of populist rhetoric, the sections of the 2019 electoral manifestos and the paragraphs of parliamentary debates related to topics associated with populism (corruption, immigration, minorities, among others), were collected and coded. In turn, the analysis of Euroscepticism was based on the collection and coding of paragraphs of the manifestos and speeches of members of parliament (MPs) directly related to the EU or its institutions. In both cases, the period of analysis for the speeches of MPs begins at the inauguration, just after the 2019 legislative elections, and ends in April 2021. The methodology followed in each specific content analysis is explained in more detail in the sections devoted to these two dimensions. Before moving on with the presentation of our results, a brief description of the country’s party system is warranted, since frequent references to parties and voters for specific parties will be made. The Portuguese party system was mainly established right after the democratic revolution of 1974. Since then, the tendency has been for votes to be concentrated in the two mainstream parties: the centre-left Socialist Party (PS) and the centre-right Social Democratic Party (PSD), which have been able to gather over 70 per cent of the votes in successive general elections. Since 1987, these two parties have alternated in government (either by themselves or in coalition with other parties). To the left of the PS, we find the Marxist-Leninist Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), which runs for elections in a pre-electoral coalition (CDU – United Democratic Coalition) with the Greens (PEV) since the 1980s. Also, to the left, we find the Left Bloc (BE), a left-libertarian party founded in 1999. More recently, two new left-wing parties have emerged: the animalist party People-Animals-Nature (PAN), and the left-libertarian Free (LIVRE). In turn, to the right of the PSD, there is the People’s Party (CDS-PP), founded in 1974, representative of the Christian Democratic and conservative ideological stances, and with an history as junior partner in coalition governments with the PSD and, in one occasion, the PS. Since the 2019 legislative elections, the number of parties on the right of the ideological spectrum was reinforced with the entry of the Liberal Initiative (IL), a right-libertarian party, and Enough (CH), a populist radical right party, in the Assembleia da República.

Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos

National project final report