Political Representation and Citizenship in Portugal: From Crisis to Renewal 2020003385, 2020003386, 9781793601155, 9781793601162

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Political Representation and Citizenship in Portugal

Political Representation and Citizenship in Portugal From Crisis to Renewal

Edited by Marco Lisi, André Freire, and Emmanouil Tsatsanis

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2020 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lisi, Marco, 1975- editor. | Freire, André, editor. | Tsatsanis, Emmanouil, 1976- editor. Title: Political Representation and Citizenship in Portugal: From Crisis to Renewal / edited by Marco Lisi, André Freire, and Emmanouil Tsatsanis. Description: Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This volume analyzes key dimensions of political representation and participation in Portugal, examining the impact of the economic crisis on the linkage between voters and elected representatives, contributing to assessing the significant changes that representative democracies have experienced and the factors that may boost their renewal”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020003385 (print) | LCCN 2020003386 (ebook) | ISBN 9781793601155 (cloth) | ISBN 9781793601162 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Political participation—Portugal. | Representative government and representation—Portugal. | Citizenship—Portugal. | Global Financial Crisis, 2008–2009—Political aspects—Portugal. | Portugal—Politics and government—21st century. Classification: LCC JN8605 .P65 2020 (print) | LCC JN8605 (ebook) | DDC 323/.04209469–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003385 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003386 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

vii

List of Abbreviations

ix

Acknowledgmentsxi Introduction1 Marco Lisi, André Freire, and Emmanouil Tsatsanis PART 1: NEW AND OLD PATTERNS OF CITIZENSHIP 1 Bridging the Gap? The Changing Relationship between the Socialists and Radical Left in Portugal before and after the Government Deal Elisabetta De Giorgi and João Cancela 2 Politics in Austerity: Strategic Interactions between Social Movements and Institutional Actors in Portugal, 2010–2015 Guya Accornero and Pedro Ramos Pinto 3 Democratic Legitimacy and Trust in Political Institutions in Portugal before and after the Great Recession: Transitory or Lasting Effects? Emmanouil Tsatsanis and Ana Maria Belchior

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Contents

4 Political Participation of the Young versus Old Age Cohorts before and after the Great Recession: Portugal in a Comparative Perspective, 2008–2016 André Freire, Vicente Valentim, Viriato Queiroga, and Francisco Graça PART 2: PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION BEFORE AND AFTER THE CRISIS

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105

5 Ideological and Policy Representation in Portugal before and after the Great Recession, 2008–2017 André Freire and Augusta Correia

107

6 Gender and Political Representation before and after the Great Recession, 2008–2017 Ana Prata, André Freire, and Sofia Serra-Silva

129

7 Opening the Black Box of “Constraining Dissensus”: Euroskepticism and Intraparty Dissent in Portugal before and after the Crisis Marco Lisi and Vera Ramalhete 8 Legislative Activities before and after the Great Recession: An Analysis of Unemployment and Social Welfare Issues Enrico Borghetto and Marco Lisi 9 Conclusions Marco Lisi, André Freire, and Emmanouil Tsatsanis

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173 191

Appendix

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Index

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About the Contributors

209

List of Figures and Tables

FIGURES Figure 1.1 Party Placement According to MPs and Experts Figure 1.2 Attitudes toward Socioeconomic Issues and the EU Figure 1.3 Perceptions of Attitudes of Austerity of Different Parties According to MPs Figure 1.4 Evolution of Approved Laws by Policy Sector and Voting Behavior of RLPs Figure 2.1 Protest Event Count, Portugal January 2010 to July 2013 (three days/week sample) Figure 3.1 Mixed-effects Models for Diffuse and Specific Support (2008, 2012, 2016) Figure 3.2 Predictive Margins of Diffuse Support of Different Cohorts by Year (2008, 2012, 2016) Figure 5.1 Ideological Congruence, 2008, 2012, and 2016, for Portuguese Voters and MPs, by Party Figure 5.2 Socioeconomic Policy Congruence, 2008, 2012, and 2016, for Portuguese Voters and MPs, by Party Figure 7.1 Candidates’ Attitudes toward Europe and Intraparty Dissent (2008–2016) Figure 8.1 Distribution of Parliamentary Activities on EWS Issues by Party and Legislature Figure A.1 Portuguese MPs’ Attitudes toward European Union

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32 34 36 39 50 81 82 115 120 162 182 202

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List of Figures and Tables

TABLES Table I.1 Results of the 2015 and 2019 Legislative Elections 5 Table 1.1 Favorable Votes to Government-Initiated Proposals by Party and Legislature 37 Table 2.1 Voting and Abstention According to Self-Reported Participation in Lawful Demonstrations (LD), ESS, Portugal 2012 (%) 52 Table 3.1 Components of Political System Support, Portugal (2016) 79 Table 4.1 Conventional Participation in Each of the Six Countries (2008, 2012, and 2016) and Statistical Significance of Differences (t-test) Using ESS Data 93 Table 4.2 Unconventional Participation in Each of the Six Countries (2008, 2012, and 2016) and Statistical Significance of Differences (t-test) Using ESS data 94 Table 4.3 Conventional and Unconventional Participation in Portugal (2008, 2012, and 2016) and Statistical Significance of Differences (t-test) Using Data from the Survey to the Portuguese Population 96 Table 5.1 Summary Table of Ideological and Political Congruence before and after Economic Crisis 116 Table 6.1 Differences between Male and Female Political Elites and Voters in Terms of Policy Preferences, in Each Year 138 Table 6.2 Explaining Variation in Policy Preferences of Voters in 2008 (OLS Regressions) 141 Table 6.3 Explaining Variation in Policy Preferences of Voters and Political Elites in 2016 (OLS Regressions) 142 Table 7.1 Candidates’ Attitudes toward Europe, by Party and Year (2008–2016) 163 Table 7.2 Explaining Candidates’ Intraparty Dissent (OLS Regression) 166 Table 8.1 MPs’ Parliamentary Activity in Portugal, 2007–2018 181 Table 8.2 Explaining MPs’ Activity on ESW Issues 184 Table A.1 Policy Sectors and EU Involvement 202 Table A.2 Logistic Regression Coefficients 203

List of Abbreviations

CDS-PP CDU CGTP CNE BE IL L MoU PàF PAN PCP PEV PS PSD UGT

Centro Democrático e Social-Partido Popular Coligação Democrática Unitária Confederação Geral dos Trabalhadores Portugueses Comissão Nacional de Eleições Bloco de Esquerda Iniciativa Liberal Livre Memorando de Entendimento Portugal à Frente Pessoas-Animais-Natureza Partido Comunista Português Partido Ecologista Os Verdes Partido Socialista Partido Social Democrata União Geral dos Trabalhadores

ix

Social Democratic Center-Popular Party Unitary Democratic Coalition General Confederation of the Portuguese Workers National Electoral Commission Left Bloc Liberal Initiative Free Memorandum of Understanding Portugal Forward People-Animals-Nature Party Portuguese Communist Party The Greens Portuguese Socialist Party Social Democratic Party General Union of Workers

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the support of the Portuguese Science Foundation (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, FCT), which funded the project coordinated by André Freire (with Marco Lisi and Emmanouil Tsatsanis), “Crisis, Political Representation and Democratic Renewal: The Portuguese Case in the Southern European Context (PTDC/ IVC-CPO/3098/2014), between 2016 and 2019 (as well as previous projects on political representation directed by André Freire et al., and also funded by FCT between 2007 and 2014, also online as: http://er.cies.iscte-iul.pt/). Part of Freire’s work for this book was done during his sabbatical leave in the University of Salamanca, April–May and September–October 2019, which was also funded by FCT (SFRH/BSAB/143105/2018). Freire would also like to thank the colleagues in Salamanca (namely, Manuel Alcantara Sáez, Ángela Suarez Collado, Fátima Maria García Díez, Melany Barragán Manjón, Kerman Calvo Borobia, Alberto Penadés, Maria Mercedes Garcia Montero, Asbel Bohigues, Carolina Plaza Colodro, Cristina Rivas, and Ajo Diz) for the warm hospitality and the stimulating intellectual environment. We would also like to acknowledge the support of other institutions and individuals in the abovementioned projects and thus also for the production of this book. Our thanks go first to the Portuguese Parliament and all the Parliamentary Groups for their help with financial and logistic support (namely for the fieldwork of the MP surveys, comparative candidate survey in Portugal, CCS-PT), and also to the National Electoral Commission (Comissão Nacional de Eleições, CNE) for its help with financial and logistic support (namely for the fieldwork for the surveys of the nonelected deputies, Comparative Candidate Survey in Portugal, CCS-PT), and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (STAPE, DGAI-MAI, notably its former director, the late Jorge Miguéis). Second, we are grateful to all the polling companies that helped us with the xi

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mass surveys over the period (2008, 2012, 2016–2018): TNS, GFK Metris, and Netquest. Third, we would like to thank our research assistants in the different projects (Filipa Seiceira, Inês Lima, Augusta Correia, and Vera Ramalhete) as well as the many interns and interviewers. Fourth, our thanks go to all the researchers and/or authors who collaborated with us in the different political representation projects and various publications (the list is too long to name all). Last but not least, we are grateful to our institutions for their support: University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL) and its Center for Sociological Studies and Research (CIES-IUL), and the Nova University of Lisbon (NOVA FCSH) and its Portuguese Institute for International Relations (IPRI-NOVA).

Introduction Marco Lisi, André Freire, and Emmanouil Tsatsanis

Over the past decade, it has become common to speak of Europe’s multiple crises and the growing threat facing liberal democracies. The economic and financial crisis, the refugee crisis, the success of populism, and the Brexit have heightened political frustrations and economic grievances, eroding the support toward the basic principles that build democratic institutions and challenging the functioning of representative democracies. There is no lack of evidence to suggest that democracy is in trouble. The first sign was seen a long time ago when parties started to lose the role of essential instruments of—and for—democracy (e.g., Ignazi 2018; Katz and Mair 2018). Similarly, the falling levels of voter turnout since the 1970s also undermine the role of elections as a key mechanism of representative democracies. There has been a marked decline in citizens’ trust in parliaments and an increasing shift of power to the executive as well as to supranational political entities like the European Union (EU) institutions (in the case of EU countries). All these processes have eroded democratic legitimacy and the effectiveness of contemporary democracies. Against the backdrop of democratic malaise, from time to time democratic regimes have experienced a process of democratic renewal. In general terms, this concept entails the idea that something goes wrong with the functioning of representative democracies and that a reform process is needed and feasible. While this notion will be explored in more detail below, it is clear from the outset that it entails two aspects. On the one hand, it implies that democracy is failing and that there are some pathologies that undermine its “normal” functioning. On the other, democratic renewal means that new reforms or policies are implemented in order to fix these problems and to adjust democratic institutions to citizens’ expectations and demands. While policy makers and scholars have addressed this problem, though not always 1

2

Introduction

intentionally, few studies have examined processes of crisis and renewal from a longitudinal viewpoint. This is the main goal of this book. We contend that the Portuguese case is a suitable case to examine how democracies can move from an intense political, economic, and social crisis to democratic renewal, simultaneously displaying political stability and economic sustainability (if not success). This introduction has two main objectives. The first is to provide an overview of the key theories and analytical tools that help elaborate the conceptual framework for examining the Portuguese case. The second is to depict the political, economic, and societal context of the country during and after the crisis. To this end, the introduction is structured in the following manner. The next section provides a short review of the debate on the crisis of contemporary democracies, highlighting the main challenges these regimes face in terms of political representation and participation. The second section focuses on the economic and financial crisis and its impact on the Portuguese political system from a comparative perspective. We will then address the aftermath of the Great Recession, providing and discussing the concept of democratic renewal and how it helps interpret empirically the evolution of democratic regimes. The concluding section sets out the structure of the volume. CRISIS OF DEMOCRACIES AND THE FAILURE OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION Concerns about the fate of representative democracies are not new. It is a long time since the well-known contribution that claimed “democracies have become ungovernable and unable to answer to the challenges of modern times” (Crozier et al. 1975). There has been growing anxiety about the future of democracy over the past decade due to the gradual deterioration in the quality of democracy, leading some authors to talk about a global trend of democratic erosion (Diamond 2015; Bermeo 2016; Foa and Mounk 2016; Alonso 2014; Alonso et al. 2011; Crouch 2004; Hermet 2008; Mair 2011, 2013). The debate on the “crisis of democracies” or “democratic malaise” (Geissel 2012b) has produced countless studies that have tried to identify the main challenges facing democracies. The problems are related in particular to rising levels of dissatisfaction and disaffection for the way democracy works. Growing abstention rates, higher levels of volatility, decline in party members, not to mention the rise of populist and protest parties are some of the most common indicators that support the notion of democratic erosion. There are also signs of malfunctioning in procedural terms.1 To rephrase Fung and Wright (2001, 5), as the main channel through which citizens participate and

Introduction

3

express their preferences, elections are increasingly considered to be an ineffective mechanism of political representation. Some of the problems are related to long-term and structural changes that have transformed not only the political arena, but also the economic and societal spheres. One of these consists of the process of globalization and Europeanization, which has threatened the way representative democracies work (Herment 2008; Mair 2011, 2013; Rodrik 2012; Alonso 2014). First, this phenomenon has spurred socioeconomic transformations that have reduced the traditional welfare state’s capacity to correct inequalities of income and opportunities. Second, globalization has made political elites less accountable. Third, globalization has also negatively impacted national identities, and this was particularly visible in Europe when it was unable to respond adequately to the migration and refugee crisis. These challenges have been clearly expressed through Rodrik’s (2012) famous “trilemma,” according to which it is increasingly difficult, if not downright impossible, to reconcile democracy, sovereignty, and economic opening. Besides globalization, new communication technologies and networks have also put European political systems to the test. While new ICT have heightened the intensity and transparency of the democratic debate, they have also strengthened the homogeneity of the information coming mainly from each individual’s community, to the detriment of broader interactions with fellow citizens. This has also led to a growing mistrust of conventional media outlets (representative of the “establishment”) and, simultaneously, to the spread of “fake news,” which has increasingly made up the bulk of contemporary election campaigns. These structural changes have exacerbated the crisis of political representation. First, support for long-established mainstream parties has fallen. This has produced quite intense transformations in European party systems where new political actors have had increasing success (Hobolt and Tilley 2016). Second, voters have become more volatile and party loyalties have declined (e.g., Chiaramonte and Emanuele 2017). Third, citizens nowadays show less trust in elections as a means to voice their grievances and as an efficient mechanism to select good politicians. This problem can be seen by observing declining trends in voter turnout and growing personalization, often associated with the appearance of unconventional politics (see Rahat e Hazan 2018). These changes have paved the way for the emergence of strong leaders—from the left and the right of the political spectrum—who aspire to “reconnect” with citizens and to interpret the popular will. One of the main implications of these transformations is the increasing polarization of contemporary democracies. This is in part due to the fact that the divide is no longer between the electorate and the representatives, but within the electorate. From the sociodemographic point of view, the

4

Introduction

massive and structural change that representative democracies have undergone is linked with the growing similarity between voters and political elites. While the electorate has become increasingly educated, older and well-off, parliamentary representatives are, generally speaking, younger and tend to have higher levels of education and income. Nonetheless, there are still huge divides in the electorate that are difficult to translate in the parliamentary arena, at least through conventional mechanisms associated with representative democracies. These structural changes have interacted with the new challenges brought to the fore by the global economic and financial crisis that started in 2007 and, subsequently, the European debt crisis, the effects of which will be analyzed in more detail in the following section. THE GREAT RECESSION, ITS IMPACT, AND THE NEW POLITICAL CYCLE Two major junctures have affected Portuguese democracy over the past decade. The first is the economic and financial crisis, and the subsequent bailout signed by the Portuguese government and the Troika (ECB [European Central Bank], EC [European Commission], and IMF [International Monetary Fund]) (see Moury and Freire 2013; Freire, Lisi, and Viegas 2015, 2016; Freire et al. 2016; Freire and Lisi 2016; Freire 2016, to name only the major publications on these topics produced within the framework of our previous research projects directed by the present editorial team). The second, the emergence after the 2015 legislative elections of the new left government led by the Socialist Party (PS, Partido Socialista) and supported in parliament by the two radical left parties (the Portuguese Communist Party [PCP, Partido Comunista Português] and the Left Bloc [BE, Bloco de Esquerda]),2 plus the permanent communist ally, the Greens (PEV, Partido Ecologista “Os Verdes”). The two junctures were not unconnected given that the collaboration between the parties of the left would probably not have materialized had it not been for the economic crisis and the ensuing events (see Freire 2016, 2017). The political consequences of the economic crisis on European democracies have been multifaceted and documented by various different studies (e.g., Magalhães 2014b; Hernández and Kriesi 2016). As mentioned above, a notable increase in electoral volatility was the most striking effect of the austerity policies that were imposed throughout Europe (though not to equal measure) in response to the economic crisis. This brought about minor or major transformations in the party systems of many countries, mainly through the decline of mainstream parties, the rise of challenger parties, and overall party-system fragmentation (Hobolt and Tiley 2016; Bosco and Verney

5

Introduction

2012). Other effects include the emergence of new political divides (Hooghe and Marks 2018) and the rise in political protest and unconventional forms of political participation (Kern et al. 2015), especially among the young (Grasso 2018). Furthermore, there was a sharp increase in political discontent and dissatisfaction with the way democracy works in virtually every country that was affected by the economic crisis, even though diffuse support for democracy as the preferable form of government remained generally unaffected (Cordero and Simón 2016). Given that Portugal was one of the countries that was most affected economically and socially by the economic crisis, one would have expected the political impact to be commensurate. However, this was not the case, at least not to the extent that other hard-hit countries experienced political change. Similar to other democracies, the first political consequence in Portugal was the punishment of the party that was at the helm during the onset of the economic crisis. Unable to borrow at sustainable rates, the Socialist government was forced to sign a 78 billion euro loan agreement with the so-called Troika. The deal introduced severe wage cuts and tax hikes, along with a significant decrease in social spending with the aim of eliminating runaway budget deficits. When the PS lost the ensuing legislative election (see table I.1), the center-right opposition party PSD (Social Democratic Party, Partido Social Democrata) reaped the benefits and was able to form a government with the conservative CDS-PP (Social Democratic Center-Popular Party, Centro Democrático Social-Partido Popular) as a junior coalition partner. Despite the emphatic defeat of the Socialist Party, the Portuguese party system as a whole was not affected to the same extent as in Spain, Greece, Ireland or, later, Italy, and France. Unlike other countries, Portugal’s party system Table I.1  Results of the 2015 and 2019 Legislative Elections 2015

PS PPD/PSD PàF CDS-PP BE PAN CDU IL CHEGA L Turnout

N. Votes

Percent Votes

1,747,685 – 1,993,921 – 550,892 75,140 445,980 – – – 5,408,805

32.31 – 36.86 – 10.19 1.39 8.25 – – – 55.86

2019 Seats 86 – 102 – 19 1 17 – – –

N. Votes

Percent Votes

Seats

1,908,036 1,457,704

36.34 27.76

108 79

221,774 500,017 174,511 332,473 67,681 67,826 57,172 5,251,064

4.22 9.52 3.32 6.33 1.29 1.29 1.09 48.57

5 19 4 12 1 1 1 230

Source: Ministry of Internal Administration https​://ww​w.leg​islat​ivas2​019.m​ai.go​v.pt/​#none​.

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Introduction

projected an image of stability rather than change (see Freire 2016; Freire and Lisi 2016), which was confirmed in the next election four years later, in 2015; this was certainly the case of the composition of the party system, though not necessarily its dynamics, as we will discuss later in this section. As the right-wing coalition implemented the harsh austerity measures, PS started attacking the bailout deal from the opposition benches, notably from late 2012. Austerity had a considerable impact on household incomes, even though the country successfully exited the bailout in May 2014 (see Freire 2016). In 2015, the two right-wing government parties together lost about 12 percentage points in relation to 2011, but the gains of PS were more modest than expected. However, during all this time, and despite votes swinging from one major party to the other, no new significant challenger party had emerged. The parties that had existed in the Portuguese political landscape before the economic crisis (PS, PSD, CDS-PP, CDU, BE) continued to dominate parliamentary life during and after the economic crisis. The most evident political consequences of the crisis in Portugal have perhaps been seen outside electoral politics. First, political discontent has increased and has had both behavioral and attitudinal manifestations, namely a collapse of trust in political institutions and a rise in unconventional participation (Accornero and Ramos Pinto 2015; Baumgarten 2013) at the start of the crisis, coupled with a decline in conventional forms of political participation (particularly voting). In terms of trust, several studies have documented the steep decline of both confidence in political institutions and satisfaction with the way democracy worked in Portugal at the peak of the crisis (Teixeira et al. 2014, 2016, 2019). In this regard, Portugal followed a pattern observed in many European democracies during the Great Recession. However, as support for the democratic regime (a more diffuse type of regime support) did not waiver over that period, the growing political discontent did not translate into a fullfledged regime legitimacy crisis. Nonetheless, apart from attitudinal indicators, the growing political mobilization outside electoral politics during this period clearly indicated that Portugal—like other European democracies—was experiencing a “crisis of representation.” Along with other South European societies, notably Spain and Greece, Portugal was one of the most active participants in the global cycle of protest in the first period of the crisis (2011–2013) in contradiction to the perception of Portuguese civil society as acquiescent or “mild-mannered” (Accornero and Ramos Pinto 2015). The mobilizations went beyond the “usual suspects” in protest mobilization—that is, left party activists and labor union members—and encompassed new citizen groups, mostly among the young. The protests between 2011 and 2013 were some of the largest mobilizations since the Carnation Revolution and the tumultuous transition period of 1974–1976. They were largely nonpartisan in character, even antipolitical

Introduction

7

in the sense of rejecting established political parties (Accornero and Ramos Pinto 2015, 506), which heightened the general feeling that Portuguese society was experiencing a “representation crisis” with uncertain political outcomes. However, the cycle of protest gradually faded out in 2013, but without giving rise to new challenger parties that stood as ostensive representatives of this new anti-austerity social movement, as had happened with Podemos in Spain and SYRIZA in Greece. Instead, change in the Portuguese political landscape occurred from within the constellation of preexisting actors and forces of the political system. To put it another way: although the Portuguese citizens were also severely affected by the Great Recession and its aftermath, citizens’ protests were mainly channeled by the traditional parties and not by new political parties (see more about this in Fernandes 2017). Following the legislative election in October 2015, the ruling coalition, which had stood in the election as a unified bloc under the label PàF, Portugal à Frente (Portugal Forward), captured the plurality of votes and seats but failed to win the majority of seats in parliament. Despite the exit of Portugal from the adjustment program the previous year and the stabilization of macroeconomic figures, Portuguese society had already been adversely impacted by consecutive years of GDP contraction and the two ruling parties of the right were associated with austerity policies in the eyes of most of the electorate. In addition, the right-wing government used the Troika intervention as “a window of opportunity” to pass radical neoliberal measures that were not in the original Troika agreements and thus were not approved by the Portuguese voters in the 2011 elections (see Moury and Freire 2013; Freire 2016). The opposition parties (PS, CDU, BE) were unified in their stand against austerity, although the PS had only taken this position in late 2012 following the huge mass demonstrations against the TSU, and especially after the change of leadership in mid-2014 that resulted from weak results in the 2014 European elections. These parties were now in a position to block the formation of a minority PSD/CDS-PP coalition government. When PS rejected the possibility of a grand coalition government with PSD after the 2015 elections, left-wing voters were overwhelmingly in support of a solution that prevented another term of the right-wing coalition, thus allowing the Socialist Party to reach out to the smaller parties of the left, the CDU (the coalition between the communist PCP and the ecologist PEV) and the BE. The problem was that the established pattern of noncooperation between the PS and the radical left and—particularly—between the PS and the PCP required a mini-revolution in terms of interparty dynamics on the left side of the political spectrum for a Socialist-led government to become reality. The legacy of the conflict between the reformist PS and the revolutionary PCP in the 1970s over the type of regime to be installed following the overthrow

8

Introduction

of the right-wing authoritarian regime that had ruled Portugal for over four decades had created a deep divide among the parties of the left and seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the collaboration between the Communists and the Socialists (Lisi 2016, 541–542; Freire 2017; Fernandes et al. 2018, 507). Since that time, socialists had viewed the PCP as an anti-system party that could never be considered as a viable coalition partner. Conversely, both PCP and BE appeared more comfortable in opposition, and had never really sought to participate in government or to lend their support to a major centerleft party as in other European democracies. The PSD’s strong move toward a position much closer to neoliberal right during the Troika years, which made “grand coalition politics” far more difficult than before (see Freire 2017), in conjunction with a common desire on the left to oust the government of Passos Coelho (former prime minister and PSD leader) and put an end to austerity policies, paved the way for a historic collaboration among the parties of the left based on mutual compromises. This collaboration took the form of a Socialist minority government with the support of the three parties of the left following painstaking negotiations (so-called Geringonça, literally “contraption”). Relatively early in its term, the Socialist minority government managed to reverse some of the austerity policies of the previous government without causing conflict with the European institutions that both formally and informally monitored post-bailout budgets, labor market legislation, and other economic policies. The “crisis of representation” moment appeared to be in the rearview mirror a few months after the formation of the minority government. Satisfaction with democracy and confidence in political institutions started to rebound from the lows of the previous years (see chapter 2 in this volume). In a highly constrained policy space within the EU and the Eurozone (in particular), which had become even more restricted after the onset of the crisis for the weaker economies of the monetary union, the Portuguese experience demonstrated that elections mattered, and that different political parties could still present and implement distinct policy platforms to the electorate by taking advantage of the ever-shrinking room to maneuver. In that regard, we could say that Portugal during the crisis constitutes a case of “crisis of representation” evolving to a case of elite-driven “democratic renewal,” albeit via pressure from the electorate below. But in order to assess this development, we first need to discuss and define the concept of “democratic renewal.” DEMOCRATIC RENEWAL: THE ROLE OF ECONOMY, INSTITUTIONS, AND LEADERSHIP It is puzzling that the concept of democratic renewal can rarely be found in the literature on democracy, since it represents a nice antithesis to the notion

Introduction

9

of democratic crisis. Although it entails the idea of some temporary malfunctioning, little attention has been dedicated to the processes and mechanisms that may reestablish the democratic “normalcy.” Democratic renewal has often been used in different contexts and with distinct meanings. There are at least three different approaches related to the concept (e.g., Pratchett 1999). The first is linked with specific problems with representative democracies, for which some practical responses are identified and implemented. This can be the case, for instance, of a major reform in bureaucracy. The second approach deals with more structural problems of democracy related, for example, to constitutional reforms, a dramatic political change (e.g., a new party system) or deep cultural shifts. This approach emphasizes more systemic failings of representative democracies, as well as the interaction between the political system and the economic, international, or societal sphere. Finally, democratic renewal can also be interpreted from a normative point of view, which means that the paradigm on which democracy is based—in terms of main values, principles, and rules—has been replaced or has shifted to another “model” of democracy. Our conceptual framework departs from the second approach to examine democratic renewal. We believe that this is the most suitable to link the longterm debate on the crisis of representative democracies with the attempt to assess the impact of the Great Recession and the way democracies can regenerate from the (temporary) malaise. Therefore, the volume strives to examine and discuss in detail not only the main aspects of Portuguese democracy affected by the Great Recession, but also the extent to which these trends have been inverted. In doing so, our contribution goes beyond recent studies that have dealt with the Portuguese case and the impact of the crisis (Freire et al. 2015, 2016, 2016; Freire 2016; Freire and Lisi 2016; David 2017; Morlino and Raniolo 2017; Pinto and Teixeira 2019). While the chapters analyze relevant changes in terms of political attitudes and behavior, party strategies, and the link between citizens and politicians, it is important here to provide some evidence of the trajectory experienced by the Portuguese democracy. Overall, Portuguese democracy has been quite resilient to austerity. According to the Freedom House score, in 2017 the country registered one of the highest aggregate scores in Europe (97/100), higher than other advanced democracies (e.g., France, Germany, Italy, and Spain). In addition, it has fully recovered from the slight decline in the quality of democracy experienced during the crisis period. This trend is also confirmed by the expert evaluations used to elaborate the V-Dem democracy indexes. The European region has shown a slight decline in all the main components of representative democracies (liberal, participatory, electoral, egalitarian, and deliberative) over the past decade. By contrast, Portugal has displayed relative stability in all

10

Introduction

dimensions except for the participatory component; the score for this dimension revealed a deterioration between 2008 and 2017. The political change that started in 2015 also brought to the fore important policy reversals. As Branco et al. (2019) examined, several structural changes were implemented in the labor market and in welfare policies. For example, the regime of social protection was enhanced, and the salary cuts were eliminated. Finally, the “Geringonça” also reduced the standard public sector working time. Similar policy reversals took place in the areas of education, transportation, or health service. Overall, these changes show that it was possible not only to stop, but also to invert the so-called structural reforms when external constraints fade away and when there is a clear turn in the ideological makeup of the government. Besides changes in terms of polity and policies, it is also worth recalling important patterns in terms of politics. Perhaps one of the most important indicators is the appointment, in January 2018, of Mário Centeno (Minister of Finance) as president of the Eurogroup. Conversely, the Socialist prime minister is regarded as one of the most successful leftist leaders in Europe and has taken a leading role especially among Socialist partners, who are witnessing troubled times in Southern Europe and elsewhere.3 How can we explain this democratic renewal? There are at least two well-established theories that attempt to account for processes of democratic regeneration. One has to do with the economy, and the second focuses on institutional reforms. The economy is a powerful factor that shapes the functioning of political systems. According to the seminal contribution of Easton (1956) and Lipset (1966), economic development and growth boost the efficacy of democracy. There are of course several mechanisms underlying this association. On the one hand, economic downturns affect the effectiveness of governments, which in turn is likely to erode or strengthen “principled” support for democratic regimes (e.g., Magalhães 2014a). On the other, theories of economic voting have shown that economic crises tend to foster voter dealignment, thus increasing volatility and support for new protest parties (Hernández and Kriesi 2016). By contrast, good economic results might benefit the evaluation of governments and, indirectly, democratic satisfaction. The second important factor that may explain democratic renewal is democratic innovation. This entails the deliberate implementation of an innovative idea, which originates from the political willingness of representatives and seeks to alter the typical structure and processes of democratic government with the ultimate objective of improving them (Newton 2012, 4–5; Geissel 2012, 164). There are two main types of democratic innovation. On the one hand, there are “top-down” reforms that aim to enhance the transparency and accountability of institutions, such as state decentralization or parliamentary

Introduction

11

reforms. On the other, there are “bottom-up” innovations, which are associated mainly with citizens’ input in the political process such as measures fostering political participation, deliberative forums or polls, or co-governance reforms intended to increase the inclusiveness of policymaking. Portugal has displayed very high stability in institutional terms. Despite the never-ending debate on electoral system reform (e.g., Freire 2018), the basic rules have remained unchanged over the past decades. Furthermore, the semi-presidential system has shown enough flexibility to ensure the successful management of the crisis period. Despite the political upheavals that shook democratic institutions during the crisis—that is, snap elections in 2011, demonstrations, government reshuffle in 2013—prime ministers have remained the central players in the political game and there has not been any significant interference from the president in party dynamics or executivelegislative relations. This confirms the consolidation and resilience of the main representative institutions. However, minor institutional reforms were implemented after the emergence of the “contraption” government. First, a participatory budget at the national level has been introduced during the first Socialist minority government (2015–2019). Taking the participatory budget adopted by Lisbon municipality as a starting point, the government has increased the amount of the state budget to be decided on through the participation of citizens or groups via online voting (Falanga 2018). Second, the government implemented annual citizens’ audit sessions to evaluate government performance and to assess the fulfillment of electoral promises. Meetings have also been organized between government members and citizens with the aim of raising questions and discussing the main problems the country should address. Although it is impossible to assess the impact of the new measures in terms of public opinion, it is questionable whether these minor reforms have triggered democratic renewal by altering the relation between citizens and democratic institutions or by affecting the functioning of the political system. What these reforms demonstrate is that the political elite is willing to increase the legitimacy of political actors, that is, the symbolic value of these measures goes well beyond their practical effects. In other words, these new democratic practices are an indicator of the changing discourse and the attempt to open the political space in order to strengthen the responsiveness of political actors. This point leads to a closer examination of the role of political leadership. The literature has not yet investigated the role that agency can play in fostering democratic renewal. Political leadership is an important mechanism that enables the implementation of institutional reforms, but it can also affect political attitudes by strengthening legitimacy, partisanship, or by politicizing new issues or enhancing participation. Contrary to other studies on the crisis in Southern Europe (e.g., Bosco and Verney 2016; Morlino and Raniolo

12

Introduction

2017) or in Portugal (Pinto and Teixeira 2019), this book takes not only participation and competition into account, but also the political supply, that is the role and actions undertaken by representatives in government and in parliament. In doing so, the volume contributes to stimulating the debate on political representation, while providing a new perspective for the analysis of responses to the democratic crisis. From this viewpoint, case studies are particularly suited to investigate how and when leadership strategies impact the functioning of political institutions and shape the interaction between citizens and their representatives. The Portuguese case is well suited to illustrate the role played by leadership strategy in fostering political change. In particular, the new left-wing government alliance formed in 2015 triggered three new dynamics in the functioning and/or output of the political system. First, by putting together partners that have not been able to coalesce for government for around 40 years of democracy (and in a stable and successful manner, it must be underlined), the new left-wing government alliance brought the attitudes and behavior of left-wing leaders (from the BE, the PCP-PEV, and the PS) in line with their constituents in terms of preferences for government formation. In other words, left-wing voters from all the four parties have been very much in favor of left-wing alliances for government since at least 2009, but the left-wing leaders did not act accordingly until late 2015 (see Freire 2017). Second, the right-wing government was marked in the Troika years (2011–2015) by a systematic violation of the electoral mandate (several times even against the Constitution), that is governing against their own electoral promises in 2011 and The Fundamental Law of the country (see Moury and Freire 2013; Freire 2016; Freire and Lisi 2016). This pattern was completely reversed by the new left-wing governmental alliance and, although we cannot estimate its specific impact on democratic renewal, we can of course acknowledge that it must have been significant (albeit more in terms of specific than diffuse support). Last but not least, there was a moderate reversal of austerity policies, at least toward a less asymmetrical austerity (on this concept, see Freire 2016 and 2017), and this was done in accordance with both citizens’ preferences and also EU rules. Again, we cannot estimate the specific impact of these policy reversals (see Moury and Afonso 2019), but they must of course have had a significant bearing on the aforementioned democratic renewal. The fact that Portuguese democracy has experienced some democratic renewal does not imply that everything has changed or that it is free of problems. First, Portugal is still one of the European countries with very high levels of inequality (e.g., Rodrigues 2012). Second, corruption is perceived to be a widespread phenomenon by the vast majority of citizens. These findings are confirmed by an expert survey that evaluated the quality of democracy in 2018 (Lobo et al. 2018). Among the five dimensions considered in the survey

Introduction

13

(citizens’ rights and rule of law; political representation; governability and political accountability; civil society and participation; international dimension), corruption is the component with the lowest score (3.5 on a 11-point scale ranging from 0 to 10). This evaluation also mirrors data from Transparency International, according to which Portugal occupies one of the lowest positions in the European ranking of ethical lobbying, well below the average for European countries (23 and 33 points, respectively, on a 0–100 scale). Last but not least, electoral participation remains very low and has displayed negative trends since the 1980s. This is visible in both “second-order” elections (European and presidential) and legislative contests. In the 2019 European elections, only 30.7 percent of the electorate went to the poll, one of the lowest turnout rates in Europe, continuing the evident downward trend also seen in other types of election. Indeed, according to the same expert survey mentioned above, civil society and participation are the dimensions that registered the lowest score. This is even more striking when we consider that political participation was the element that registered the biggest improvement in the 2018 Democracy index elaborated by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU 2019). These considerations remind us that our object of study is a moving target. In other words, this volume is still a work in progress and more studies will be required to update our findings and to open new avenues for future research. Institutional reforms remain under debate and are seeds for the emergence and success of new political actors, but the country remains extremely sensitive to political, economic, and societal shocks in the international arena. In addition, new avenues for future research are needed that cover more neglected topics such as the judicial and media systems, the role of interest groups, the characteristics and trends of the political culture or the functioning of local government. STRUCTURE OF THE VOLUME Starting from the main theoretical contributions used to study the crisis of political representation, this book focuses on two main dimensions. The first is based on democratic renewal by examining how Portuguese democracy has been able to innovate democratic practices at both the citizen and elite level. The second dimension is that of political representation and analyzes the longitudinal evolution of the linkages between voters and MPs, highlighting both continuities and changes. In this volume, we pursue these issues by presenting several studies that not only further our understanding of how Portuguese democracy has bounced back and avoided many problems that most European democracies are still struggling with, but that can also bring a fresh look at the mechanisms and determinants of democratic renewal.

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Introduction

The book is divided into two parts in terms of organization and substantive content. The first part, “New and Old Patterns of Citizenship,” comprises four papers. Two of them, “Bridging the Gap? The Changing Relationship between the Socialists and Radical Left in Portugal before and after the Government Deal” by Elisabetta De Giorgi and João Cancela, and “Politics in Austerity: Strategic Interactions between Social Movements and Institutional Actors in Portugal, 2010–2015,” by Guya Accornero and Pedro Ramos Pinto, focus more on the system or elite levels of politics. Based on the surveys of Portuguese Members of Parliament (MPs) 2008–2012–2016, as well as indicators of party behavior in parliament 2008–2018, chapter 1 focuses on the formation of the new left-wing government alliance from late 2015 until 2019. The authors found that the formation of this new alliance was due more to the growing distance between the Socialists (PS) and the right (PSD and CDS-PP) than to a move of the radical left (BE, PCP-PEV) toward the PS, or vice versa, both in terms of MPs’ attitudes (issues positions and left-right self-placement) and party behavior in parliament. In contrast to other works on this topic (see Freire 2017), the authors conclude that the radical left saw this new governmental solution largely as the lesser of two evils (the PS versus the PSD and CDS-PP), that is the right was seen as much worse than the PS in terms of austerity orientations. Chapter 2 analyzes the patterns of alliances of social movements, unions, and political parties in framing the protest during the Troika years (mainly 2011–2013). It concludes that during the crisis new alliances were made among social movements, unions, and the parties of the left (PS, PCP-PEV, and BE) and this probably also explains (1) the channeling of protest through traditional actors across the parliamentary arena (and not through the formation of new parties) and (2) the formation of closer anti-austerity positions among the three left-wing parties (see also Fernandes 2017, in a similar vein). Thus, the new alliances that were made between social movements, unions, and the parties of the left during the crisis probably also help explain the formation of the new left-wing governmental alliance. The other two chapters in the first part of the book focus more on the mass level, taking a bottom-up perspective. Chapter 3, “Democratic Legitimacy and Trust in Political Institutions in Portugal before and after the Great Recession: Transitory or Lasting Effects?” by Emmanouil Tsatsanis and Ana Maria Belchior, examines diffuse and specific democratic support, 2008– 2016. As in their previous works, the authors conclude that the crisis barely affected diffuse democratic support, and that its effects were mainly felt in specific democratic support (satisfaction with democracy and trust in institutions). Moreover, the data show signs of democratic renewal after 2015, with a clear recovery in the overall levels of specific democratic support. In terms of explanatory factors, the authors found that cognitive mobilization, social

Introduction

15

modernization, and party identification are among the best predictors of specific support, and that diffuse support is more difficult to explain because there is low variance. However, generation/cohort effects (a legacy of the right-wing authoritarian regime) were found in relation to diffuse support: left-wing ideology in Portugal is more associated with diffuse support (a finding already seen in previous comparative studies: see Freire and Kivitski 2016). Chapter 4, “Political Participation of the Young versus Old Age Cohorts before and after the Great Recession: Portugal in a Comparative Perspective, 2008–2016,” by André Freire, Vicente Valentim, Viriato Queiroga, and Francisco Graça, analyzes the evolution in youth participation in Portugal before and after the Great Recession from a comparative perspective (visà-vis other crisis countries, Cyprus and Spain, and other noncrisis countries, France, Germany, and Sweden). Youth were one of the groups most severely hurt by the Great Recession, which gives added value to this type of analysis. The analyses are based on a comparison of the countries more affected by the crisis with those that were less affected. To ensure a more in-depth analysis, the authors focus on two types of dataset: The European Social Survey, for the years 2008, 2012, and 2016; and a set of surveys fielded only in Portugal also for the years 2008, 2012, and 2016. Three major conclusions were drawn. First, the trends in conventional participation for both crisis and noncrisis countries are not conclusive. Second, however, the sharp increase in unconventional political participation in crisis countries from 2008 to 2012 was greater than that of noncrisis countries (but it disappeared after the crisis in Spain, and only remained in Portugal). Third, the rise in unconventional political participation was larger among younger cohorts. Thus, the crisis seems to have had some positive effects on unconventional political participation, and therefore on democratic mobilization and renewal, and the question here is whether or not this will last. The second part of the book, “Parliamentary Representation before and after the Crisis,” focuses on the elite level or on the connections (congruence) between voters’ and representatives’ attitudes and behavior; that is, the four chapters in this part address political representation in the parliamentary arena. The traditional topics in the political representation studies are examined in chapter 5, “Ideological and Policy Representation in Portugal before and after the Great Recession, 2008–2017,” by André Freire and Augusta Correia, and chapter 6, “Gender and Political Representation before and after the Great Recession, 2008–2017,” by Ana Prata, André Freire, and Sofia Serra-Silva. More specifically, chapter 5 examines the levels of congruence in socioeconomic policy preferences (socioeconomic issues) and left-right selfplacement (ideological identities) both for the whole electorate and whole

16

Introduction

parliament, and segmented by parties. Different conclusions were reached for policy preferences and ideological identities. First, the overall level of ideological congruence (i.e. for the whole parliament and citizens) was stable but there was a linear increase 2008–2012–2016 in the overall level of congruence for policy preferences. Thus, there are only clear signs of democratic renewal in the latter case. Second, in the case of (socioeconomic) policy preferences the MPs are more aligned with the electorate in 2016 than in 2008; however, this is only true of left-wing parties (BE, PCP-PEV, and PS) as the right-wing parties (PSD and CDS-PP) are less aligned with their constituents in 2016 than in 2008 mainly due to stability in voters’ preferences and a move to the right of parties/MPs. Third, the case is different for ideological orientations: BE, PCP-PEV, and PSD are more congruent with their voters in 2016 than in 2008, while the opposite is true for the PS and CDS-PP. The authors interpreted the differences in findings on ideological identities (left-right selfplacement) and socioeconomic policy preferences as being due to the nature of each dimension. Whereas the left-right dimension is based mainly on an identity element, thus less influenced by policy competition, socioeconomic issues have a more substantive element and are therefore more closely linked to policy competition. Chapter 6 follows a similar approach to the previous chapter but with three specificities: first, it focuses only on issues and sets ideological identities aside; second, in addition to socioeconomic issues, it examines libertarianauthoritarian and gender-related issues; third, all analyses are segmented by both party and gender. The research questions address possible gender divides on issues at the voter and MP levels, even after controlling for the party, and also possible changes before and after the Great Recession. Two major conclusions of chapter 6 must be underlined: first, gender divides are only found on non-crystallized issues (i.e., gender-related issues); second, these divides are mostly at the voter level and are not translated at the elite level, thus revealing a mismatch in women substantive representation; third, the study found no changes across time. Hence, the democratic renewal here seems to be far from perfect. Two further chapters are included in part 2. In chapter 7, “Opening the Black Box of ‘Constraining Dissensus’: Euroskepticism and Intraparty Dissent in Portugal before and after the Crisis,” by Marco Lisi and Vera Ramalhete, the authors offer a preliminary analysis of party stances on European issues before and after the crisis. Relying upon the candidate surveys conducted in Portugal in 2008, 2012–2013, and 2016–2017, the study allows some conclusions to be drawn on the evolution of candidates’ attitudes toward the EU, before and after the crisis. On the one hand, it maps the evolution of Euroskepticism in Portugal over the past decade, a period characterized by

Introduction

17

a growing politicization of European matters in the political debate. On the other, the chapter assesses intraparty dissent on different components of Euroskepticism by examining how political elites shift their opinions on Europe between 2008 and 2016. Some conclusions should be underlined here. First, there is a significant divide between radical left parties (more Euroskeptic) and mainstream forces (more pro EU), and this divide persists even after the formation of the new left-wing government alliance. Second, the findings show that the crisis had a mainly short-term impact, affecting specific support for the EU in particular. Third, the chapter shows that differences between candidates and MPs, within parties, are more important than differences across parties, which could lead to a growing incongruence between party leadership and lower echelons of party organizations on EU issues. Chapter 8, by Enrico Borghetto and Marco Lisi, focuses on MPs’ activities in Portugal to examine the extent to which the institutional agenda, notably unemployment and social welfare issues, changed before and after the crisis. The data come from both parliamentary questions and bills put forth by the deputies to the government. The questions were coded in policy areas according to the framework provided by the Comparative Agendas Project. The following conclusions of chapter 8 must be highlighted. First, it was found that the Great Recession has not systematically impacted MPs’ legislative activities (questions or bills). Second, the radical left parties (BE, PCP-PEV) differ from mainstream forces (PS, PSD, and CDS-PP), as their responsiveness to the crisis was substantially different: both radical left actors increased their focus on employment and welfare issues during the crisis and also after the end of the bailout. This means that political factors, notably the change after the 2015 elections, was consequential for party issue emphasis. Third, attention measured through oral questions is more sensitive to changes in economic conditions. The book concludes with a summary of the findings, the Portuguese case from a comparative perspective and finally by addressing further avenues for future research.

NOTES 1. See, for instance, the data collected by the Electoral Integrity Project. Even within Europe, the world region with the highest electoral integrity score, there are several countries (e.g., Greece, UK, and Malta) with very low scores (65–66, on a 0–100 scale), more than twenty points below the world leader of Denmark. 2. The BE is a left-libertarian party formed in 1999. It includes two extreme-left parties and a political movement formed by communist dissidents. 3. See, for instance, the opinion by the Financial Time journalist Peter Wise, “Portugal: A European Path out of Austerity?” April 10, 2019.

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Introduction

REFERENCES Accornero, G. and P. Ramos Pinto. 2015. “‘Mild mannered’? Protest and mobilisation in Portugal under austerity, 2010–2013.” West European Politics 38(3): 491–515. Alonso, S. 2014. “‘You can vote but you cannot choose’: Democracy and the sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone.” Estudio/Working Paper, 2014/282 – IC3JM, Instituto Mixto Universidad Carlos III de Madrid – Fundación Juan March de Ciencias Sociales. Alonso, S., J. Keane and W. Merkel (eds.). 2011. The Future of Representative Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baumgarten, B. 2013. “Geração à Rasca and beyond: Mobilizations in Portugal after 12 March 2011.” Current Sociology 61(4): 457–473. Bermeo, N. 2016. “On democratic backsliding.” Journal of Democracy 27(1): 5–19. Blyth, M. 2012. Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Boin, A., P. ‘t Hart and A. McConnell. 2009. “Crisis exploitation: Political and policy impacts of framing contests.” Journal of European Public Policy 16(1): 81–106. Bosco, A. and S. Verney. 2012. “Electoral epidemic: The political cost of economic crisis in Southern Europe, 2010–11.” South European Society and Politics 17(2): 129–154. Bosco, A. and S. Verney. 2017. Crisis Elections, New Contenders and Government Formation: Breaking the Mould in Southern Europe. London: Routledge. Branco, R., D. Cardoso, A. Guillén, S. Sacchi and D. Luque. 2019. “Here to stay? Analyzing policy reversals in the way out of the crisis.” South European Society and Politics 24(2): 205–232. Chiaramonte, A. and V. Emanuele. 2017. “Party system volatility, regeneration and de-institutionalization in Western Europe (1945–2015).” Party Politics 23(4): 376–388. Cordero, G. and P. Simón. 2016. “Economic crisis and support for democracy in Europe.” West European Politics 39(2): 305–325. Crouch, C. 2004. Post-Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press. Crozier, M., S. P. Huntington and J. Watanuki. 1975. The Crisis of Democracy. New York: New York University Press. Diamond, L. 2015. “Facing up to the democratic recession.” Journal of Democracy 26(1): 141–155. Easton, D. 1957. “An approach to the analysis of political systems.” World Politics 9(3): 383–400. EIU. 2019. Democracy Index 2018: Me Too? London: Economist Intelligence Unit. Falanga, R. 2018. “The national participatory budgeting in Portugal: Opportunities and challenges for scaling up citizen participation in policymaking.” In Hope for Democracy: 30 Years of Participatory Budgeting Worldwide, edited by N. Dias et al., 447–466. S. Brás de Alportel: In Loco Association. Fernandes, T. 2017. “Late neoliberalism and its discontents: The case of Portugal.” In Late Neoliberalism and its Discontents in the Economic Crisis, edited by D. della Porta, et al. 169–200. London: Palgrave.

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Fernandes, J. M., P. C. Magalhães and J. Santana-Pereira. 2018. “Portugal’s leftist government: From sick man to poster boy?” South European Society and Politics 23(4): 503–524. Foa, R. S. and Y. Mounk. 2016. “The democratic disconnect.” Journal of Democracy 27(3): 5–17. Freire, A. 2016. “The condition of Portuguese democracy during the Troika’s intervention, 2011–2015.” Portuguese Journal of Social Science 2(15): 173–193. Freire, A. 2017. Para lá da “Geringonça”: O Governo de Esquerdas em Portugal e na Europa. Lisbon: Contraponto. Freire, A. 2018. “A reforma do sistema eleitoral em Portugal: um eterno retorno.” In Sistema Eleitoral Português: Problemas e Soluções, edited by M. Costa Lobo, 53–66. Coimbra: Almedina. Freire, A. and M. Lisi. 2016. “Introduction: Political parties, institutions and civil society: The economic crisis and the evolution of Southern Europe political systems.” Portuguese Journal of Social Science 15(2): 153–171. Freire, A. and K. Kivistik. 2016. “Authoritarian legacies and mass left-right regime support in new democracies: The Baltic states and Southern Europe compared.” Comparative European Politics. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/cep.2015.25. http:​ //www​.palg​rave-​journ​als.c​om/ce​p/jou​rnal/​vaop/​ncurr​ent/a​bs/ce​p2015​25a.h​tml. Freire, A., M. Lisi and J. M. Leite Viegas (eds.). 2015. Crise Económica, Políticas de Austeridade e Representação Política. Lisbon: Assembleia da República. Freire, A., M. Lisi and J. M. Leite Viegas (eds.). 2016. Participação e Representação Políticas na Europa em Crise. Lisbon: Assembleia da República. Freire, A., M. Lisi, I. Andreadis and J. M. Leite Viegas (eds.). 2016. Political Representation in Times of Bailout: Evidence from Greece and Portugal. London: Routledge. Fung, A. and E. O. Wright. 2001. “Deepening democracy: Innovations in empowered participatory governance.” Politics and Society 29(1): 5–41. Fung, A. and E. O. Wright (eds.). 2006. Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance. London: Verso. Geissel, B. 2012a. “Impacts of democratic innovations in Europe: Findings and desiderata.” In Evaluating Democratic Innovations: Curing the Democratic Malaise? edited by B. Geissel and K. Newton, 163–183. London: Routledge. Geissel, B. 2012b. “Democratic innovations: Theoretical and empirical challenges of evaluation.” In Evaluating Democratic Innovations: Curing the Democratic Malaise? edited by B. Geissel and K. Newton, 209–214. London: Routledge. Grasso, M. 2018. “Young people’s political participation in Europe in times of crisis.” In Young People Re-Generating Politics in Times of Crises, edited by S. Pickard and J. Bessant, 179–196. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hermet, G. 2008. El Invierno de la Democracia. Auge y Decadencia del Gobierno del Pueblo. Barcelona: Los Libros del Lince. Hernández, E. and H. Kriesi. 2016. “The electoral consequences of the financial and economic crisis in Europe.” European Journal of Political Research 55(2): 203–224. Hobolt, S. B. and J. Tilley. 2016. “Fleeing the centre: The rise of challenger parties in the aftermath of the Euro crisis.” West European Politics 39(5): 971–991.

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Hooghe, L. and G. Marks. 2018. “Cleavage theory meets Europe’s crises: Lipset, Rokkan, and the transnational cleavage.” Journal of European Public Policy 25(1): 109–135. Ignazi, P. 2018. Party and Democracy. The Uneven Road to Party Legitimacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Katz, R. S. and P. Mair. 2018. Democracy and the Cartelization of Political Parties. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kern, A., S. Marien and M. Hooghe. 2015. “Economic crisis and levels of political participation in Europe (2002–2010): The role of resources and grievances.” West European Politics 38(3): 465–490. Lipset, S. M. 1966. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. London: Heinemann. Lisi, M. 2016. “U-turn: The Portuguese radical left from marginality to government support.” South European Society and Politics 21(4): 541–560. Lisi, M. (ed.). 2019. Party System Change, the European Crisis and the State of Democracy. Abingdon: Routledge. Lobo, M. Costa et al. 2018. A Qualidade da Democracia em Portugal. Resultados das Avaliações dos Especialistas, Policy Brief 2018, Lisbon: Observatório da Qualidade da Democracia. Magalhães, P. C. 2014a. “Government Effectiveness and Support for Democracy.” European Journal of Political Research 53(1): 77–97. Magalhães, P. C. 2014b. “Introduction–financial crisis, austerity, and electoral politics.” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties 24(2): 125–133. Mair, P. 2011. “Bini Smaghi vs. the parties: Representative government and institutional constraints.” Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and EU Democracy Observatory, EUI working paper no. 2011/22, Florence: European University Institute. Mair, P. 2013. Ruling the Void. The Hollowing of Western Democracy. London: Verso Editions. Morlino, L. and F. Raniolo. 2017. The Impact of the Economic Crisis on South European Democracies. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Moury, C. and A. Afonso. 2019. “Beyond Conditionality: Policy Reversals in Southern Europe in the Aftermath of the Eurozone Crisis.” South European Society and Politics 24(2): 155–176. Moury, C. and A. Freire. 2013. “Austerity policies and politics: The case of Portugal.” Pôle Sud – Revue de Science Politique 39(2): 35–56. Newton, K. 2012. “Curing the democratic malaise with democratic innovations.” In Evaluating Democratic Innovations: Curing the Democratic Malaise? edited by B. Geissel and K. Newton, 3–20. London: Routledge. Pinto, A. Costa and C. Pequito Teixeira (eds.). 2019. Political Institutions and Democracy in Portugal. Assessing the Impact of the Eurocrisis. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Pratchett, L. 1999. “Introduction: Defining democratic renewal.” Local Government Studies 25(4): 1–18. Rahat, G. and O. Kenig. 2018. From Party Politics to Personalized Politics? Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Rodrigues, C. Farinha. 2012. Desigualdade Económica em Portugal. Lisbon: Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos. Rodrik, D. 2012. The Globalization Paradox. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Teixeira, C. Pequito, E. Tsatsanis and A. M. Belchior. 2014. “Support for democracy in times of crisis: Diffuse and specific regime support in Portugal and Greece.” South European Society and Politics 19(4): 501–518. Teixeira, C. Pequito, E. Tsatsanis and A. M. Belchior. 2016. “A ‘necessary evil’ even during hard times? Public support for political parties in Portugal before and after the bailout (2008 and 2012).” Party Politics 22(6): 719–731. Teixeira, C. Pequito, P. de Almeida Pereira and A. M. Belchior. 2019. “Political discontentment in Portugal post-Troika: Risks and opportunities.” In Political Institutions and Democracy. Assessing the Impact of the Eurocrisis, edited by A. Costa Pinto and C. Pequito Teixeira, 215–246. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Part 1

NEW AND OLD PATTERNS OF CITIZENSHIP

Chapter 1

Bridging the Gap? The Changing Relationship between the Socialists and Radical Left in Portugal before and after the Government Deal Elisabetta De Giorgi and João Cancela

INTRODUCTION This chapter has two major goals: to explore the process that brought the Socialist Party (PS, Partido Socialista), the Left Bloc (BE, Bloco de Esquerda), and the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP, Partido Comunista Português) as well as the Greens (PEV, Partido Ecologista “Os Verdes”)1 close enough to cooperate with each other and to support the so-called Geringonça (Contraption) established in Portugal in 2015; and to see what happened to the relations between these parties after the start of this unprecedented alliance. The first goal raises a series of questions. What was it that made the Socialists and the radical left parties collaborate after so many years of distancing themselves from each other? Had they already started any sort of convergence in ideological or policy terms before 2015? Or was it simply the fear of another legislature led by the center-right coalition that pushed them into finding common ground for discussion and collaboration after the 2015 election? This first part of the chapter addresses the phase that preceded the agreement between the PS and the radical left parties; the second part examines the government phase. Following the general approach of the volume (see the introduction by Lisi et al. 2019), the government phase can be defined as one of renewal—a time of both political stability and economic sustainability after (or despite) the strong political, economic, and social crisis of a few years earlier. Our aim is to understand how the relationship between the Socialists and the radical left has changed since 2015 and, in particular, whether the parties involved in the Geringonça drew any 25

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closer on the ideological and policy issues or simply decided to leave aside their differences, pursuing the common goal of keeping the center-right out of government. If the latter case is correct, as expected, did the radical left parties play the role of “opposition in government” in order to reassure their electorate that they had not “sold out” (McDonnell and Newell 2011: 444) their political principles? Or did they in fact seek to appear as responsible as their mainstream political ally? And whichever of these approaches they adopted, how have they pursued it? We will attempt to answer these questions using a combination of three different methods: the analysis of the results of three waves of a survey administered to the Portuguese Members of Parliament (MPs) between 2008 and 2017; the examination of expert evaluations on the positions of different parties as measured by the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Bakker et al. 2015; Polk et al. 2017); and the study of the voting behavior of the parliamentary party groups in the period 2005–2018, that is, before, during, and after the onset of the economic crisis. The crisis and the consequent beginning of the so-called austerity season (that was implemented in Portugal by a center-right coalition) are in fact a crucial variable for consideration when exploring the reasons for the formation of such an unprecedented government. The chapter is consequently divided into three sections: the first presents the theoretical argument and the main hypotheses we wish to test; the second explains the data and methods employed in our analysis, while the third describes our models and results before concluding.

REASONS AND CONSEQUENCES OF AN UNPRECEDENTED PACT Theoretical Framework Extant research has usually departed from the classical model of party behavior (Müller and Strøm 1999) based on the three party goals—policy, office, votes—to understand the radical left parties’ decision to either become a coalition partner or support a government. All parties usually have one favorite strategic goal from among the three, though it might vary over time. However, coalitions are mostly based on office and policy considerations. If parties are to form an alliance with each other, they must either share a similar position on the most relevant policies or reposition themselves on some specific policies (Narud 1996). For radical left parties, repositioning is harder and also more dangerous than for mainstream parties. In fact, their specific ideological and policy principles represent their distinguishing feature for the electorate.

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So what is it that affects the radical left parties’ decision to become a coalition partner or support a government, other than the triangle of strategic goals that can be considered as the base, albeit a rather theoretical one, for such a choice? According to extant research, a number of situations might concur to influence this decision. These factors can be systemic, that is, related to the party system and the nature (open or closed) of party competition; institutional, that is, associated with the constitutional provisions and the rules of the parliamentary game; historical, that is, linked to the parties’ past experience of collaboration with each other in and out of government; or contingent, that is, related to a broad political or economic crisis. In one of the most convincing research works on left parties in government, Olsen and colleagues (2010) refer to three variables that might influence the chances of left parties participating in national governments: the ideological distance between the radical left and the mainstream left parties (usually the socialist/social democratic parties); the electoral dynamics; and the “segmentation and block dynamics.” Their research proves that ideological distance, the effective number of parties and the number of veto players do not significantly condition the chances of radical left parties participating in government, while the electoral strength of left parties vis-à-vis both the social democrats and the other possible coalitionable parties seems to play a crucial role. Segmentation and block dynamics also matter: when the social democrats have more opportunities (to get into office) on the left, or fewer on the right, the chances of the radical left getting into a government coalition increase. Finally, the most important finding: party system dynamics are certainly important, but what matters above all is that, on the one hand, most social democratic parties consider the radical left to be a “tactical partner” (Olsen et al. 2010: 176) and, on the other, the left parties’ choice to ally with the moderate social democrats is considered as a lesser evil to political irrelevance or a center-right government (Olsen et al. 2010: 177). Furthermore, existing research has also proved that policy goals, notably the chance of influencing policies aimed at combating the neoliberal agenda of center-right governments, play an important role for radical left parties and can counterbalance some of the risks associated with coalition politics, in particular electoral losses (Dunphy and Bale 2011). In addition, previous works argued that in recent years austerity policies represent a further incentive for left parties to cooperate, especially when the main dimension of competition is based on socioeconomic issues. In his recent work on the Portuguese case, Lisi (2016) not only confirms that the narrowing of the ideological distance between the radical left and the mainstream left parties is not a significant factor influencing government cooperation (Olsen et al. 2010), but he also proves that policy convergence is not necessary when the primary aim is to undo austerity policies (Lisi 2016: 543). Thus, a common negative goal might

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suffice to convince both parts to cooperate with each other. In the Portuguese case, this is also confirmed by the content of the agreements signed by the parties involved: what they contained was, in fact, mainly the reversal of some of the most important measures implemented by the center-right coalition as a result of the Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2011. “The common basis for achieving an understanding between left-wing parties was thus a return to the status quo ante, at least in terms of taxation and welfare state” (Lisi 2016: 554). Thus, the majority supporting the new Portuguese government was primarily a “marriage of convenience” (Fernandes et al. 2018; Lisi 2016) rather than the result of a new real passion between the parties involved. But when was this decision to cooperate actually taken? Was it the result of a rapprochement process started in the 2011–2015 legislature or was it simply the result of the 2015 election outcome? Given the victory of the center-right coalition in 2011, and its implementation of the most painful austerity measures for the country following the Memorandum of Understanding, one would have expected the center-left parties to have already united against the “common enemy” during the 2011–2015 legislative term. But given the findings of extant research (Olsen et al. 2010; Freire et al. 2015; Lisi 2016), this was probably not what happened in Portugal between 2011 and 2015. And even after the new government was established with the support of the radical left parties, we doubt that the mainstream and radical left parties became particularly close in terms of ideological and policy positions. In fact, what we expect is that parties maintained their position on the Left/Right (L/R) axis and on the major policy issues, opting to collaborate with each other for a matter of pragmatism rather than for a matter of political proximity. This is confirmed by the agreements signed at the beginning of the thirteenth legislature (2015–2019), which show an effort to focus on tangible policy proposals and not just on symbolic policy issues (Fernandes et al. 2018; De Giorgi and Cancela 2019). Pragmatism is the keyword to understand the deal between the PS and the radical left parties and how it subsequently worked: the choice between the lesser of two evils right after the elections and the support of government (not only on those issues included in the agreements) in exchange for policy outcomes. Research Hypotheses As far as ideological placement is concerned, the Socialists and the radical left parties have always been quite distant despite being on the same side of the ideological spectrum; in fact, the PS is located closer to the center, and the three radical parties, including the Greens, closer to the extreme left. However, in the 2008–2012 period,2 PS repositioned itself more to the left side of

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the ideological spectrum but this did not result in much greater proximity with the radical left parties as they had also moved further to the left at this time (Lisi 2016). Nonetheless, for the PS this meant distancing itself from the center-right parties. We expect these dynamics to be confirmed after 2015, and in the case of the relative distance among left-wing parties even strengthened. So despite the crisis and the start of the austerity season, we expect that the Portuguese radical left parties—BE, PCP, and PEV—did not become closer to the PS on the L/R ideological spectrum, either before or after the government agreement signed in 2015 (H.1). Conversely, given the move of the PSD (Social Democratic Party, Partido Social Democrata) toward a position much closer to neoliberal right during the Troika years (Freire 2017: 48), we expect the distance between the Portuguese Socialist Party and the center-right parties—PSD and CDS-PP (Social Democratic Center-Popular Party, Centro Democrático Social-Partido Popular)—on the L/R ideological spectrum to have increased since 2011, reaching its peak from 2015 onwards (H.1.1). As regards the policy dimension, even though the three radical left parties had taken the major decision to sustain a Socialist minority government for the first time, we do not expect the actors involved—either the moderate PS or the radical BE, PCP, and PEV—to have gone through any kind of rapprochement in policy terms either, even after the agreement was signed. In terms of the most relevant issues (notably, management of the economy and European integration), we hypothesize that the Portuguese radical left parties—BE, PCP, and PEV—and the Socialist Party did not reduce their distance on the policy space either before or after the 2015 election (H.2), for the same reason as given above, that is, the fact that this alliance was based on political pragmatism rather than ideological or policy proximity. Again in this case, however, we expect the distance between the PS and the center-right parties—PSD and CDS-PP—to have increased in terms of policy positions since 2011, reaching its peak in the thirteenth legislature, that is since 2015 (H.2.1). Turning to policy positions as measured by the policy proposals contained in their party manifestos (Volkens et al. 2015), the Portuguese Socialists have been traditionally closer to the parties on their right than to those on their left and, conversely, very distant from the PCP, the BE, and the Greens on crucial issues such as European integration, defense, and management of the economy (Magalhães 2012). This, among other factors, led to the exclusion of any possible cooperation among the parties of the left in the past, to such an extent that all the PS minority governments of the 1990s and early 2000s, as well as the more recent minority government led by the PS leader José Sócrates (2009–2011), managed to survive thanks to the support/abstention of the center-right parties rather than that of the left parties as one would expect. So what made the radical left support the Socialist minority government? Despite marked differences with the PS on both ideological and policy

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positions, we expect that the radical left evaluated the performance of the center-right coalition in government as being worse than that of the Socialists when they were leading the executive; this would confirm that the decision taken in 2015 was based on the choice of “the lesser of two evils” and not due to a substantive rapprochement process among the left parties (H.3). Finally, as regards the position on European integration, the PS and the radical left parties have traditionally been quite distant. Two different analyses—one based on interviews with Portuguese MPs conducted in 2008 at the onset of the crisis (Moury and de Sousa 2011), and the other based on party manifestos in the period from 1995 to 2005 (Lobo and Magalhães 2011)— concluded that the two Portuguese mainstream parties, the PS and PSD, had a very strong pro-European attitude but that the distance between these two parties and the radical parties was significant. Nonetheless, some differences also appeared among the radical left parties: while the manifestos of all three parties presented strong anti-European stances, Moury and de Sousa (2011) observed in their interviews that whereas a large majority of BE deputies believed that EU membership was a good thing (66.7 percent), this was the case for only a small minority (29 percent) of the Communist and Green deputies. Had these positions changed in the years preceding the deal? And what happened after 2015? As for the ideological position, we do not expect any rapprochement between the two sides to have occurred either before or after 2015. On the contrary, we expect the radical left parties to have maintained their critical, albeit silent, position on the EU. The strategy they have adopted, we argue, is to play a sort of double game by presenting themselves as an “opposition in government” (McDonnell and Newell 2011: 447) that is supporting the government on noncontroversial issues and trying to avoid a clash on the issues they “own” and on which they do not want to lose credibility (Petrocik 1996). So in relation to the thirteenth legislature (2015–2019) in which the radical left parties formally support a PS minority government, we expect the behavior of the radical left in parliament to be led by pragmatism as well as their initial decision to support the Socialist government. Hence, despite the persisting significant distance between the parties in terms of both ideological and policy positions, we expect to find a far higher level of consensus in terms of voting behavior on legislation (H.4). In other words, the radical left parties’ parliamentary support implies more consensus, but without any betrayal of their political and policy principles, at least in theory. DATA AND METHODS We tackle the research questions posed above by exploiting three main sources of data. First, like other chapters in this volume, we rely on data on

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the attitudes of Portuguese MPs collected by a sequence of three research projects on political representation.3 These projects have surveyed Portuguese MPs on a wide range of attributes and attitudes, and the data were collected in 2008 (tenth legislature), 2012–2013 (twelfth legislature), and 2016–2017 (thirteenth legislature). In total, 428 interviews were performed: 143 in 2008, 123 in 2012–2013, and 162 in 2016–2017. The response rates were always more than 50 percent, achieving good coverage of the different parliamentary groups across the three rounds. Henceforth, we will label this source as the Political Representation Project (PRP) surveys (Freire and Viegas 2008; Freire et al. 2013; Freire et al. 2016). The second data source is the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES), which has been conducted on a regular basis since 1999 (Polk et al. 2017). Each survey collects the assessments of a series of experts on different European countries regarding the general orientations of parties as well as their position vis-à-vis different issues. The CHES thus provides rich comparative data, and we use its four most recent waves, namely 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2017. The data from the PRP allow us to survey the attitudes of MPs and their assessment of where their parties stand as a whole, whereas the CHES data offer the view of experts on some of the same questions, thus providing external validation. While there is not a complete temporal correspondence in terms of the periods of data collection, they are sufficiently close to allow us to make a parallel analysis of the evolution of how MPs and experts locate the different parties. By combining the PRP and CHES data, we aim to present a detailed picture of the evolution of the relationship between the PS and the parties to its left. Finally, we exploit a dataset that encompasses all the legislative bills approved in Portuguese parliament since 2005. These data were extracted from the Portuguese Observatory on Parliamentary Dynamics website (De Giorgi and Dias 2019)4 and they allow us to chart the evolution of the parliamentary behavior of left-wing parties from the past legislatures to the present one (2015–2019). ANALYSIS In this section, we conduct a series of descriptive analyses and interpret the results in light of the hypotheses outlined earlier. The initial hypotheses deal with a possible process of rapprochement in terms of ideological and policy preferences among the parties involved in the government solution after the 2015 elections. Specifically, we want to verify whether it is indeed the case that the ideological distance between the PS and its partners has not been reduced (H.1) and we posit that the distance between the PS and the parties

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on its right has increased (H.1.1). The hypotheses are not mutually exclusive, and so we must take into consideration the responses on the different parties. In order to test these two initial hypotheses, we use a frequent “shorthand” in the study of political ideology: the unidimensional left-right (L/R) scale (Mair 2007: 207). L/R identification serves as a basic political anchor that allows members of the elite and the public to easily place themselves (and their parties) in ideological terms (Freire 2008). Importantly, using the L/R scale lets us make a straightforward comparison of how different parties are located vis-à-vis their competitors. The three survey rounds of the PRP include a set of identical questions in which MPs are asked to place themselves, their party, and the voters of their party in a typical L/R scale ranging from 0 (Left) to 10 (Right). We use the data on how MPs place their own party to assess the extent to which our two hypotheses are met. Using an identical scale, the CHES has also asked country experts to indicate the “position of [each] party in terms of its overall ideological stance.” We thus have fully comparable data on how MPs and experts have perceived the evolution of the parties in recent years. Figure 1.1 illustrates the evolution of the variables of interest according to the two sources. Regarding the PRP data, the most salient result is the continuity over the three rounds. According to the parties’ MPs, there is therefore no significant change or mutual rapprochement between the PS and the left-wing parties; in fact, there was no marked change in the perceptions of the party positions held by members of the PS, CDU, and BE even in the

Figure 1.1  Party Placement According to MPs and Experts. Source: PRP datasets 1, 2, and 3 and CHES (Polk et al. 2017). (The figures are author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

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2017 round, after the agreement between the PS and its left-wing partners was signed.5 Rather than understanding their parties as evolving and reducing the distance vis-à-vis each other, MPs’ ideological perceptions seem to have been mostly unaffected by the crisis, the period of austerity and its political consequences. The CHES data present a slightly more complex picture, however. According to the surveyed experts, between 2014 and 2017 the PS moved from a “centrist” position of 4.5 (in a 0–10 scale) to a more left-leaning one (3.8). Conversely, both the BE and the CDU are presented as being slightly less leftist in 2017 than in 2014, but both still record values inferior to 2. It thus looks that experts are more willing than MPs to identify a process of rapprochement between the PS and its partners on the left and a widening of the gap between the PS and the parties on the right. Our initial hypotheses are thus fully corroborated by the MPs’ surveys, but only partially confirmed using CHES data. It can be argued that while ideological placement as measured by a direct question has remained relatively unchanged, substantive opinions could have evolved more noticeably. There might have been a gradual convergence of the PS and the radical parties and/or a divergence vis-à-vis the PSD/CDSPP on concrete issues and policy aspects. We thus examine the evolution of responses to questions that have repeatedly featured in the PRP and CHES surveys in order to trace whether concrete ideological shifts took place. Figure 1.2 presents the evolution of attitudes of MPs and the assessment of experts regarding questions of particular interest in terms of economic policy and attitudes toward the EU, two issues on which the mainstream PS and the three radical left parties had been traditionally quite distant. The two top plots within figure 1.2 depict the evolution between 2008 and 2017 of the average level of agreement in a 1 (disagree) to 5 (agree) scale toward two statements: “The economic consequences of globalization are eminently negative” and “Bigger efforts would have to be made to reduce income inequalities.” Regarding the question on the efforts to reduce inequality, it should be said that the average level of agreement with the sentence in 2017 was still higher than 3 on a 1–5 scale for all parties, including the CDS-PP and PSD; moreover, the relative distances between parties seem to have remained quite similar, as the average values decreased slightly for all parties except the BE. When it comes to the question on globalization, the plot depicts a slight widening of the gap between the PS and the parties on the right rather than greater proximity between the PS and the parties on the left. Therefore, whereas the divide was previously between the “mainstream” PS, PSD, and CDS-PP, on the one hand, and the “radical” CDU and BE, on the other, it could be the case that another divide is emerging within the former “mainstream” camp.

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Figure 1.2  Attitudes toward Socioeconomic Issues and the EU. Source: PRP datasets 1, 2, and 3 and CHES (Polk et al. 2017). (The figures are author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

The issue of Europe is an arena of particular interest when it comes to current Portuguese politics. While Euroskepticism in Portugal is relatively minor in terms of elite attitudes (Ruivo and Tavares de Almeida 2015), parties on the radical left are historically more likely to engage with it. However, in recent years the attitude of the PS has become slightly more nuanced, with more critical stances toward the performance of the European Commission (Magalhães et al. 2016). It is therefore interesting to check whether there has been a convergence of the left and/or a divergence between the PS and the parties on the right both in terms of the assessment of the EU in its current form and the prospects for its future. Against that backdrop, we examine responses to one question that featured in the three rounds of the PRP: “Some say European unification should be pushed further. Others say it has already gone too far. What is your opinion?” (with possible responses varying from 0 to 10). Additionally, we examine responses to the CHES variable “position,” which asks experts to estimate the “overall orientation of the party leadership toward European integration” on

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a scale of 1 (strongly opposed) to 7 (strongly in favor). The two bottom plots in figure 1.2 thus show the evolution of the parties’ sentiment toward the EU, as measured by the responses to the PRP surveys and CHES data. Like the previous plots, they do not show any kind of convergence of the left. If anything, in 2017 MPs from the BE were more likely to state that EU integration had gone too far than in previous rounds. However, there does not seem to be any divergence between the PS and the parties on the right. Thus, based on these data, it is not possible to say that there was a gradual proximity on EU attitudes among the various parties on the left. Overall, our hypothesis H2 is thus broadly confirmed: the PS and the leftwing parties were not much closer in 2017 than before (H.2). The distance between the PS and the parties on its right seems to have widened (H.2.1) especially within issues in the socioeconomic realm, but the changes are not substantial. Our third hypothesis deals with the rationale behind the decision made by the PS and the radical left parties to join forces. Specifically, from the perspective of the latter, we hypothesize that this step was seen as a lesser evil than the perpetuation in power of the parties on the right. This was hinted in the responses to some questions included in the 2012 round when MPs were asked whether the “PSD and CDS-PP coalition [then in power was] handling the economy since 2011 better or worse than the PS governments did in 2008–2011?” All the surveyed Socialist MPs (38) concurred that the coalition was handling the economy a little worse (23.7 percent) or a lot (76.3 percent) worse. The BE MPs agreed, with 60 percent arguing that the rightwing coalition was managing the economy a little worse, and 40 percent a lot worse. This was also the case of most of the CDU MPs: 50 percent considered that the coalition was a little worse, 20 percent a lot worse, and 30 percent thought the level of (mis)management was more or less the same. In other words, MPs from the radical left parties acknowledged, until as late as 2012, that the PSD/CDS-PP coalition was worse than the PS. This indicates that there was indeed a preference (albeit slight) for the approach pursued by the PS as opposed to that of the PSD and CDS-PP. Another strand of evidence is provided by responses to questions on a then hypothetical left-wing cooperation (2012) and on the decision to cooperate (2017). In 2012, MPs were asked whether they agreed with a statement according to which left-wing parties (including the PS) should cooperate in order to generate stable government solutions. While CDU MPs were skeptical about this, with 75 percent neither agreeing nor disagreeing, 60 percent of BE MPs agreed and 69 percent of PS MPs agreed or strongly agreed. In 2017, MPs were asked post factum whether the decision to cooperate by the left-wing parties had been a good one. Everyone on the left with the exception of a single PS MP agreed or strongly agreed that it had been. Overall, this

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Figure 1.3  Perceptions of Attitudes of Austerity of Different Parties According to MPs. Source: PRP dataset 3. (The figures are author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

indicates that MPs on the left agreed with the decision and refused to reject that this had been the best possible choice given the scenarios ahead of their respective party leaderships. It should be said that even in the thirteenth legislature (2015–2019), with the agreement between the left-wing parties in force, the radical left parties’ perception of the PS has not changed drastically. When asked about how likely different parties were to drop (0) or keep (10) socioeconomic austerity policies, on average, MPs from the radical left parties classified the PS as an 8 (CDU) or a 6 (BE), while both the PSD and CDS-PP were classified as a 10 (CDU) or a 9.8 (BE). Thus, the PS occupies what can be seen as an intermediate position between the radical left and the former right-wing coalition (Figure 1.3). This is true even if the BE is less likely than the PCP to view the PS as prone to implementing austerity policies. Even for the PCP MPs, the PS is not as austerity-inclined as the PSD and the CDS-PP. This is relevant insofar as it signals that MPs from the radical left do not have a dichotomic scheme of classification that establishes an equivalence between “pro-austerity” parties (PSD, CDS-PP but also PS) and their own parties, but rather that there is a more nuanced gradation in place in which the PS is not so prone to austerity as the right-wing parties. Should any doubts remain, it

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also shows that MPs of the radical left parties do not think that the PS truly changed its structural values after getting into government with their support. Our final hypothesis (H.4) concerns the concrete behavior of parties in the legislative arena, as we expect the thirteenth legislature (2015–2019) to display a higher level of consensus in terms of parliamentary voting. Parliamentary voting behavior can be analyzed in a number of ways. We opt to trace the evolution of how parties vote on bills initiated by the government and voted on in parliament. This can be seen as a straightforward measurement of the degree of opposition, as it allows us to distinguish between parties consistently voting “no” to virtually all government initiatives from those that present a less rigid approach. As table 1.1 shows, we compare four different legislatures. The tenth (2005–2009) corresponds to a majority government by the PS prior to the onset of the financial crisis. In this legislature, the left-wing parties’ support was not required to pass legislation, and indeed the levels of support ranged between 30 percent (PCP) and 35 percent (BE). In the eleventh legislature, the economic crisis took off as the PS governed without a parliamentary majority. The radical left parties did not support the course of action proposed by the PS and rejected on average about two-thirds of the government-initiated proposals. The economic and financial developments eventually became unsustainable and led José Sócrates, then prime minister, to call for an international bailout and resign. The following PSD and CDS-PP executive led by Pedro Passos Coelho, which governed the country during the twelfth legislature as the Troika bailout assistance was being implemented (Moury and Standring 2017), was also unable to catch much support from the radical left: the BE voted favorably to 14 percent of their proposals, whereas both the PCP and PEV supported 11 percent. Finally, in contrast with previous legislatures, the radical left parties were much more likely to support governmentinitiated proposals in the initial 3 years of the thirteenth legislature. Levels of parliamentary support reached 80 percent for the BE, 79 percent for the PEV, Table 1.1  Favorable Votes to Government-Initiated Proposals by Party and Legislature1 Legislature

Parties in Government

10th: 2005–2009 11th: 2009–2011 12th: 2011–2015 13th: (2015–2018*)

PS (majority gov.) PS (minority gov.) PSD and CDS-PP (majority gov.) PS (minority gov.)

BE PCP PEV (percent) (percent) (percent) 35 30 14 80

30 33 11 76

31 36 11 79

PEV and PCP are considered separately because while they contest elections under a common coalition they form two separate parliamentary groups. * As the legislature was still undergoing as of the writing of this chapter, we include data until the end of the third legislative session, which ended in July 2018. Source: PRP datasets 1, 2, and 3. (The table is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

1

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and 76 percent for PCP. These unprecedented levels of consensus represent a substantive change in terms of parliamentary behavior, which springs from the decision to support the PS. In order to provide a more complete account of the evolution of parliamentary voting behavior, we try to explain the variations in the levels of consensus of the three radical left parties. Specifically, we use a logistic regression to test the extent to which the levels of consensus among radical left parties in the period between 2005 and 2018 can be explained by a combination of factors. In addition to a dummy for each legislature, we test whether the following variables are relevant in explaining the level of consensus: the number of days since the start of the legislature—with the expectation that government proposals will be more likely to pass in the first period of a new legislature (the so-called honeymoon); the number of bills that led to the law, with a higher number expected to lead to greater consensus; the level of EU involvement6 in the respective policy sector, which can be expected to have different consequences depending on the type of government in charge; and whether the law is related to social and labor market policies, the effect of which can also be hypothesized to change over time. The coefficients, which are reported in table A.2 (appendix), show that there is a complex relationship between these factors. On the one hand, neither the number of originating bills nor the number of days since the start of the legislature has statistical significance. On the other hand, the relationship between the level of EU involvement is dynamic. In the tenth and eleventh legislatures, the regression terms for the interactive relationship are not significant. However, in the twelfth legislature, that is during the PSD/CDS-PP government, the greater the involvement of the EU in the sector of the law, the less likely it was that the radical left parties voted in favor; this changed in the thirteenth legislature, since the interaction term is also significant but in the opposite direction, that is, laws from sectors with greater involvement from the EU are now more likely to be voted on favorably. This can be due to the fact that in order to reverse some of the prior enacted policies as agreed upon the signature of the agreements between the PS and its partners, leftwing parties started to cooperate. This is further corroborated by the results on the labor variable: while the radical left parties are not generally likely to vote in favor of legislation related to this sector, they tend to behave otherwise in the thirteenth legislature. The analysis of the evolution of voting behavior in parliament since 2005 can be further expanded by looking at the details of how laws from other policy sectors have been addressed. We use data coded according to the Comparative Agendas Project7 codebook, which were then aggregated into nine “broad” policy sectors: (1) macroeconomic policy and finance; (2) civil rights and liberties; (3) health policy; (4) agriculture, environment,

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and natural resources; (5) social policy and labor market; (6) education, culture, and science; (7) transportation; (8) justice and home affairs; (9) public administration. In order to understand the extent to which the change in voting behavior depends on particular sectors, we analyzed the evolution of favorable votes to laws initiated by the government over the four latest legislatures, from the tenth (2005–2009) to the thirteenth (2015–2019). The results are displayed in figure 1.4; the left-hand panel presents the proportion of approved laws initiated by the government in each policy sector, while the right-hand panel exhibits the evolution of favorable votes. It can be seen that the growth in consensus between the PS and the radical left parties is not restricted to the areas that are more directly linked to the reversal of austerity measures, namely macroeconomic and finance policy, social policy, and labor. Instead, we can see that the increase in favorable votes affected a wide range of sectors—from justice to education and science, including agriculture and environment—which shows that their commitment to supporting the government was not limited to the policy reversals. Finally, we checked the subject matter of the bills which the radical left parties voted against in the thirteenth legislature (2015–2019). Out of the nineteen laws that were proposed by the government and which were approved without the support of all or at least one of the parties, seven dealt with the socioeconomic sector (again following the Comparative Agendas Project coding scheme), with macroeconomic issues (Health, Social Welfare, Banking and Finance), which are usually considered to be innately salient for all parties and, therefore, also particularly controversial (De Giorgi et al. 2015). The remaining twelve bills address a range of issues, from justice to civil rights, defense to agriculture. We can thus conclude that particular issues

Figure 1.4  Evolution of Approved Laws by Policy Sector and Voting Behavior of RLPs. Source: PRP datasets 1, 2, and 3. (The figures are author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

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have been at stake in each individual law discussion leading to a vote against (or abstention), without showing any policy-oriented pattern of behavior by the radical left parties. CONCLUSIONS In this work, we have attempted to answer a series of questions related to the formation of the first ever Socialist minority government supported by the radical left parties in the history of democratic Portugal: the first set of questions is on the reasons that led both the PS and the radical left parties to take such an unprecedented step; the second regards their relationship once the agreements were signed and the government was established. Was the agreement between the Portuguese mainstream and radical left parties an effect of the crisis—and of the fear of another legislature led by the center-right—or had the rapprochement process among the left parties already started during the economic crisis, or even before? And how have the radical left parties adapted to their new role of supporting parties since 2015? Three different methods were combined to answer these questions: the analysis of the results of three waves of a survey administered to the Portuguese MPs between 2008 and 2017; the study of the perceptions of country experts as included in the CHES; and the examination of the conduct of the parliamentary party groups in the period 2005–2018, that is, before, during, and after the onset of the economic crisis. First, we tried to understand whether the distance between Portuguese radical left parties—BE, PCP, and PEV—and the Socialist Party had already reduced in terms of both ideological and policy positions before 2015. Our expectation was that they had not. If anything, in fact, we expected the distance between the Portuguese Socialist Party and the center-right parties—PSD and CDS-PP—to have widened since 2011, reaching its peak from 2015 onwards. Survey data confirmed our hypothesis: the perception of the mainstream and radical left MPs did not change much between 2008 and 2017—so not even after the agreement between the PS and its radical left partners was signed— either in terms of L/R (self)placement or policy preferences. Conversely, data showed a significant widening of the gap between the PS and PSD and CDSPP on their respective policy spaces; nevertheless, no clear signs of divergence were found on the ideological spectrum, which remained remarkably unchanged for all the Portuguese parties. The analysis of the parliamentary behavior confirmed our previous findings: no rapprochement process between the radical and the mainstream left parties can be observed in terms of voting behavior. When voting on legislation, the PS started to act in a more adversarial way from 2012–2013 onwards, but this might be due to the rising tension

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with the center-right government and its decision to push its austerity program rather than to a precise intention to collaborate with the left-wing parties. So what could explain the decision of the left parties to cooperate with each other if almost nothing had changed until 2015? Moving onto the realm of politics, we focused on the radical left parties’ evaluation of the different executives’ performance—notably, in the management of the crisis—and on the desirability of a possible cooperation between the left parties. Survey data indicate that, despite the marked differences with the PS on both ideological and policy positions, the radical left evaluates the performance of the centerright coalition as worse than that of the Socialists. Nonetheless, it should be noted that even in the thirteenth legislature (2015–2019), with the agreement between the left-wing parties in force, the radical left parties’ perception of the PS has not changed drastically. In their opinion, the PS is not so prone to austerity as the right-wing parties but it did not truly change its structural values either after getting into government with their support. But what happened once the new PS government took office thanks to the external support of the radical left parties? As we hypothesized, the behavior of the radical left parties in parliament has been guided by pragmatism as well as their initial decision to support the socialist government. In fact, despite the absence of a rapprochement process in ideological and policy terms, legislative data shows that the radical left parties significantly increased their level of consensus on government legislation. Never before had these parties voted in favor of such a large number of government bills, and this is not due simply to the implementation of the pledges contained in the agreements signed at the start of the legislature. They behaved as classical supporting parties by backing most of the legislation proposed by the government. All the data analyzed—including those relative to the years in which the collaboration among the left parties was already in force—confirm that the decision taken in 2015 was as pragmatic as the behavior that followed, that is, first based on the choice of the lesser of two evils (and not due to a substantive rapprochement process among the Portuguese mainstream and radical left parties) and then on the possibility of influencing the content of the bills approved by negotiating with the government from a stronger position than in the past.

NOTES 1. The Portuguese Communists and the Greens typically run for office as an electoral alliance called Coligação Democrática Unitária (Unitary Democratic Coalition—CDU), but once in parliament they have separate party groups. 2. The period corresponds to those explored by two of the three post-electoral surveys we are employing in this study.

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3. “Portuguese Deputies in Comparative Perspective: Elections, Leadership and Political Representation” (2007–2010); “Elections, Leadership and Accountability: Political Representation in Portugal, in longitudinal and comparative perspective” (2012–2015); and “Crisis, Political Representation and Democratic Renewal: The Portuguese case in the Southern European context” (2016–2019). Throughout the text, references to these projects are abbreviated to PRP datasets 1, 2, and 3. Information about the projects and the datasets is available at http://er.cies.iscte-iul. pt/en. 4. Data collected by the project “Opposition parties in Europe under pressure. Far from power, close to citizens?” (IF/00926/2015) financed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, FCT). 5. The single aspect that should be highlighted is that, in the most recent survey, MPs belonging to BE have considered their voters to be less to the left than in earlier rounds, which follows an increase in voting share from to 5.2 percent in 2011 to 10.2 percent in 2015. 6. To this end, we adapted Nugent’s classification (2006), dividing the policy sectors in line with five different levels of EU involvement: broad EU involvement, considerable involvement, shared responsibility between the EU and member country, limited EU involvement, no involvement (see table A.1 in the appendix). 7. The Comparative Agendas Project has coded an enormous amount of legislation in many countries, including Portugal, adopting a common classification scheme. For more information, see the project website: https://www.comparativeagendas.net/.

REFERENCES Bakker, R. et al. 2015. “Measuring party positions in Europe: The Chapel Hill expert survey trend file, 1999–2010.” Party Politics 21(1): 143–152. De Giorgi, E. and J. Cancela. 2019. “The Portuguese radical left parties supporting government: From policy-takers to policymakers?” Government and Opposition (advance publication online, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.2019.25). De Giorgi, E. and A. L. Dias. 2019. Portuguese Observatory on Parliamentary Dynamics database (POPaD): Information on legislative process, scrutiny activity and speeches in the Portuguese parliament (Development version) [Datafile and Codebook]. Retrieved from https://popad.org. De Giorgi, E., C. Moury and J. P. Ruivo. 2015. “Incumbents, opposition and international lenders: Governing Portugal in times of crisis.” The Journal of Legislative Studies 21(1): 54–74. Dunphy, R. and T. Bale. 2011. “The radical left in coalition government: Towards a comparative measurement of success and failure.” Party Politics 17(4): 488–504. Fernandes, J. M., P. C. Magalhães and J. Santana-Pereira. 2018. “Portugal’s leftist government: From sick man to poster boy?” South European Society and Politics 23(4): 503–524. Freire, A. 2008. “Party polarization and citizens’ left—right orientations.” Party Politics 14(2): 189–209.

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Freire, A. 2017. Para lá da “geringonça”: O governo de esquerdas em Portugal e na Europa. Lisbon: Contraponto. Freire, A. and J. M. Leite Viegas. 2008. Portuguese MPs Survey 2005 Legislative Election. Distributed by ISCTE‑ IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and CIES‑ IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portuguese. Data Archive. http://er.cies. iscte‑iul.pt/. Freire, A., J. M. Leite Viegas and M. Lisi. 2013. Portuguese Candidate Survey: 2011 Legislative Election. Research project at ISCTE-IUL and CIES-IUL, “Elections, Leadership and Accountability: Political Representation in Portugal in a Longitudinal and Comparative Perspective”, FCT: PTDC/CPJ-CPO/119307/2010, available online at: http://er.cies.iscte-iul.pt/. Freire, A., M. Lisi and I. Lima. 2015. “Crise económica, política de austeridade e o potencial de coligação da ‘esquerda radical’ portuguesa.” In Crise Económica, Políticas de Austeridade e Representação Política, edited by A. Freire, M. Lisi and J. M. Leite Viegas, 385–409. Lisbon: Assembleia da República. Freire, A., M. Lisi and E. Tsatsanis. 2016. “Portuguese MPs survey elections 2015.” In Research project at CIES-IUL and IPRI-NOVA, “Crisis, Political Representation and Democratic Renewal: The Portuguese case in the Southern European context,” FCT: PTDC/IVC-CPO/3098/2014. Available online at: http://er.cies. iscte-iul.pt/. Lisi, M. 2016. “U-Turn: The Portuguese radical left from marginality to government support.” South European Society and Politics 21(4): 541–560. Lobo, M. C. and P. C. Magalhães. 2011. “Room for manoeuvre: Euroscepticism in the Portuguese parties and electorate 1976–2005.” South European Society and Politics 16(1): 81–104. Magalhães, P. 2012. “After the bailout: Responsibility, policy, and valence in the Portuguese legislative election of June 2011.” South European Society and Politics 17(2): 309–27. Magalhães, P. T., J. Cancela and C. Moury. 2016. “Scattered clouds in the horizon of consensus: Attitudes of Portuguese parliamentary elites towards Europe before and after the crisis.” Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 4(158): 173–194. Mair, P. 2007. “Left–right orientations.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior, edited by R. J. Dalton, H.-D. Klingemann and P. Mair, 206–222. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McDonnell, D. and J. L. Newell. 2011. “Outsider parties in government in Western Europe.” Party Politics 17(4): 443–452. Moury, C. and L. de Sousa. 2011. “Comparing deputies’ and voters’ support for Europe: The case of Portugal.” Portuguese Journal of Social Science 10(1): 23–41. Moury, C. and A. Standring. 2017. “Going beyond the Troika’: Power and discourse in Portuguese austerity politics.” European Journal of Political Research 56(3): 660–679. Müller, W. C. and K. Strøm. 1999. Policy, Office, or Votes?: How Political Parties in Western Europe Make Hard Decisions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Narud, H. M. 1996. “Electoral competition and coalition bargaining in multiparty systems.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 8(4): 499–525. Olsen, J., M. Koss and D. Hough. 2010. Left Parties in National Governments. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Polk, J. et al. 2017. “Explaining the salience of anti-elitism and reducing political corruption for political parties in Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey data.” Research and Politics 4(1). https​://do​i.org​/10.1​177/2​05316​80166​86915​. Ruivo, J. P. and P. Tavares de Almeida. 2015. “National elites and the European political system: Portugal and Spain in a comparative perspective.” In Iberian Elites and the EU: Perceptions towards the European Integration Process in Political and Socioeconomic Elites in Portugal and Spain, edited by M. Jerez-Mir, J. RealDato and R. Vázquez-García, 85–114. Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada. Volkens, A., P. Lehmann, T. Matthieß, M. Nicolas, S. Regel and A. Werner. 2015. The Manifesto Data Collection. Manifesto Project (MRG/CMP/MARPOR). Version 2015a. Retrieved from Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) website: https​://ma​nifes​topro​ject.​wzb.e​u/upl​oads/​citat​ion_2​015a.​ris.

Chapter 2

Politics in Austerity Strategic Interactions between Social Movements and Institutional Actors in Portugal, 2010–2015 Guya Accornero and Pedro Ramos Pinto

INTRODUCTION The effects of the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 had a particularly strong impact on the more vulnerable economies of the Eurozone. Portugal was not an exception. By 2010, the government was introducing austerity measures to contain the growing deficit in public accounts. From 2011, these measures were intensified in the context of the Memorandum of Understanding agreeing the terms of financial assistance to the government by the EUIMF-ECB “Troika,” bringing a set of drastic cuts to many public services and benefits as unemployment rose dramatically. Although it is always difficult to establish a direct causal link between the economic contexts and mobilization processes, it was during the years of crisis and austerity that Portugal experienced its strongest cycle of mobilization since the revolutionary period that marked its transition to democracy between 1974 and 1975 (Baumgarten 2013; Accornero and Ramos Pinto 2015; Accornero 2015a).1 However, in contrast to other Southern European countries, these social mobilizations did not result in the emergence of strong new political actors, or a sustained threat to the consolidated party system. Nevertheless, there were significant changes to the political landscape, particularly with the creation of an unprecedented strategic alliance between left-wing parties following the October 2015 elections.

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Seeking to explain these developments, this chapter will trace the evolution of the “dynamics of contention” in Portugal since 2011, paying particular attention to facets of embeddedness and institutionalization of Portuguese civil society and party systems, and to the way in which contentious actors emerged, acted, changed, and interacted with the political process in and beyond the crisis and the austerity. First, we will chart the impact of the economic crisis and of austerity politics on unconventional forms of participation in Portugal between 2010 and 2013. We will mainly focus on two kinds of contentious actions, demonstrations and strikes, which became much more frequent and larger during that period than had been the case for decades. We then move to analyze the effect of the 2010–2013 cycle of protest on the Portuguese political landscape. We will suggest that its main consequence has been the establishment of new strategic alliances following the October 2015 elections, when for the first time in the history of the country the Communist Party (Partido Comunista Português, PCP) and the Left Bloc (Bloco de Esquerda, BE, the non-communist left) agreed to support a government of the center-left Socialist Party (Partido Socialista, PS). So, while in Portugal the protest cycle did not result in the emergence of a new political party in the mold of SYRIZA in Greece or Podemos in Spain, we consider this parliamentary alliance as an equally relevant consequence, and as the main specificity of the relation between economic crisis, austerity, contentious and institutional politics in Portugal. Our aim in this chapter is twofold: first to offer some preliminary thoughts on the relationship between protest cycles and political change in Portugal; in addition, we also want to connect research into anti-austerity protest to an analysis of the dynamics that followed the new landscape it produced. As our study will show, social conflict did not end with the implementation of a new government promising an “end to austerity.” Some forms of protest, especially strikes, continued and even increased after this date, revealing the complex and dynamic relations between social movements and institutions. Nevertheless there are significant differences: even if marked by a sustained conflict in labor, this post-austerity period does not have the distinctive elements of a cycle of protest. According to Sidney Tarrow, a cycle of protest implies the “rapid diffusion of collective action from more mobilized to less mobilized sectors” and it involves “innovation in the forms of contention; new or transformed collective action identities; a combination of organized and unorganized participation; and sequences of intensified interactions between challengers and authorities which can end in reform, repression and sometimes revolution” (Tarrow 1998: 42). Many of these elements, especially the intensification of the interaction between actors, contentious and institutional, were specific of the Portuguese austerity period between 2011 and 2013, but were not visible

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in the period since 2014 where social conflict returned to a more “traditional” pattern. We look at these political processes by adopting a “players and arenas perspective” (Jasper and Duyvendak 2015a and 2015b), that is, by paying special attention to the strategic interactions between the different players, institutional and not. As stressed by Jasper, a strategic perspective may be able to bridge the gap between structuralist and culturalist perspectives, between macro and micro dimensions and between state and nonstate actors, “by giving equal and symmetric weight to protestors and to the other players whom they engage, and by focusing equally on players and the arenas in which they interact” (Jasper 2015a: 9). Players are defined as “those who engage in strategic action with some goal in mind” (Jasper 2015a: 10), when an arena is “a bundle of rules and resources that allow or encourage certain kinds of interactions to proceed, with something at stake” (Jasper 2015a: 14). This point of view also stresses that no rigid separation exists between “social movements” and “institutions” and between “state” and “challengers.” Thus, the state—and the state entities, such as the police, local government, courts, and so on—is seen “less as a monolithic structure than as a set of strategic players who interact with challengers” (Jasper 2015b: 14). One of the aspects we want to highlight in this chapter is that this “networked” view of the state can be productively integrated into an analysis of political contention in Portugal since 2011. The state can be seen as a collection of different “state players” whose agendas and strategies are not only not aligned with each other but also often pulling in different directions (Jessop 2016). During cycles of protest, not only these tensions and cleavages between state entities intensify, and the interactions between state and nonstate actors strengthen, but also the boundaries between all these players became even less defined than usually. Our question is: how did this occur in the Portuguese case, and what were its results? To deal with this question, we will stress how some of these state actors, particularly the Lisbon local government and the Constitutional Court, opted at certain moments during the cycle of protest for actions closer to the agendas and claims of contentious actors than to those of the parties in government. Equally, other institutional actors, such as trade unions, established parties, or local government, also interacted with social movements, contributing in particular to the redefinition of the Portuguese left. Such interactions should be seen as an “interplay” between two fields whose boundaries are not impermeable: the institutional and the noninstitutional. As we will also try to show, social movements are often coalitions of different actors, more or less institutionalized. Moreover, social movement activists themselves have multiple affiliations, encompassing more or less institutionalized organization, including trade unions, political parties, voluntary

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associations, as well as social movement organizations (SMOs)—and they do so in both formal and informal ways. In addition, data from Portugal (unsurprisingly) reveal that those who take part in contentious politics (e.g., demonstrations and other noninstitutional forms of claim-making) frequently show also higher levels of participation in conventional politics than other citizens, again blurring the line between the forms of participation. For these reasons, a “players and arenas” perspective helps us to go beyond a rigid separation between conventional and unconventional politics and between social movements as challengers and institutional actors as targets. Understanding these dynamic exchanges will contribute both to increase our knowledge of the Portuguese case in the larger context of Southern Europe in and beyond austerity and to develop an interactionist perspective in social movement theory. AUSTERITY AND ANTI-AUSTERITY POLITICS IN PORTUGAL BETWEEN THE STREET AND THE POLLS The protest cycle witnessed in Portugal between 2010 and 2013 can be related to two general elections. The first, in 2011, removed from power the center-left PS, the incumbent when the economic crisis began to be felt in the country. The other, in 2015, was an opportunity to test the popularity and legitimacy of four years of austerity policies driven by the coalition between the center-right Social Democratic Party (Partido Social Democrata, PSD) and the right-wing Social Democratic Center—Popular Party (Centro Democrático Social-Partido Popular, CDS-PP). The result of the October 2015 parliamentary elections was, in that sense, inconclusive. The governing coalition, as a bloc, was still the largest parliamentary force but lost twenty-five seats and its majority. The Socialists increased their vote share from 28 to 32.3 percent, but the greater increases were further to their left. The BE (a new left type of party created in the 1990s following the fusion of several formerly Trotskyist and revolutionary left parties) doubled its vote share to reach 10.2 percent, gaining nineteen seats. The PCP got 8.2 percent of the vote, electing seventeen MPs. The result was, therefore, unclear: the left, broadly conceived as the PS with the BE and the PCP, did have an arithmetic majority, but no such alliance had been tried in the 40 years since democratization, and few predicted the three parties would come to an understanding. Unexpectedly, however, the PCP general secretary announced his party’s willingness to support a Socialist government. The BE, which had hitherto rejected that possibility, followed. Negotiations led to a post-electoral agreement that committed the PS to a gradual reduction of austerity measures, starting from the progressive reinstatement of cuts to public sector wages.

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In contrast to what had happened in Greece and partially in Spain, in Portugal a “mainstream” party, the PS, found itself representing the “anti-austerity” position. What this meant is that the political consequences of crisis, austerity, and cycle of protest in Portugal were not the sudden affirmation of a new party, nor a rapid change of the party system as in Greece and Spain. Instead, it was the redefinition of strategic alliances of existing political forces, which allowed left and radical left-wing parties to reach an agreement for the first time in their history. Unexpectedly, a mainstream party found itself invested with the expectations expressed by social movements in the previous years. Understanding how the interaction between different arenas and players, both institutional and noninstitutional, contributed to the outcome requires us to go back to the start of the crisis. In Portugal, the outbreak of the financial and economic crisis in 2008 brought in deep modifications in politics and society. In the earlier stages of the economic crisis the Socialist government led by José Sócrates followed the neo-Keynesian strategy initially adopted at the EU level, implementing expansive fiscal policies to address the crisis (Pedroso 2014). Reelected as Prime Minister in 2009, José Socrates changed direction toward a deflationary austerity strategy to tackle the country’s deficit, pressured by the shifting strategy of leading EU countries. A 1st Stability and Growth Program (PEC 1) along these lines was adopted in 2010. The implementation of these measures provoked a political crisis and in March 2011 José Sócrates resigned after parliament rejected a fourth successive round of cuts to public spending. This made external intervention inevitable, followed by early elections and the adoption of harsher austerity measures under the new PSD/CDS-PP government. On the one hand, these measures had a significant effect on the financial security of many in the country, with knock-on effects on consumption, and through that on employment, creating what many argue is a vicious circle (Castro Caldas 2012, Carmo et al. 2012). On the other hand, from the moment of implementation of the first austerity measures in 2010, contentious actions by citizens increased. As noted earlier, in the context of the crisis and austerity Portugal experienced its strongest cycle of protest since the revolutionary period between 1974 and 1975. According to the 2013 European Social Survey, the proportion of respondents who said they had participated in a public demonstration in the previous year more than doubled, from 2.4 percent in 2010 to 6.8 percent in 2012. Indeed, Portugal was one of the European countries that saw the biggest increase in this indicator, along with Spain and Ireland. A study developed by the Portuguese police confirmed this data. It shows that in Lisbon alone the number of demonstrations increased from 244 in 2010 to 298 in 2011 and to 579 (an average of one every 15 hours) in 2012 (Elias and Pinho 2012). In a previous study we charted the evolution

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of a protest cycle starting in 2010 using the methods of Protest Event Analysis (Accornero and Ramos Pinto 2015). We identified several peaks and a number of important characteristics in this cycle, which are summarized in figure 2.1. A first wave of protest confronted the then incumbent party, the PS led by José Sócrates. The most significant points of this early upsurge were two general strikes, and the Geração à Rasca (“Desperate Generation”) demonstration. The general strikes of March and November 2010 bookended a period of sustained labor mobilization led by the trade union federation CGTP (“General Confederation of the Portuguese Workers”). Following the second general strike, protest intensified and reach a peak in the Geração à Rasca demonstration of March 12, 2011, which saw at least 200,000 march through the capital.2 The Geração à Rasca demonstration marked the start of a period of reconstitution of the arena of contention in Portugal to the extent that it emerged at a distance from existing institutional actors, and mobilized citizens using new claims and modes of appeal. It was called by a small group of activists via social media (particularly via Facebook), in a process that quickly went viral and loosely gathered a generic and less partisan discontent. Although

Figure 2.1  Protest Event Count, Portugal January 2010 to July 2013 (three days/week sample). Source: Database of protest events in Portugal between January 2010 and July 2013 created by the authors. Using a Protest Event Analysis (PEA) methodological framework, we sampled three weekly issues of the online platform of the daily national newspaper Diário de Notícias, which includes the newspaper’s news, as well as agency material from the Portuguese news agency Lusa, sampling the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday issues of the newspaper between January 1, 2010 and July 31, 2013. (The figure is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

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earlier than the better known Indignados movement in Spain, it shared with it some of the aspects of what have been called “new new” movements by some authors, rejecting existing political parties, emphasizing forms of direct democracy and the use of social media as a mobilizing and democratic tool (Feixa et al. 2009). The Geração à Rasca protest took place in a very specific political context: the desperate attempts by the PS government to avoid requesting a bailout, even as its competence and legitimacy were questioned in both parliament and the street. And while the causes of complex processes are seldom evident, the protest clearly contributed to the creation of a feeling of political crisis which culminated in the government’s resignation. The following ten months saw a quietening of the intensity of protest. This, however, was to change by the second half of 2012 as new, deeper, and longer austerity measures were announced by the PSD/CDS-PP government. A key part of these were emergency cuts to public sector salaries and pensions, which followed a raft of other measures aimed at greater “flexibility” in labor laws and wider supply-side reforms. This new wave of contention included some of the largest demonstrations in Portuguese history, on September 15, 2012, and March 2, 2013, both organized by a new movement, the “Screw the Troika!” (Que se Lixe a Troika! QSLT). There are elements of continuity between the “Desperate Generation” protests of March 2011 and these later events. The organizers of that demonstration had created a “movement platform” called 12 March Movement (Movimento 12 de Março, M12M) whose aim invoked the words of the late writer José Saramago: “turning every citizen into a politician.” Some parts of that platform were involved in the creation of the QSLT, which echoed it in defining itself as nonparty political. Nevertheless, its left-wing position is clear, evidenced by the important presence of BE activists, organizations such as the Precários Inflexíveis (Inflexible Precarious Workers, connected to BE) and by its occasional alliance with the CGTP union federation. This last observation points to an important feature of the 2010–2013 cycle of protest. Despite the visibility and attention given to the large-scale demonstrations called by novel SMOs such as “Desperate Generation” or “Que se Lixe a Troika,” overall it was the trade union sector that gave structure and continuity to this cycle of contention.3 Since the 1974 Revolution, only four general strikes had been called before 2010 (two in 1982, in 1988, and in 2007); during this cycle, four general strikes were called between 2010 and 2013 (2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013). Across our sample of protest events, twothirds of actions were initiated by labor organizations, while only a little over one in ten instances of protest were attributable to new-form SMOs. While it could be argued that although smaller in number, these events were more impactful, we have also suggested that these SMOs had great difficulty in sustaining mobilization over time, and came increasingly to rely on alliances

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and collaborations with established parties and trade unions. For instance, the CGTP union federation put its full weight and resources behind the QSLT’s call for the March 2, 2013 demonstration, which was in all likelihood the largest street protest in Portuguese modern history (Accornero and Ramos Pinto 2015). There is also further evidence of complex interactions between different arenas of politics. At the same time as anti-austerity contentious mobilization grew, conventional political participation decreased, with electoral abstention reaching its highest levels in the democratic history of the country in both 2011 (41.9 percent) and 2015 (44.1 percent) legislative elections.4 As surveys revealed, by 2012 satisfaction with democracy had “plunged to the lowest levels ever recorded in Portugal” (de Sousa et al. 2014: 1529). That said, the relationship between unconventional and conventional political participation is not simple, and should not be considered as a zero-sum game, with one growing at the expense of the other. The available data, limited though it is, suggests that participants in unconventional forms of participation in Portugal (especially in terms of demonstration) were more likely to vote than those that did not, and revealed strong pro-democratic attitudes. According to Portuguese panel of the 2012, 2014, and 2016 European Social Survey, respondents who declared having participated in at least one lawful demonstration in the previous year were more likely to say they had voted in the previous general election (2011 and 2015) than those who had not (see table 2.1). Respondents who declared having taken part in demonstrations were also close to the parties on the left end of the spectrum, the Communists and the BE, but less so to the center-left, the Socialist Party. With respect to 2011, 18.7 percent of those who stated having taken part in protests declared feeling closer to the BE and 10 percent to the “Unitary Democratic Coalition” (Coligação Democrática Unitária, CDU)—the electoral coalition between the Communist and Green Parties. 12.6 percent stated they were closest to the PS. Seen through another prism, 44 percent of respondents who declared themselves closest to the BE participated in a demonstration; 21 percent in the case of those closest to the CDU and 5.7 percent of those close to the Table 2.1  Voting and Abstention According to SelfReported Participation in Lawful Demonstrations (LD), ESS, Portugal 2012 (%) Participated in Lawful Demonstrations? 2011 Elections Abstained Voted

Did not take part 32 68

Participated 22 78

Source: 2012 European Social Survey (ESS). (The table is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

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PS.5 Respondents who took part in a demonstration also showed higher than average levels of affiliation to trade unions or similar organizations: 26.9 percent when for the total population this percentage is 12 percent. Conversely, 29.5 percent citizens who declared to be or having been member of a trade union or a similar organization reported having participated in at least one demonstration in the previous year. Similarly, Fernandes underlined the “strong traits of attachment with the political system, namely identification with a political party and interest in politics” of people participating in demonstrations during this cycle of protest (Fernandes 2016: 188). These figures are particularly relevant not only because 2011 (alongside 2013) is the most “active” year in the cycle, but because these patterns are revealed even before parties, unions, and movements developed new strategic alliances. It suggests that many supporters were ahead of their organizations in reaching across party or movement lines and opens up the question of whether leaderships were “pushed” by their members to reach compromises with competing actors. Taken together, these factors reveal a complex arena of contention that cannot be reduced to a simple story of insurgent outsider social movements and insider established institutional players. Instead, we observe an evolving dynamic interaction between players and across arenas. The indication is that this cycle of protest is driven by more a politicized section of the population, with overlapping connections to the left of the mainstream of Portuguese politics. This is consistent with the findings of other authors (for instance, Walgrave and Klandermans 2010) suggesting many movement activists show multiple affiliation, of different levels of institutionalization. Some authors also speak of “overlapping activists” (Carroll and Ratner 1996; Meyer and Whittier 1994). In this sense, not only social movements should be seen as fluid entities composed by different bodies interacting with each other and with other outside players, but activists themselves frequently overlap different forms of engagement, which could also explain the creation of new alliances. PLAYER INTERACTION AND PATTERNS OF INSTITUTIONALIZATION The more “visible” side of the Portuguese anti-austerity cycle of protest seemed to wane as of 2013, but not without leaving important changes on the left-wing political landscape of the country, as a result of the interactions among different players which started to be central a short time after the start of the wave of contention. We would argue that these interactions and new alliances created the conditions and laid the ground for the governmental solution found after the October 2015 elections.

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If during the first months of the cycle of protest reciprocal suspition and hostility emerged between old and new conflictual actors, collaborations had begun to develop at least as of 2011, with several “new new” movements engaging with established political actors in initiatives such as the creation, in December, of a “Citizen Audit on Sovereign Debt” (Auditoria Cidadã à Dívida Pública) aiming at promoting debate around debt restructuration or even its cancellation. Among the organizers of this platform—which was supported by 500 signatories—were SMOs, as the M12M; members of PS (declaring themselves in favor of an opening “to the left”); members of the BE; left-wing economists; members of trade unions, as well as Carvalho da Silva, former secretary general of the labor federation CGTP (traditionally close to the PCP). In September 2012, after the first demonstration organized by Que se Lixe a Troika, this group called on its supporters to attend a demonstration convened by the CGTP two weeks later. As a consequence of these interactions, in October 2012, the Congresso Democrático das Alternativas (Democratic Congress for the Alternatives, CDA) was created. This was an opposition platform which organized a series of public conferences bringing together trade unions, left-wing parties, and some of the new social movements active at this time, including the leaders of the M12M and of the QSLT. Its aim was to create a common programmatic platform which could unify the various movements and groups fighting against austerity and focused on two main points: rolling over the debt and bringing down the PSD/CDS-PP government. Among the signatories of the CDA manifesto we can also find a very wide range of public personalities and political affiliations: union leaders, parliamentarians, journalists, academics, and civic leaders from a range of political backgrounds (principally the PCP, BE, and PS). Its first conference took place on October 5 with the participation of about 1,500 people.6 The blurred boundaries between movement organizations and political parties are also visible in the trajectory of the CDA. It continued active until its dissolution in June 2016, but in 2014 several of its members, formerly members of the BE created a new political party, Livre. This new party sought to occupy a space between the BE and the Socialist Party, aiming to connect these parts of the left with an anti-austerity, direct democracy, and pro-Europe agenda (which contrasted with the more Euroskeptic tone of the BE). In the end, Livre did not produce a serious threat to the established Portuguese party system, failing to elect any of its candidates in the 2014 European and 2015 general elections. It is nevertheless undeniable that, adopting for the first time in the country new intraparty practices such as the primary election of the candidates and the online debate and voting of the program, this party contributed to innovate Portuguese political arena. Moreover, Livre contributed to introduce a pro-Europe discourse on the left of the PS, which was also a relevant innovation.

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Other new forms of interaction propitiated by the cycle of protest were less visible, but arguably equally important in building links across different players on the left. Of particular relevance is the case of the Lisbon City Council. The Mayoralty of Lisbon, one of the most high-profile political roles outside government in the country was held from 2007 by António Costa for the Socialist Party. Costa had previously held several ministerial posts; significantly, he would successfully challenge the incumbent to become leader of the Socialist Party in 2014 and eventually become prime minister following the October 2015 elections. Before then, and between 2011 and 2014 the Lisbon Municipality positioned itself in clear opposition to the government, embarking on an alternative strategy of “counter-cyclical governance,”7 enacting a range of policies explicitly aimed at showing there was an alternative to austerity, a position that contrasted with the more conciliatory strategy of then leader of the PS in opposition, António José Seguro. We would suggest that the option for these policies has to be understood in the context of new alliances across the left (both institutional and noninstitutional) and they are in many ways a forerunner of the parliamentary coalition that surprised nearly everyone in 2015. During this period, the Lisbon City Council was governed on the basis of an alliance between the PS, the parties to its left (PCP and BE) and a new political group, the Cidadãos por Lisboa (“Citizens for Lisbon,” CPL). This group—which later merged into the PS—was responsible for a number of participatory initiatives, and policies directed at alleviating the effects of crisis and austerity in the capital city. Two entities were particularly involved in this effort: the Council for Housing and Social Development and the Councillorship for Social Rights, a new post created after the 2013 local elections in the specific context of crisis and austerity. The Council for Housing and Social Development was responsible for the “Local Housing Programme”8; the creation of an Emergency Social Fund to support tenants unable to pay rents in private accommodation9; increasing the number of the municipal houses available at lower prices; and plans for the redevelopment of problematic areas of the cities (the “Neighborhood and Areas of Priority Intervention”), mainly through the development of local associations, and including some elements of deliberative democracy (Accornero 2015b). Interviewed in October 2014, at the peak of the crisis, a town hall officer stressed that these programs aimed not only at tackling social problems in Lisbon, but also to produce “a positive boost and stimulus to local participation, which is the defining element of the Councillorship’s activity.”10 The Councillorship for Socials Rights, in turn, was strongly engaged in containing the increases in poverty and marginality in the city. These policies, the declarations of the councillors and their open support to initiatives related to the anti-austerity cycle of protest, placed these

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councillors, and consequently the municipality itself, on the side of contentious players against center-right government. In addition, there are also indications that there were direct contacts between the Lisbon municipal executive and noninstitutional anti-austerity movements. Several members of the Cidadãos por Lisboa (CPL) group and, among them, the Lisbon Councillors for Social Rights and for Housing and Local Development were among the signatories of the call for the Que se Lixe a Troika’s demonstration of March 2, 2013, and of the CDA manifesto. That said, our aim is not to say that the municipal coalition in Lisbon determined or predicted the step of creating a left-supported PS government in 2015. Local government coalitions of the left, including in Lisbon, have been common over the last 40 years without ever leading to a national-level agreement. What we mean to suggest is that, in the exceptional circumstances of the ongoing political and economic crisis since 2010, and the broader context of increased collaboration across the left in multiple forms of opposition, there are indications that these may have been important contingent dynamics. In particular (and subject to further research) we suggest that during this period, the Lisbon City Council could be considered as engaging in a form of “contentious governance.” From this perspective, “there is no ‘government’ as such that engages with protestors; instead we encounter a plethora of governmental players in contentious interactions with each other and with other players . . . Many cases can be found in which governmental players together with movements and other civil society organizations fight for the same cause. We encounter governmental players that behave ‘social movementlike’ by mobilizing citizens to support their claims in policy conflicts with other governmental players. In these cases governmental players become movements, at least for a while, thus blurring . . . the distinction between state and movements” (Verhoeven and Bröer 2015: 97). Breaking up the analysis of the state into a network of institutional players, some of whom at times were explicitly allied, or at least in step with antiausterity social movements, is an important part of investigating 2010–2013 as a cycle of contention and its consequences in a comprehensive way, one that does not artificially distinguish between institutional and noninstitutional arenas, but rather focuses on the interaction between all of these. Fernandes refers a number of examples where institutional actors directly or indirectly collaborated with social movements. Especially, he suggests that not only state repression was lower in Portugal than in other countries, but that there were even important “segments of the military and police forces aligning with anti-austerity protesters” (Fernandes 2016: 170). According to this author, moreover, “movements received support from an additional plethora of organizations including the Catholic church, the media and some employers’ organizations” (Fernandes 2016: 170).11

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There are other examples of such interactions that we cannot expand on here, but are equally deserving of attention, such as the role played by the Constitutional Court (Accornero 2015a). Tiago Fernandes considers this one of the most relevant particularities of the Portuguese anti-austerity cycle of protest and a particular relevant example of the institutional support for social movement claims (Fernandes 2016). From 2012, the Constitutional Court vetoed central austerity measures introduced by the PSD/CDS-PP government. In July 2012, it ruled that the cuts to holiday and Christmas bonus payments (a traditional component of salary packages in Portugal) were unconstitutional as they contradicted the principle of equality, given that they applied only to public servants. In September 2012, the court annulled the reform of the labor code, and in May 2014 all cuts made to public sector wages from 2011 were deemed to be unconstitutional, forcing the government to reverse them. These actions were not taken in a vacuum and had important consequences for broader political dynamics: they were, naturally, a serious blow for the government’s savings and economic reform plans, but arguably they also had an effect among noninstitutional actors. The first interventions of the Court, in July 2012, contributed to reenergizing protest politics from that summer onwards, to the extent that they suggested the possibility of reversing key austerity measures. But the Court’s intervention also shifted the arena of debate. For one side, it led the right to renew calls for revisions to the Constitution that would give the government more room for maneuver. For the other, it focused the strategies of trade unions, social movements, and political parties including the PCP and BE on the mobilizing frame of the defense of the Constitution—a “symbol” of Portugal’s democratization following the end of the Salazar dictatorship in 1974—and of the social rights it enshrined (Fernandes 2016; Accornero 2015a). This, however, meant the relegation of other issues, particularly calls more participatory forms of direct democracy, to the background (Carvalho and Ramos Pinto 2019). BACK TO THE STREET: NEW CLAIMS, OPEN PROTESTS, AND LATENT CONFLICTS IN POST-AUSTERITY PORTUGAL As we highlighted earlier, public protests and movement-style politics, not exclusively directed by social movements but in different and evolving forms of collaboration with institutional actors, marked the period after 2010. Nevertheless, the more protest-driven part of the cycle characterized by a wave of mass media-friendly demonstrations (Accornero 2017) seemed to come to an end in 2013. However, these collaborations created in those years seem to have encouraged increased interactions and local-level coalition building

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between party and social movement activists, blurring the lines between the two arenas. Arguably, these also contributed to facilitating the novel coalition of support for the PS government after the 2015 elections. In that way, many movement demands and themes were incorporated into the government’s program, often under pressure from its partners in parliament, the BE and the PCP. But social conflict did not stop in 2013. The number of strikes, which was decreasing during the first years of the Socialist government, moving from 90 in 2014 to 76 in 2016, started increasing again in 2017, with 106 events, little less than in the crucial years of the crisis (123 in 2010 and 127 in 2012).12 Many actors continued to mobilize around material claims, especially along the issues of education, health, and housing, and long-lasting protests occurred in many Portuguese sectors in recent years. In the public sector, according to data from the General Directorate for Public Employment and Administration, the PS government faced, in its first 3 years, almost the same number of strikes as the previous government faced during all its mandate, especially in the health and education sectors. In the next section, we explore some of the reasons behind such a return to the streets. Commentators sometimes explain the reemergence of street protests and labor conflict after 2015 through the need of the left-wing parties, and particularly the PCP (traditionally strong in the union movement) to flex their muscle and pressure the PS government on behalf of their constituencies. However, we identify a number of underlying trends that both connect these protests to the earlier “austerity years,” as well as to new claims generated by the politics of austerity which were not resolved by the PS government sustained by the left. In the postcrisis period, Portugal experienced a rapid economic recovery and by 2016, the government budget successfully delivered a deficit below the 3 percent of GDP required under EU rules, while in the same year, unemployment dropped to 11 percent, the lowest rate since 2010. Tourism, along with the arrivals of foreign investors and new residents attracted by favorable tax status, has been considered one of the driving forces of what many observers consider as the Portuguese economic miracle. At the same time, the partial inversion of austerity, carried out by the Socialist government, coincided with a noticeable decrease in indices of poverty and inequality (INE 2018). Such macro-level data reflect only part of the situation. Portugal is still one of the more unequal countries in Europe and a large sector of society continues to experience real economic insecurity, and the social costs of the Portuguese miracle still bear on the poorest parts of the society, who continue to suffer from austerity-era cuts. Key sectors such as education, health, and housing continue to suffer deep structural shortages. Spending in education as a percentage of GDP continued to decrease under the PS government: from 4.2 in 2013 to 3.7 in 2017.13 In health, this proportion fell from 9.1 in 2013 to

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8.9 in 2017.14 Housing is one of the sectors where the limits of the Portuguese recovery are most evident, and where the traditional large economic inequalities of the country emerge most clearly. In 2016, the UN Housing Rapporteur Leilani Farha visited Portugal reporting “conditions that one hopes never to see, and certainly not in a developed country” (Farha 2016). She particularly referred to the effects of “austerity measures” which “resulted in an increase in poverty levels, lower social protection benefits, higher rates of homelessness and unaffordable housing, utilities and other public services”—and stressed “the effects of the beefed up tourism industry . . . resulted in the displacement of poor tenants and lack of affordability.” The affordability of housing was negatively affected by the implementation, as a part of the Troika’s conditions for the bailout agreement, of the Novo Regime de Arrendamento Urbano (New Urban Tenancy Framework— NRAU) in 2012. This package of measures removed most of the existing controls on long tenancies, encouraging the setting of market-level rates or the sale of properties on the open market. Other changes, such as new rules governing evictions and reduction of the minimum number of years for tenancies from three to one, also contributed to the generalized increase of rents. At the same time as social protection for tenants was decreasing, house prices increased rapidly across the country. This situation has been denounced by many activists and urban experts, who stressed the political responsibilities (Mendes 2018) at the basis of these dynamics, and mainly the decision to promote private (especially foreign) investment in the real estate market, not only through the liberalization of the housing market but also through the preferential tax arrangements for non-domiciled residents and foreign investors. Additionally, further pressure was put on the housing market by the especially favorable fiscal conditions that apply to short-term vacation rentals (e.g., Airbnb), which was subject to a tax rate nearly 50 percent lower than that applying to longer term residential lettings (Tarsi 2016). The intersection of these factors has created an explosive situation in housing. In addition to the risk of a new housing bubble, it is at the basis of the dramatic deterioration of housing conditions in the country, and especially in the urban areas. After the implementation of the new rental law, according to the Ministry of Justice, in 2016, the number of evicted people was almost double that of three years before, with an average of 5.5 tenants evicted each day. In the housing sector, along with traditional forms of protest such as occupations, new forms of contentious organization and actors emerged. In the context of a worldwide wave of protests (della Porta 2016), new contentious players in Southern Europe have helped frame housing and gentrification problems (Lees, Annunziata and Rivas-Alonso 2018), and, more recently, anti-tourism claims (Colomb and Novy 2017). This was the case of the Spanish Platform for Mortgage-Affected People (Garcia-Lamarca 2017)

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and part of the Greek Solidarity Movement (Arampatzi 2016). Similarly, the development of associations acting in the area we can generally call of the “right to the city” are examples of the emergence of a more autonomous social movement field in Portugal. New organizations were given impetus by the 2010–2013 anti-austerity mobilizations, but it was especially in the post-austerity era that their actions became particularly visible, and this is strongly connected with the housing crisis, which, contrary to Spain, arrived in Portugal after the economic crisis. Neighborhood movements were crucial players during the 1974 revolution (Ramos Pinto 2013), but housing activism against gentrification is a new phenomenon. This new form of housing activism has different modalities: direct material support to neighbors who risk eviction, legal assistance, demonstrations in crucial urban areas (such as shantytowns or in front of the municipality), contacts and negotiations with local government, development and diffusion of reports on housing, organization of events together with professional groups (for instance, the Association of Portuguese Architects) or in collaboration with Universities (such as the Lisbon’s Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning, IGOT). Created as an informal network inside the wider group Solidariedade Migrante “Migrant Solidarity” in 2005, habita established itself as a formal association in 2014. Connected to habita, in 2017 the platform Morar em Lisboa was created, in which the role of professional in urban issues and of public figures is particularly relevant. On the other side, habita is also connected to the creation, always in 2017, of the more radical group Stop Despejos (“Stop evictions”), engaged in defending both tenants who risk eviction, and neighbors of shanty towns at risk of demolition. In this context, the first Portuguese explicitly anti-gentrification demonstration, “Rock in Riot,” took place in Lisbon on March 24, 2018. The movements described above are an example of a revitalization of civil society which can be understood as a consequence of the 2010–2013 cycle of protest, and the alliances more or less formal established during it. Grassroots organizations, more or less institutionalized associations, formal and informal groups and networks expanded significantly. As in other countries in the aftermath of crisis—such as Greece and Italy (Arampatzi 2016; Bosi and Zamponi 2015)—the multiplication of different experiences generally ascribable to the field of “prefigurative politics” or “direct action” is another sign of the civil society dynamics in this context (Baumgarten 2017). These experiences can be defined as “forms of participation that ignore or circumvent the traditional state-addressing repertoires of action, and that focus instead on a ‘self-changing’ society as part of everyday politics, in which the distinction between the public and private spheres is blurred” (Bosi and Zamponi 2015). This reflects the undertow of the cycle of protest, with the continuation of traditional conflicts—such as the labor—and the consolidation of new players

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which show different levels of visibility and latency,15 and different combinations of disruptive, direct, and performative actions. Conversely, especially in certain conflicts (housing) the role of experts seems to be increased. Urban scholars, geographers, architects, and planners are particularly involved in framing gentrification and tourism as social problems and in connecting them with housing crisis. These high professionalized new forms of activism also changed the repertoire of contention, with a growing resort to the legal system, and the increasing use of channels of communication with authorities which were opened during the cycle of protest. CONCLUSIONS: FROM SOCIAL MOVEMENTS TO INSTITUTIONS AND BACK AGAIN This chapter is a first approach to examining the broader political consequences of the Portuguese 2010–2013 cycle of contention. In particular, we tried to widen the perspective, departing from a focus on social movements and protest action to take in multiple arenas (political economy, elections, local governance) and players that take a diversity of forms and occupy varied positions within, outside, and across institutional settings. Our arguments, based on a close observation of the political dynamics of the period, are nevertheless only a first step, pointing to areas that need to be interrogated more closely if we are to understand the specificity of the Portuguese case and produce insights about the interactions between institutional and noninstitutional actors in moments of political crisis. We can summarize our argument by saying that, unlike in other Southern European countries, and despite the mobilization of the largest cycle of protest since the 1970s, the Portuguese political system seems to have (so far) weathered the storm brought about by the financial crisis of 2008–2009. It did so through a surprising recasting of the position and pattern of alliances on the left. These alliances cut across institutional boundaries and brought movements, parties, unions, and different types of state actors into uneasy, negotiated, and tentative alliances, but nonetheless into alliance, a development that resulted in the creation of a minority PS government supported by the PCP and the BE in 2015. When we last wrote about the political dynamics of the protest cycle, in early 2014, we asked whether the emerging collaborations between the institutional players of the left (BE, PCP, and unions) and new players in the form of social movements, citizen platforms and other noninstitutional actors might lead to new coalitions on the left (Accornero and Ramos Pinto 2015: 510). What we did not expect was these new alliances would extend to the PS and contribute to the fundamental repositioning of the main center-left party.

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While many will undoubtedly see that repositioning as a purely expedient measure aimed at securing power (a motivation that was certainly present), we see significant evidence that the strength of anti-austerity mobilization, the cross-cutting frames deployed, and the development of networks of collaboration helped create the conditions in which the necessary shifts across the left were possible. It is important to remember that it was not only the PS that had to change tack: both the PCP and the BE had to shift from a customary position of competition with each other and the PS, and “park” long-held positions, including their euro-skepticism. In comparative terms, what seems clear to us is that the Portuguese political system seems to be incorporating into the existing institutional spectrum the new issues and players emerging out of the consequences of the crisis. Why does it seem to have been able to do so, when other party systems across Southern Europe are disintegrating? Without wishing to attribute weights to each, there are several factors in play, and possibly others could be identified. The lack of significant religious or national cleavages helps. Equally, as Robert Fishman has argued, the manner of democratization of the country, via the 1974–1975 Revolution, has left a legacy in which (particularly in the left) there is political culture in which protest and contentious mobilization are considered a legitimate and desirable form of political participation (Fishman 2011). As a consequence, the PS was arguably more open to interaction with noninstitutional actors and their influence than reciprocal parties in other parts of Southern Europe. A further factor may be degree of institutionalization of civil society in Portugal, as identified by Tiago Fernandes. Compared to Spain, at least, voluntary organizations, civic associations, and other noninstitutional actors in Portugal have a much greater degree of collaboration and partnership with political parties (through overlapping membership as well as explicit collaboration) and the state creating, in Fernandes opinion, “channels of communication between masses and elites” (Fernandes 2015). An alternative reading of these patterns would see in them a greater degree of control by institutional players of civil society, crowding out the development of more powerful and genuinely autonomous social movements. However, the emergence of new actors such as housing and anti-gentrification movements since 2015 seems to us to show instead that the anti-austerity protest cycle, among other effects, invigorated Portuguese civil society which, for the time being at least, is operating at a higher level of mobilization than had been the case for most of the post-democratization period. The same can be said for the reemergence of labor conflict since 2017. Not only are these mobilizations generated by demands to replace cuts to budgets and salaries brought about under austerity, but they are also clearly a continuation of the 2010–2013 pattern of protest. In the health and education sectors there is clearly a greater degree of inter-relation between unions and the left parties, particularly the

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PCP, but it would be reductive to seem them simple instruments of the party’s agenda—in some ways they bring the party as many risks as advantages. If they do put pressure on the Socialist government to deliver, they also have the potential to put the current left majority in jeopardy. Significantly, this variegated landscape of political contention since 2015 continues to be framed within the boundaries of the system, and there have been very few anti-systemic challengers emerging in the period since 2011.16 Through a period of dramatic austerity, followed by a strong but problematic recovery, the Portuguese political system has shown remarkable adaptability. And maybe its ability to “muddle through” is the sign of a mature democracy (Runciman 2014).

NOTES 1. The Portuguese cycle of protest is also to be understood in the context of a global wave of contention which has spread across the world in the last few years, from Northern Africa to, more recently, Brazil as shown by several authors (e.g., Ortiz et al. 2013). Scholars dealing with this phenomenon have highlighted not only common repertoires and frames, but also different causes, dynamics, and effects across nations (e.g., Bartels and Bermeo 2013; della Porta 2015 and Giugni and Grasso 2016). 2. Our data cover only 2010–2013. However, Tiago Carvalho’s subsequent research, based on an even more extensive protest event database covering the years 2009–2015, shows that our sample covers the most active years, with protest events tailing off rapidly after the end of 2013 (Carvalho 2019: 96). 3. Similar findings also appear in the studies realized by Campos Lima on Portugal and Spain (2011), by Hamann Johnston and Kelly on Western Europe (2013), and by Kousis and Karakioulafi on Greece (2013). 4. Source: Taxa de abstenção nas eleições para a Assembleia da República: total, residentes em Portugal e residentes no estrangeiro http:​//www​.pord​ata.p​t/Por​tugal​ /Taxa​+de+a​bsten​%C3%A​7%C3%​A3o+n​as+el​ei%C3​%A7%C​3%B5e​s+par​a+a+A​ ssemb​leia+​da+Re​p%C3%​BAbli​ca+to​tal++​resid​entes​+em+P​ortug​al+e+​resid​entes​ +no+e​stran​geiro​-2208​ 5. Source: 2012 ESS. 6. http://www.congressoalternativas.org/ 7. This expression is used by a town hall officer interviewed on October 30, 2014. 8. http:​//www​.cida​daosp​orlis​boa.o​rg/do​cumen​tos/1​22357​1021A​8cKI1​oe2Vc​ 98OM8​.pdf 9. http:​//www​.cm-l​isboa​.pt/p​ergun​tas-f​reque​ntes/​apoio​-inst​ituci​onal/​apoio​-do-f​ undo-​de-em​ergen​cia-s​ocial​ 10. Interview with a town hall officer (Lisbon, October 30, 2014). 11. Tiago Fernandes also states that “The pro Austerity government did not dismantle and even expanded a state-civil society partnership for policy delivery to the

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poor, unique in Southern Europe” (Fernandes 2016: 170). While we agree with this author on the role of some state players who, during the anti-austerity cycle of protest, adopted a position closer to contentious players than to the central government, we are more skeptical in considering the delegation to some civil society sectors of services as an indicator of more openness to social movements. 12. Fonte: PORDATA, “Greves e conflitos de trabalho,” 2017. 13. PORDATA, “Despesas do Estado em educação: execução orçamental em % do PIB,” https​://ww​w.por​data.​pt/Po​rtuga​l/Des​pesas​+do+E​stado​+em+e​ducaç​ão+ex​ ecuçã​o+orç​ament​al+em​+perc​entag​em+do​+PIB-​867 14. PORDATA, “Despesa corrente em cuidados de saúde em % do PIB,” https​ ://ww​w.por​data.​pt/Po​rtuga​l/Des​pesa+​corre​nte+e​m+cui​dados​+de+s​aúde+​em+pe​rcent​ agem+​do+PI​B-610​ 15. According to Alberto Melucci, latency and visibility are the two essential and complementary poles of collective action: latency helps to consolidate solidarity, while visibility “reinforces submerged networks” (Melucci 1985: 801). 16. An exception is the appearance in early 2019 of a populist party, Chega! (Enough!) attempting to create a space on the far-right of the political spectrum. At the time of writing, despite some media attention, this party had not been able to gather sufficient valid signatures to be legally registered and compete in elections.

REFERENCES Accornero, G. 2015a. “Back to the Revolution. The 1974 Portuguese Spring and Its ‘Austere Anniversary’.” Historein 15(1): 32–48. Accornero, G. 2015b. “La città e la crisi. Il caso di Lisbona.” In La città e la crisi. Quattro casi di globalizzazione urbana, edited by P. de Nardis, 207–242. Rome: Bordeaux. Accornero, G. 2017. “The ‘Mediation’ of the Portuguese Anti-Austerity Protest Cycle. Media Coverage and Its Impact.” In Media Representations of Anti-Austerity Protests in the EU: Grievances, Identities and Agency, edited by T. Papaioannou and S. Gupta, 165–188. Abingdon: Routledge. Accornero, G. and P. Ramos Pinto. 2015. “‘Mild Mannered’? Protest and Mobilisation in Portugal under Austerity, 2010–2013.” West European Politics 38(3): 491–515. Arampatzi, A. 2017. “The Spatiality of Counter-Austerity Politics in Athens, Greece Emergent Urban Solidarity Spaces.” Urban Studies 54(9): 2155–2171. Bartels, L. and N. Bermeo (eds.). 2013. Mass Politics in Tough Times Opinions, Votes and Protest in the Great Recession. New York: Oxford University Press. Bosi, L. and L. Zamponi. 2015. “Direct Social Actions and Economic Crises. The Relationship between Forms of Action and Socio-Economic Context in Italy.” Partecipazione e Conflitto 8(2): 367–391. Baumgarten, B. 2013. “Geração à Rasca and Beyond: Mobilizations in Portugal after 12 March 2011.” Current Sociology 61(4): 457–473. Baumgarten, B. 2017. “Back to Solidarity-Based Living? The Economic Crisis and the Development of Alternative Projects in Portugal.” Partecipazione e Conflitto 10(1): 169–192.

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Caldas, J. M. Castro. 2012. “The Consequences of Austerity Policies in Portugal.” International Policy Analysis, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, available at http:​//lib​rary.​ fes.d​e/pdf​-file​s/id-​moe/0​9311.​pdf, 2015, retrieved on October 2, 2015. Campos Lima, M. da Paz and A. M. Artiles. 2011. “Crisis and Trade Union Challenges in Portugal and Spain: Between General Strikes and Social Pacts.” Transfer 17(3): 387–402. Carmo, R. do, F. Cantante and M. Carvalho. 2012. “Inequalities in Portugal: Recent and Structural Trends.” Observatório das Desigualdades, available at http:​ //obs​ervat​oriod​as-de​sigua​ldade​s.cie​s.isc​te.pt​/inde​x.jsp​?page​=proj​ects&​id=12​6, retrieved on January 14, 2014. Carroll, W. and R. Ratner. 1996. “Master Framing and Cross-Movement Networking in Contemporary Social Movements.” Sociological Quarterly 37: 601–625. Carvalho, T. 2019. Contesting Austerity: A Comparative Approach to the Cycles of Protest in Portugal and Spain under the Great Recession, Doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge. Carvalho, T. and P. Ramos Pinto. 2019. “From the ‘Unfinished Revolution’ to the ‘Defence of the Revolution’: Framing the Transition in Austerity-Era Portugal.” In Rethinking South European Democratization in Spain, Greece and Portugal, edited by M. E. Cavallaro and K. Kornetis, 199–227. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Colomb, C. and J. Novy (eds.). 2017. Protest and Resistance in the Tourist City. Abingdon: Routledge. De Sousa, L., P. Magalhães and L. Amaral. 2014. “Sovereign Debt and Governance Failures: Portuguese Democracy and the Financial Crisis.” American Behavioral Scientist 58(12): 1517–1541. Della Porta, D. 2015. Social Movements in Times of Austerity: Bringing Capitalism Back into Protest Analysis. Cambridge: Polity Press. Elias, L. and P. Pinho. 2012. “Reuniões e manifestações – Os desafios das novas formas de contestação social.” Polícia Portuguesa 4(3): 37–53. Farha, L. 2016. “End of Mission Statement,” available at https​://ww​w.ohc​hr.or​g/en/​ NewsE​vents​/Page​s/Dis​playN​ews.a​spx?N​ewsID​=2101​4&Lan​gID=E​, retrieved on April 24, 2019. Feixa, C., I. Pereira and J. Juris. 2009. “Global Citizenship and the ‘New, New’ Social Movements: Iberian Connections.” Young 17(4): 421–442. Fernandes, T. 2015. “Rethinking Pathways to Democracy: Civil Society in Portugal and Spain, 1960s–2000s.” Democratization 22(6): 1074–1104. Fernandes, T. 2016. “Late Neoliberalism and Its Discontents: The Case of Portugal.” In Late Neoliberalism and its Discontents in the Economic Crisis, edited by D. della Porta et al., 169–200. London: Palgrave-McMillan. Fishman, R. M. 2011. “Democratic Practice after the Revolution: The Case of Portugal and beyond.” Politics & Society 39(2): 233–267. Garcia-Lamarca, M. 2017. “From Occupying Plazas to Recuperating Housing: Insurgent Practices in Spain.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 41(1): 37–53. Giugni, M. and M. Grasso (eds.). 2016. Austerity and Protest: Popular Contention in Times of Economic Crisis. Abingdon: Routledge.

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Hamann, K., A. Johnston and J. Kelly. 2013. “Unions against Governments: Explaining General Strikes in Western Europe, 1980–2006.” Comparative Political Studies 46(9): 1030–1057. Lees, L., S. Annunziata and C. Rivas-Alonso. 2018. “Resisting Planetary Gentrification: The Value of Survivability in the Fight to Stay Put.” Annals of the American Associations of Geographers 108(2): 346–355. Jasper, J. and J. Duyvendak. 2015a. Players and Arenas. The Interactive Dynamics of Protest. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Jasper, J. and J. Duyvendak. 2015b. Breaking Down the State. Protestors Engaged with Authorities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Jasper, J. 2015a. “Introduction. Playing the Game.” In Players and Arenas. The Interactive Dynamics of Protest, edited by J. Jasper and J. Duyvendak, 10–32. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Jasper, J. 2015b. “Introduction. Players and Arenas Formerly Known as the State.” In Breaking Down the State. Protestors Engaged with Authorities, edited by J. Jasper and J. Duyvendak, 9–24. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Jessop, B. 2016. The State: Past, Present and Future. London: Polity Press. Kousis, M. and C. Karakioulafi. 2013. “Labour Unions Confronting Unprecedented Austerity in Greece, 2010–2013,” 7th ECPR General Conference, Sciences Po, Bordeaux. Melucci, A. 1985. “The Symbolic Challenge of Contemporary Movements.” Social Research 52(4): 789–816. Mendes, L. 2018. “Tourism Gentrification in Lisbon: The Panacea of Touristification as a Scenario of a Post-capitalist Crisis.” In Crisis, Austerity and Transformation: How Disciplinary Neoliberalism is Changing Portugal, edited by I. David, 25–46. Lanham: Lexington. Meyer, D. and N. Whittier. 1994. “Social Movement Spillover.” Social Problems 41: 277–298. Ortiz, I., S. Burke, M. Berrada and H. Cortes. 2013. “World Protests 2006–2013.” Friedrich Ebert Foundation, available at http:​//cad​tm.or​g/IMG​/pdf/​World​_Prot​ ests_​2006-​2013-​Final​-2.pd​f, retrieved on May 30, 2014. Pedroso, P. 2014. “Portugal and the Global Crisis. The Impact of Austerity on the Economy, the Social Model and the Performance of the State.” International Policy Analysis, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, available at http:​//lib​rary.​fes.d​e/pdf​-file​ s/id/​10722​.pdf,​retrieved on October 2, 2015. Ramos Pinto, P. 2013. Lisbon Rising Urban Social Movements in the Portuguese Revolution, 1974–75. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Runciman, D. 2014. The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tarrow, S. 1998. Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarsi, E. 2016. “As lógicas da exclusão urbana no contexto português: uma perspectiva Sul-Norte.” Fórum Sociológico 29: 41–52. Verhoeven, I. and C. Broer. 2015. “Contentious Governance. Local Governmental Players as Social Movement Actors.” In Breaking Down the State. Protestors

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Chapter 3

Democratic Legitimacy and Trust in Political Institutions in Portugal before and after the Great Recession Transitory or Lasting Effects? Emmanouil Tsatsanis and Ana Maria Belchior

INTRODUCTION In the past decades, the topic of the legitimacy of the democratic system has widely preoccupied political scientists. This has been an important topic as, on the one hand, since at least the 1970s, there has been an increasing trend toward disaffection with politics as well as heightened levels of political cynicism among electorates in most Western democracies. Even though initially scholars tended to focus on single countries and their national particularities (the first and best known example being the literature on the impact of the Vietnam War and Watergate in the USA; e.g., Nye et al. 1997), recent scholarship acknowledges the cross-national dynamic of the phenomenon. Furthermore, the occurrence of events of transnational importance such as the economic crisis which originated in the USA in 2008 but quickly migrated to Europe has reinforced incremental changes that are associated with longer-term societal transformations. It becomes harder to deny that the decline of citizens’ trust in political institutions, for example, across different Western countries (Bosco and Verney 2012; Belchior 2015; Teixeira et al. 2016) needs to be attributed to a significant extent to processes and experiences that transcend circumstances of solely national importance. Following previous work that looked at the effects of the crisis on democratic legitimacy and trust toward political institutions in Portugal (Teixeira et al. 2014, 2015, 2016), the present chapter focuses on the aftermath of the economic crisis. To reach this goal, we compare Portuguese citizens’ 69

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attitudes at three different moments: before the emergence of the economic crisis, at the peak of the crisis, and in the postcrisis period. Our research questions are the following: Does the multidimensionality of political support hold after the crisis? What is the trend in the different dimensions of democratic support following the end of the crisis? What was the impact of the economic crisis on different age cohorts in terms of their support for a democratic regime? What is the impact of social modernization on diffuse support? And can short-term fluctuations in specific support be attributed only to economic and performance factors or are there politicalideological factors at play also? This chapter first briefly presents some seminal theoretical and empirical contributions on different types of democratic support and then proceeds to discuss the data and methods used, the empirical findings, and the final conclusions. DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY AND TRUST IN INSTITUTIONS: DIFFUSE AND SPECIFIC DEMOCRATIC SUPPORT The changing relationship between citizens and politics has manifested in a lot of different ways. There are both attitudinal and behavioral aspects of change in contemporary democracies, leading some people to ask if all these changes carry consequences for the sustained support of the citizenry for existing forms of representation and government. Behavioral changes include lower turnout in elections (Franklin 2004), declining party membership (Dalton and Wattenberg 2000; Van Biezen et al. 2012) and party identification (Dalton 2000), partisan dealignment (Franklin et al. 1992), declining associational membership (Putnam et al. 2000, 2006), and rise of unconventional political participation (Teorell et al. 2007). The fact that during this same period, the behavioral changes have been accompanied by growing political disaffection and mistrust (Pharr and Putnam 2000) makes it reasonable to assume that all these trends are manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon: the growing indifference, if not hostility, of citizens toward politics, at least in its conventional form of representative party politics and mainstream centrist governments (Hobolt and Tilley 2016). So, even though these phenomena have possibly distinct origins and often different correlates, there is always a tacit or explicit tendency to link each one to the broader question of the legitimacy of the political system and its central institutions. Given that some of the attitudinal trends have intensified since the beginning of the economic crisis in 2008, one of the questions that political scientists have been trying to answer is to what extent the crisis has accelerated or

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set in motion processes of regime delegitimization in tandem with preexisting, longer-term developments (e.g., Teixeira et al. 2014; Armingeon and Guthmann 2014; Cordero and Simón 2016). When concentrating strictly on the attitudinal dimension of democratic legitimacy, the question that has puzzled social scientists more generally is whether fluctuations in levels of support for the institutions of democratic governance reflect changes in underlying political values or whether they are simply a response to shortterm economic trends (or shocks) and perceived government performance in select policy domains. David Easton (1965, 1975, 1976) was the first to propose a qualitative distinction between types of political support.1 More specifically, Easton distinguishes between diffuse and specific support, which in their concrete manifestations tend to correspond to different objects of support. Diffuse support is directed to the fundamental aspects of the political system, such as the constitutional order and political institutions in the abstract. Specific support is directed at the officeholders themselves (political authorities) and is closely related to questions of performance and outputs. Therefore, diffuse support tends to be more durable and stable because it derives from deep-seated political values and attachments, typically cultivated during early political socialization. Conversely, specific support is contingent on perceptions and evaluations of performance and policy outputs, thus it tends to be in synch with the political ebb and flow and prone to short-term fluctuations. Support for specific parties (government or opposition), as well as attitudes toward leadership elites and authorities, is expected to fluctuate over time in response to short-term and medium-term contextual factors, such as the performance of particular governments, major shifts in public policies, leadership changes, or merely the cycles of the economy. The concept of diffuse support is closely associated with the concept of regime legitimacy. Martin Seymour Lipset defined regime legitimacy as “the capacity of a political system to engender and maintain the belief that existing political institutions are the most appropriate and proper ones for the society” (Lipset 1983, 64). In other words, regime legitimacy exists only when the governed believe a particular system of government is preferable to all others from a normative point of view. This normative foundation is assumed to exist independently of the policy outputs of the government of the day, even though Easton has conceded diffuse support can also be affected by later experience and is thus not completely unaffected by retrospective evaluations of performance (Easton 1975, 446; see discussion in Magalhães 2014, 78–80). To put it another way, the underlying theoretical argument proposed by Easton, and later explored empirically by other political scientists, is that the expression of support for democratic institutions (“system support,” in Easton’s abstract language of system theory) is composed of at least two

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dimensions. This implies that a person can be a committed democrat and yet display remarkably low levels of trust toward the institutions of representative democracy or the democratically elected political personnel (see also Klingemann 2013). The findings of comparative analyses by Norris (2011) and Dalton (2004) confirm the distinction between diffuse and specific support holds true not only conceptually but also in the minds of citizens across different political systems. Even though in most consolidated democracies support for democracy as a system of government is overwhelming, satisfaction with the way democracy works in one’s country is far more volatile. Norris went a step further, initially challenging the notion that a growing trend of political disaffection was ubiquitous and, to the extent that it is present, constitutes a negative development. She argues that growing dissatisfaction with democracy is a product of rising public aspirations of citizens who push for the improvement of democracies. In other words, dissatisfaction with democracy does not mean citizens are becoming less democratic, but are simply more demanding democrats: “critical citizens” (Norris 2011) or “assertive citizens” (Klingemann 2013). To use the language of markets, the diagnosed “democratic deficits” should not be entirely attributed to changing political supply but also with changing political demand which the existing political supply cannot meet. In other words, democratic deficits result from the increasing expectations and the cognitive awareness of “critical citizens” who are dissatisfied with the supply side of democratic governance (e.g., process and policy performance, and power-sharing arrangements). There are a host of symptoms to corroborate this thesis: civic engagement is declining, conventional political participation is eroding, and people are becoming unsatisfied with and skeptical about political institutions, parties, and politicians (Schmitt and Holmberg 1995; Pharr and Putnam 2000; Teorell et al. 2007). DIFFUSE AND SPECIFIC SUPPORT OF DEMOCRACY IN PORTUGAL BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER THE CRISIS Portugal is one of the European countries where declining satisfaction with the way democracy works in the country began to decrease in the 1980s (Freire 2003). In Portugal, growing political discontent has been accompanied in the last few decades by high levels of political disaffection (i.e., lack interest in politics and political efficacy), which has been remarkably high even by the standards of other third-wave South European democracies. Both phenomena, however, have been distinct from regime illegitimacy

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(Magalhães 2005), that is, lack of diffuse support. The latter has remained high throughout the post-authoritarian period and has facilitated the process of democratic consolidation following a tumultuous 2-year period after the Carnation Revolution in 1974. The 2008 international economic crisis eventually forced Portugal in 2011 to negotiate a bailout deal with the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund. The austerity program that was imposed as a condition for the loans created a downward spiral of recession, growing unemployment, falling state revenue, persistent budget deficits, new austerity measures, and deeper recession. Unsurprisingly, this development signaled the beginning of a period in which positive evaluations and sentiments toward government and other political institutions follow a steep downward trajectory in Portugal as in other countries across the European periphery where the same spiral was being reproduced with varying intensity. The gap between diffuse support for democracy and dissatisfaction with its performance reaches its maximum at the time when Portugal was the subject of international rescue, between 2011 and 2014 (Teixeira et al. 2019), corresponding to the period when the country received external financial support and to the application of harsh austerity measures by the government, which led to a severe worsening of the living conditions of the population. Recent years have witnessed a widespread softening of the severity of austerity policies in these countries and some revitalization of the economic indicators. Portugal was among the most afflicted countries by the economic crisis, but since 2015 the situation significantly changed with the election of a new Socialist government. The latter replaced the former center-right coalition and was formed with the parliamentary support of the two small radical left parties substantially alleviating previous political austerity measures, allowing a gradual return to standards of living that were comparable to those prior to the crisis. Explaining Levels of Diffuse and Specific Support: Hypotheses In attempting to gauge whether the economic crisis left lasting effects on the levels of democratic support in Portugal, the present research builds upon a set of relevant findings of previous studies including the Portuguese case (Teixeira et al. 2014, 2016, 2019), which complement the few studies that had been conducted in previous years (e.g., Morlino and Montero 1995; Freire 2003; Magalhães 2005). These studies found that the distinction that Easton made between diffuse and specific support held true even under extreme economic conditions. Factor analyses indicated that citizens were making the distinction between the regime in the abstract and its concrete manifestations and performance (both in 2008 and 2012). Therefore, we expect that the

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structure of support for the political system also holds after the peak of the crisis has passed. Our first hypothesis, thus, reads as follows: H1: Diffuse and specific support continue to form distinct dimensions of political support after the crisis.

Previous research suggested that Portugal experienced an acute “democratic deficit” during the economic crisis which did not appear to translate into antidemocratic backlash: diffuse support remained roughly steady between 2008 and 2012 even though specific support plummeted (Teixeira et al. 2014, 2015). In a new context where the economic crisis finally seems to be moving in the rearview mirror, it is worth examining again whether the “democratic deficit” that existed before and that peaked during the economic crisis persists or whether it has subsided. Given that economic indicators had already improved by the time the fieldwork of the third survey used in this study was conducted (2016) we expect that specific support will have recovered to a significant extent. Conversely, we expect that diffuse democratic support levels will have remained high as they have been throughout the previous years. Our second and third hypotheses are as follows: H2: Diffuse democratic support levels have remained stable during and after the economic crisis in Portugal. H3: Specific democratic support, including trust in political institutions, has rebounded after the crisis.

Are any of the observed trends at the aggregate level really uniform across the electorate or are they more pronounced for particular sociodemographic groups? For the latter question we contrast explanations that have become prevalent in the literature. The explanations offered to account for the previously observed “democratic deficits” are a mixture of long- and short-term factors. On the one hand, changing aspirations are attributed to long-term societal forces of modernization that lead to lasting cultural change. The argument here is similar to the one posed by Inglehart (1977, 2018) concerning the rise of post-materialist and self-expression values. On the other hand, perceptions of democratic performance are shaped by actual democratic performance, but this evaluation can be mediated by certain factors, such as media coverage and framing, comparisons between one’s own country and other countries, the existence or not of clear lines of accountability (Norris 2011, 4), but also the psychological effects of partisanship and ideology on the understanding of political events.

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We will assess the explanatory power of demand-side theories that focus on enduring cultural shifts (Inglehart 1977, 2018) and cognitive mobilization (Dalton 1984) and supply-side theories that emphasize the public dissatisfaction with the policy performance of democratic governments (Weatherford 1987; Finkel et al. 1989). Specifically, we will assess the relative explanatory power of social modernization approaches that attribute dissatisfaction with democratic performance to rising democratic aspirations in long-term processes of human development, especially growing levels of literacy, education, and cognitive skills, leading to emancipatory values. In this view, the processes of societal modernization and human development encourage the growth of self-expression values in postindustrial societies, which have been linked to political liberalism and demand for more participatory and democratic forms of governance. Previous findings appeared consistent with the social modernization and “critical citizen” thesis, namely that high levels of dissatisfaction coexisted with strong support for democratic regime, especially for the educated young. This trend is in line with the literature on democratic legitimacy that since the middle of the 1990s has suggested that a strong support toward democratic institutions coexists with a growing dissatisfaction with their performance (Dalton 1996; Norris 1999; 2011; Putnam et al. 2000; Dalton 2004; Torcal and Montero 2006). These claims will be tested by examining the relative impact of sociodemographic variables such as education, but also political interest and selfexpression values, all of which are expected to be positively associated with diffuse democratic support. Finally, we will examine the impact of the economic crisis and, more generally, the assumption that dissatisfaction with democracy is just a symptomatic manifestation of perceived poor policy performance of democratic governments or filtered through the perceptual screen of partisanship. Consequently, it may be expected that: H4: Diffuse support is better explained by factors associated with cognitive mobilization and social modernization (education, interest in politics, selfexpression values—H4a,b,c). H5: Specific support is better explained by factors associated with short-term factors (evaluation of state of the economy—H5a) and conditioned by political orientations (identification with party-in-government—H5b).

In the political socialization literature there is a common argument that coming of age in an authoritarian regime significantly reduces the chances of acquiring democratic values, whereas individuals that are socialized in fully democratic regimes are more likely to consider democracy as the “only game in town” and prefer it to alternatives (Voicu and Bartolome Peral 2014,

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554–555). The crucial period during which citizens are supposed to form the basis of their political attitudes is considered to be the “impressionable or formative years” between childhood and adulthood, that is, between the ages of 17 and 25 years old (Neundorf and Smets 2017, 4; Jennings and Niemi 1981). Others have argued that political attitudes are crystallized during the preadult period, meaning between the ages of 10 and 17, and remain quite stable during adulthood (e.g., Sears and Valentino 1997). There is no definitive consensus concerning which, exactly, are the “formative years”; research shows that it can stretch from early adolescence to early adulthood. As young citizens have not yet developed political habits and deeply held convictions, they can be more easily influenced by external factors (Flanagan and Sherrod 1998; Sears and Levy 2003). Social, political, as well as personal changes affect young citizens disproportionately, thus creating generational differences in patterns of political attitudes and behavior. It follows, therefore, that strong long-term generational differences will persist in the transition from authoritarianism to democracy as a result of socialization (Neundorf 2010, 1096). The literature on socialization effects would predict that democratic values are more resilient among cohorts that have been socialized in fully consolidated democracies and during a time of relative economic prosperity and development. Different generations among the citizens are therefore exposed to socialization effects related to both political and social changes. In the third-wave democracies, individuals born around or before the mid1940s (“silent generation,” i.e., born before 1945) were old enough to go through their socialization process under authoritarian rule. At the same time, this period was, for the most part, a period of rapid growth and modernization in the Portugal and Southern Europe in general. Among older people, memories of the authoritarian past may be inextricably intertwined with pleasant recollections of their own youth or with processes of economic growth and modernization of the postwar era (Morlino and Montero 1995, 234). Conversely, cohorts that have been socialized in consolidating or fully consolidated democratic regimes (“baby boomers” born between late 1940s and mid-1960s and “Generation X” born between mid-1960s and late 1970s) are expected to have more fully internalized democratic values in relation to their parents’ generation (but also in relation to “millennials,” the younger generation born after 1980 that had less time to forge strong attachment to democracy) and, therefore, no form of governance other than democracy can be fully legitimated in their eyes. Furthermore, based on previous observations for Portugal and other Southern European countries (Morlino and Montero 1995, 245), and considering the right-wing authoritarian legacies in the region, we expect to see a relationship between ideology and diffuse democratic support. Our final hypotheses are therefore:

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H6: Cohorts that were socialized under democracy (baby boomers, generation Xers) will tend to display higher levels of attachment to democracy in relation to cohorts socialized under authoritarianism (silent generation) or millennials that had less time to forge strong attachment to democracy. H7: Left-wing individuals will tend to display on average higher levels of diffuse support (legacy of authoritarianism).

DATA AND ANALYSIS The analysis is based on three nationwide mass surveys administered in Portugal before, during, and after the economic crisis of the early 2010s. The first survey (N = 1,350) was fielded at the beginning of the financial crisis (March–July 2008) but before it transformed into a sovereign debt crisis in Europe in 2010, first in Greece, and then in Portugal and Ireland. The second survey (N = 1,209) was fielded at a time when the effects of the crisis—through the austerity policy response—were starting to deeply affect the Portuguese population (September–October 2012). The third survey (N = 2,897/weighted by gender, age, and education) was fielded in the aftermath of the economic crisis (May–July 2016). We consider that the latter ended once Portugal exited the 3-year bailout program in June 2014. The nested nature of our data compels us to run mixed-effects models for both diffuse and specific democratic support. The dependent variables in our models are two additive indices, one for diffuse democratic support and one for specific democratic support. The former relies on four items that were used in the three surveys and are identical to the items used in the World Values Survey to gauge support for democratic and nondemocratic political systems. Specifically, the respondents are asked to evaluate four different ways to govern a country: a democratic system, a system with a strong leader that does not have to bother with parliament or elections, rule by the armed forces, and rule by technocrats. By reversing the preferences in the latter three items, the higher values on the 12-point scale represent increased diffuse support for the democratic system (recoded 0–3). The index of specific support relies on six common items that are included in all three surveys: one that measures satisfaction with the way democracy works in Portugal and five items that measure trust in national institutions (the government, parliament, political parties, the presidency, and the justice system). In the 18-point additive index (recoded 0–3), the higher values represent increased specific democratic support. The independent variables include a series of sociodemographic variables as controls (gender, age, level of education, rural residence), an item that

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captures interest in politics (4-point scale, recoded 0–1), left-right ideology (11-point scale, recoded 0–1), an index of self-expression values (7-point scale based on items that measures attitudes toward homosexual marriage and abortion rights for women, recoded 0–1), identification with party or parties in government at the time of study (binary variable, 0 for no identification, 1 for identification), evaluation of the national economy in the previous twelve months (5-point scale, recoded 0–1), as well as four different dummy variables that capture four different cohorts (the “silent” generation, i.e. those born before 1950; the “baby boomers,” i.e. those born between 1950 and 1964; “generation Xers,” i.e. those born between 1965 and 1979; and the “millennials,” i.e. those born after 1979). In the analysis, the “silent” generation is used as a reference category. FINDINGS The first hypothesis that we examine is whether diffuse and specific support continue to constitute distinct dimensions of political support. In order to accomplish this task, we perform a principal components analysis on the same items that were included in the previous studies of political support in Portugal (Teixeira et al. 2014, 2015, 2016). In order to gauge support for democratic regime at the abstract level, we employ indicators concerning the preferred regime type (whether democracy constitutes the best form of government and support for alternative regime types—rule by the army, by experts, and by a strong leader unhindered by parliament and elections). Respondents get to evaluate each regime type from “very good” to “very bad,” including the in-between options of “good” or “bad.” Further down the list of items we encounter satisfaction with the way democracy works in Portugal (four possible answers, running from “very satisfied” to “not at all satisfied”) and confidence to different Portuguese political institutions, with the four possible answers ranging from “a lot of confidence” to “no confidence at all.” We see a repetition of the pattern observed in 2008 (Teixeira et al. 2014, 2016) and 2012 (Teixeira et al. 2015), namely that satisfaction with democracy and the items that tap confidence in institutions form a separate dimension following the principal components analysis (table 3.1). As in 2008 and 2012, the different regime support items form two separate dimensions, with the item that measures preference for democracy forming one dimension and the three items that capture preferences for alternative forms of political rule forming another (albeit rule by experts loads above 0.3 on both factors). The failure of preference for democracy to form a single dimension with preference for alternative forms of government can be attributed (once more) to

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Democratic Legitimacy and Trust in Political Institutions in Portugal Table 3.1  Components of Political System Support, Portugal (2016) Factor I

Survey Items Democratic system good Strong leader rule bad Technocratic rule bad Army rule bad Satisfaction with democracy Trust in the Presidency Trust in Government Trust in Parliament Trust in the legal system Trust in political parties Percentage of variance explained Total % of variance explained

Regime— Performance and Institutions

Factor II

Factor III

Regime—Prodemocratic Principles 0.750 0.596 0.372 0.672

0.324 0.318 0.444 0.459 0.389 0.460 30.1%

14.8% 57.7%

−0.540

12.9%

Note: The numbers represent item loadings on each of the three factors returned after performing a principal components analysis using varimax rotation. Source: Freire et al. (2016). (The table is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

the skewed distribution of the answers on this item. As we will see below, a very high percentage of the sample once more chooses to state that democracy constitutes the best form of government regardless of whether they also state a preference for nondemocratic forms of political rule. This lack of variation can account for the failure to observe two neatly separated forms of democratic support, one diffuse and one specific, even though the distinction remains as valid as before. As in the 2008 and 2012 surveys, we can see that support for particular political institutions and the evaluation about the present-day functioning of democracy can be separated from more abstract forms of support for democratic rule. In that sense, we can say that H1 is, for the most part, confirmed using a representative sample of the Portuguese population following the exit of Portugal from the bailout program and the effective end of the economic crisis in the country. Looking at some descriptive analyses of the main components of diffuse and specific support, we see that in general there seems to be a picture of relative stability when it comes to diffuse support and of partial recovery of specific support in 2016 compared to the peak of the crisis in 2012. However, diving into the examination of separate indicators we can identify some distinct patterns. For example, the share of respondents that concur with the statement that democracy is the best form of government (agree and strongly agree) has continued to slide since before the crisis hit Portugal hard. It was 95.4 percent in 2008, dropped to 91.3 percent in 2012, and continued its decline to 85.9 percent in 2016. Even though the percentage of the population

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that considers democracy to be the best form of government still constitutes the overwhelming majority of the Portuguese population, it has decreased by nearly 10 percentage points within the space of less than a decade. At the same time, there are no alternatives to democracy that picked up support in the same 2008–2016 period. Specifically, the percentage of respondents who agreed (and strongly agreed) that army rule is the best way to govern Portugal was a mere 17.2 percent in 2008, 18.1 percent in 2012, and just 16 percent in 2016. Support for rule by experts has also remained relatively stable (65.7 percent in 2008, 72.9 percent in 2012, 68.3 percent in 2016), whereas support for rule by a strong leader that does not bother with elections and parliament has declined since 2008 (58.4 percent in 2008, 51.6 percent in 2012, 46 percent in 2016). Previous research has indeed demonstrated that the countries with Troika intervention show stronger diffuse support for democracy than the other Eurozone countries (Cordero and Simón 2016, 316–317). This suggests that the crisis has not undermined the regime legitimacy (Kriesi 2018), which is consolidated by the fact that less favorable evaluations of the functioning of the economy in bailed-out countries do not tend to lead to a reduction of the support to democratic values, but rather to an increase (Cordero and Simón 2016, 317–318). Moving to specific support, as stated above, there is an overall picture of partial recovery in the postcrisis period following the precipitous drop in specific support between 2008 and 2012, as demonstrated for Portugal (Teixeira et al. 2014). That drop in specific support has as well as been generally found for the 26 EU, with particular significance for the countries most severely hit by the crisis and some Eastern European (Armingeon and Guthmann 2014, 431–433). Focusing on individual indicators, we see that the percentage of Portuguese citizens that are satisfied and very satisfied with the way democracy works in Portugal decreased from 28.5 percent in 2008 to 10.6 percent in 2012, to partially recover to 18.4 percent in 2016. Moving on to the items that tap confidence in institutions, we observe that respondents that with (some and a lot of) confidence in parliament dropped from 48.5 percent in 2008 to 23.1 percent in 2012, to slightly recover to 30.7 percent of respondents in 2016. Similarly, confidence in government plummeted from 46 percent in 2008 to 15.3 percent in 2012, to rebound to 36.1 percent in 2016. Confidence in the presidency dropped from 73.4 percent in 2008 to 32.5 percent in 2012 to recover to 63.5 percent in 2016. Confidence in the justice system constitutes an exception to the overall trend as does confidence in political parties. The former dropped from 50.3 percent of respondents in the 2008 study to 35.7 percent in 2012 and has failed to recover with just 37.3 percent of respondents claiming to have a lot of confidence or some confidence in the justice system

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in 2016. The latter dropped from 30.5 percent in 2008 to 17.1 percent in 2012 and has continued to slide to a mere 12.9 percent of respondents in 2016 stating that they have some or a lot of confidence in political parties. In the multivariate model this picture is to some extent reproduced in the sense that there is some rebounding of specific support in 2016 in relation to 2012 but still considerably lower in comparison to 2008 when controlling for all the individual-level variables. Diffuse support (which does not include the “democracy is the best form of government” item) appears to be higher in 2016 in relation to 2008 and lower in 2012 in comparison to 2008 when controlling for all the other variables. Looking at both the descriptive and multivariate analyses, we can argue that H2 and H3 are partially confirmed. Moving on to the competing explanations for diffuse and specific support (figure 3.1) we do indeed see that diffuse support is explained by factors associated with cognitive mobilization (education, interest in politics) and social modernization (self-expression values) more than anything else. So, H4 (and its consisting sub-hypotheses) is confirmed, even though interest in politics has a comparable positive effect on specific democratic support as well. These findings are consistent with previous research on the Eurozone countries that found that education and interest in politics were among the most relevant individual-level variables explaining diffuse support for democracy (Cordero and Simón 2016, 315–317). Conversely, the factor that explains specific support far better than any other is evaluation of the state of the economy, as also

Figure 3.1  Mixed-effects Models for Diffuse and Specific Support (2008, 2012, 2016). Source: Freire et al. (2016). (The figure is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

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demonstrated for Europe during the crisis (Armingeon and Guthmann 2014), confirming that short-term factors are far more important in determining specific than diffuse support (and therefore fully confirming (H5b). Identification with the incumbent party (or parties in the case of the PSD/CDS-PP coalition government) is also positively associated with specific support but its effect is much more modest in relation to evaluation of the economy. As a proxy for partisanship we can also use left-right ideology, given that the governments since 2008 have either been left or right-of-center. For example, when interacting ideology with year (not shown here due to lack of space), right-wing ideological identification is positively associated with specific support in 2012 when PSD and CDS-PP are in government, and negatively associated with specific support in 2016, when PS created a minority government with the support of CDU and BE. In terms of the legacy of authoritarianism, H7 is indeed confirmed, in the sense that diffuse support for democracy appears to be higher for left-wing individuals as in other Southern European countries (Morlino and Montero 1995; see also Freire and Kivistik 2016). However, H6 is not confirmed as the cohorts that were socialized during the democratic transition (“baby boomers”) or under a consolidated democratic regime (“generation Xers”) do not seem to display higher diffuse support in relation to either the cohort that was socialized under authoritarian rule (the “silent generation”) or younger “millennials” that had less time to fully identify with democracy and democratic values. When interacting the different cohorts with the year of the study (figure 3.2) we observe that only in 2008 “baby boomers” and “generation Xers” displayed higher levels of support in comparison with

Figure 3.2  Predictive Margins of Diffuse Support of Different Cohorts by Year (2008, 2012, 2016). Source: Freire et al. (2016). (The figure is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

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the other cohorts, but since the onset of the crisis that distinction no longer holds. “Millennials” display the lowest levels of diffuse support both before and after the crisis, which is somewhat alarming but not enough to confirm H6. CONCLUSIONS Overall, to the extent that it existed, the period effect of the crisis on democratic support in Portugal appears to be gradually dissipating. First of all, the distinction that Easton made between diffuse and specific support continues to hold, at least to the extent it did in previous studies. The levels of specific democratic support have been recovering since the lows at the peak of the crisis. Levels of diffuse support (in the form of preference for democracy over other alternatives) remain relatively stable and largely unaffected by the period effect of the crisis. While positive evaluation for democratic form of government has slightly decreased, no nondemocratic alternatives appear to benefit. As generally found for the European countries most affected by the economic crisis, the perceived poor performance of the economy does not seem to have eroded the support for democracy, but rather to have strengthened the attachment to democratic values (Cordero and Simón 2016; Kriesi 2018). As put by Kriesi, “by creating ‘critical citizens’, the economic crisis contributes to the strengthening of democratic principles” (2018, 79). These findings have important implications for the study of democracy, showing, on the one hand, that the evaluations that citizens do of the regime’s performance are mainly conditional on the economic context, being significantly volatile over time as a result of the ups and downs of the economic performance. On the other hand, such evaluations of democracy are largely independent of the legitimacy of the regime, which tends to remain essentially unchanged over time, regardless of whether the country is experiencing an economic recession, such as the one Portugal went through in 2009, or an economic expansion. As expected factors associated with cognitive mobilization and social modernization (education, interest in politics, self-expression values) appear the best predictors of diffuse support whereas specific support appears more sensitive to short-term factors, such as evaluation of the national economy, and conditioned by the perceptual filter of partisanship and more general political orientations. The legacy of authoritarianism seems more evident on the relationship between left-wing ideology and diffuse democratic support. Cohorts effects on democratic support are negligible, as democratic values seem well entrenched across all cohorts.

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NOTE 1. The passage on Easton’s work is largely based on the discussion of the dimensions of democratic support in Teixeira et al. (2014: 503–504).

REFERENCES Armingeon, K. and K. Guthmann. 2014. “Democracy in Crisis? The Declining Support for National Democracy in European Countries, 2007–2011.” European Journal of Political Research 53(3): 423–442. Belchior, A. M. Confiança nas Instituições Políticas. Lisbon: Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos. Bosco, A. and S. Verney. 2012. “Electoral Epidemic: The Political Cost of Economic Crisis in Southern Europe, 2010–2011.” South European Society and Politics 17(2): 129–154. Cordero, G. and P. Simón. 2016. “Economic Crisis and Support for Democracy in Europe.” West European Politics 39(2): 305–325. Dalton, R. J. 1984. “Cognitive Mobilization and Partisan Dealignment in Advanced Industrial Democracies.” Journal of Politics 46(1): 264–284. Dalton, R. J. 1996. Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies. New York, NY: Chatham House Publishers. Dalton, R. J. 2000. “The Decline of Party Identifications.” In Parties without Partisans. Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies, edited by R. J. Dalton and M. Wattenberg, 19–36. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dalton, R. J. 2004. Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dalton, R. J. and M. Wattenberg (eds.). 2000. Parties Without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Easton, D. 1965. A Systems Analysis of Political Life. New York: Wiley. Easton, D. 1975. “A Reassessment of the Concept of Political Support.” British Journal of Political Science 5(4): 435–457. Easton, D. 1976. “Theoretical Approaches to Political Support.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 9(3): 431–448. Finkel, S., E. Muller and M. Seligson. 1989. “Economic Crisis, Incumbent Performance and Regime Support: A Comparison of Longitudinal Data from West Germany and Costa Rica.” British Journal of Political Science 19(3): 329–351. Flanagan, C. and L. Sherrod. 1998. “Youth Political Development: An Introduction.” Journal of Social Studies 54(3): 447–456. Franklin, M. 2004. Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies Since 1945. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Franklin, M., T. Mackie and H. Valen. 1992. Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Countries. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

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Freire, A. 2003. “Desempenho da democracia e reformas políticas: o caso português em perspectiva comparada.” Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas 43: 133–160. Freire, A. and K. Kivistik. 2016. “Authoritarian Legacies and Mass Left-Right Regime Support in New Democracies: The Baltic States and Southern Europe Compared.” Comparative European Politics 16(2): 249–270. Hobolt, S. B. and J. Tilley. 2016. “Fleeing the Centre: The Rise of Challenger Parties in the Aftermath of the Euro Crisis.” West European Politics 39(5): 971–991. Inglehart, R. 1977. The Silent Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Inglehart, R. 2018. Cultural Evolution. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Jennings, M. K. and R. Niemi. 1981. Generations and Politics: A Panel Study of Young Adults and Their Parents. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Klingemann, H.-D. 2013. “Dissatisfied Democrats. Evidence from Old and New Democracies.” Wissenschaftszentrum fuer Sozialforschung, Berlim https​ ://ny​ uad.n​yu.ed​u/con​tent/​dam/n​yuad/​depar​tment​s/soc​ial-s​cienc​e/doc​ument​s/Wor​kshop​ s, accessed on September 18, 2016. Kriesi, H. 2018. “The Implications of the Euro Crisis for Democracy.” Journal of European Public Policy 25(1): 59–82. Lipset, S. M. 1983. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. London: Heinemann. Magalhães, P. 2005. “Disaffected Democrats: Political Attitudes and Political Action in Portugal.” West European Politics 28(5): 973–991. Magalhães, P. 2014. “Government Effectiveness and Support for Democracy.” European Journal of Political Research 53(1): 77–97. Morlino, J. and J. R. Montero. 1995. “Legitimacy and Democracy in Southern Europe.” In The Politics of Democratic Consolidation: Southern Europe in Comparative Perspective, edited by R. Gunther, P. N. Diamandouros and H.-J. Puhle, 231–260. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Neundorf, A. 2010. “Democracy in Transition: A Micro Perspective on System Change in Post-Socialist Societies.” The Journal of Politics 72(4): 1096–1108. Neundorf, A. and K. Smets. 2017. “Political Socialization and the Making of Citizens.” Oxford Handbooks Online. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935307.013.98. Norris, P. (ed.). 1999. Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Norris, P. 2011. Democratic Deficit. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nye, J. S., P. Zelikow and D. C. King (eds.). 1997. Why People Don’t Trust Government. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pharr, S. and R. D. Putnam. 2000. Disaffected Democracies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Putnam, R. (ed.). 2006. The Dynamics of Social Capital. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Putnam, R. D., S. J. Pharr and R. J. Dalton. 2000. “Social Capital, Beliefs in Government, and Political Corruption.” In Disaffected Democracies, edited by S. J. Pharr and R. D. Putnam, 3–27. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Schmitt, H. and S. Holmberg. 1995. “Political Parties in Decline?” In Citizens and the State, edited by H.-D. Klingemann and D. Fuchs, 95–133. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Sears, D. O. and J. S. Levy. 2003. “Childhood and Adult Political Development.” In Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, edited by D. O. Sears, L. Huddy and R. Jervis, 60–109. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sears, D. O. and N. A. Valentino. 1997. “Politics Matters: Political Events as Catalysts for Preadult Socialization.” American Political Science Review 91(1): 45–65. Teixeira, C. P., E. Tsatsanis and A. M. Belchior. 2014. “Support for Democracy in Times of Crisis: Diffuse and Specific Regime Support in Portugal and Greece.” South European Society and Politics 19(4): 501–518. Teixeira, C. P., E. Tsatsanis and A. M. Belchior. 2015. “Apoio difuso e específico ao regime político em tempos de crise: avaliação da democracia em Portugal antes e depois do resgate económico (2008–2012).” In Crise Económica, Políticas de Austeridade e Representação Política, edited by A. Freire, M. Lisi and J. M. Leite Viegas, 335–357. Lisbon: Assembleia da República, Colecção Parlamento. Teixeira, C. P., E. Tsatsanis and A. M. Belchior. 2016. “A ‘Necessary Evil’ Even During Hard Times? Public Support for Political Parties in Portugal before and after the Bailout (2008 and 2012).” Party Politics 22(6): 719–731. Teixeira, C. P., P. Almeida Pereira and A. M. Belchior. 2019. “Political Discontentment in Portugal Post-Troika: Risks and Opportunities.” In Political Institutions and Democracy. Assessing the impact of the Eurocrisis, edited by A. C. Pinto and C. P. Teixeira, 215–246. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Teorell, J., M. Torcal and J. R. Montero. 2007. “Political Participation: Mapping the Terrain.” In Citizenship and Involvement in European Democracies: A Comparative Analysis, edited by J. van Deth, J. R. Montero and A. Westholm, 334–357. New York: Routledge. Torcal, M. and J. R. Montero. 2006. Political Disaffection in Contemporary Democracies. London: Routledge. Van Biezen, I., P. Mair and T. Poguntke. 2012. “Going, Going,... Gone? The Decline of Party Membership in Contemporary Europe.” European Journal of Political Research 51(1): 24–56. Voicu, M. and E. Bartolome Peral. 2014. “Support for Democracy and Early Socialization in a Non-Democratic Country: Does the Regime Matter?” Democratization 21(3): 554–573. Weatherford, M. S. 1987. “How Does Government Performance Influence Political Support?” Political Behavior 9(1): 5–28.

Chapter 4

Political Participation of the Young versus Old Age Cohorts before and after the Great Recession Portugal in a Comparative Perspective, 2008–20161 André Freire, Vicente Valentim, Viriato Queiroga, and Francisco Graça

INTRODUCTION Political participation is one of the building blocks of democracy; yet in recent years, falling rates of voter turnout among young people have caused some authors to suggest the younger generations are less inclined to participate in the matters of the polis, while others argue young people are not necessarily participating any less, but that instead they are participating differently—by preferring more elite-challenging (unconventional) instead of elite-directed (conventional) forms of political participation. A large number of studies have suggested conventional participation by young people tends to be lower than among older groups. There are two main reasons that this finding, upon which a number of studies drawing on different cases agree (Amador 2013; Blais and Rubenson 2013; Deželan 2015; Flanagan and Levine 2010; Forbrig 2005; Franklin 2004; Garcia-Albacete and Cortés 2010; IDEA 2013; Lima and Artiles 2013; Magalhães and Moral 2008; Muxel 2008; O’Neill 2007; Quaranta 2016; Quintelier 2007; Robertson 2009; Turcotte 2015; Varela et al. 2015), is of concern. First, it may lead one to predict an even steeper fall in aggregate levels of conventional participation in the future as cohorts with a higher propensity to participate are replaced (Ellis 2004). Second, it is during their early years that individuals develop many of the attitudes they carry with them for 87

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the remainder of their lives (Dinas 2014; Esser and De Vreese 2007, 1208; Inglehart 1977). Low levels of participation by young people may thus be considered cause for concern because the strongly path-dependent nature of political participation means individuals tend to create a lasting habit of participation or abstention with their first experience of voting (Dinas 2013, 2014; Franklin 2004). Despite the crucial nature of this topic, there is as yet no comprehensive and comparative study of the evolution of conventional and unconventional political participation by Portuguese youth before and after the crisis. This chapter aims to fill this lacuna by analyzing the way in which different age groups have been affected by the recent downgrading of economic performance associated with the Great Recession. The analyses compare countries that were most affected by the Great Recession (Cyprus, Portugal, and Spain) with countries that were not so severely affected (Denmark, France, and Germany). The findings suggest there was no homogenous trend in the evolution of participation in any of these six countries; however, the countries most affected by the crisis experienced a definite increase in unconventional participation, which was greater among the young than the remaining population. THE LITERATURE ON ECONOMIC CRISES AND THE POLITICAL PARTICIPATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE A number of authors have in recent years expressed concerns that the increasing individualization of younger generations and their lower propensity to participate in public affairs may lead to an erosion of democratic regimes (Bellah et al. 1985; Lane 2000; Putnam et al. 1993). Other authors have instead argued this tendency toward lower levels of electoral participation by young people is the result of an intergenerational value change that does not necessarily mean they are more detached from politics. It has been argued we are witnessing nothing but a preference for different forms of political participation that is a consequence of the development of mass citizens who are increasingly critical to the performance of political elites (Dalton and van Sickle 2005; Inglehart and Welzel 2005; Norris 1999, 2003). According to this view, young people now prefer unconventional, elite-challenging political participation to conventional, elite-directed participation. There is indeed some empirical evidence to support this claim. Not only do elite-challenging forms of political participation seem to be on the rise (Inglehart and Catterberg 2002; Norris 2002), it also seems young people tend to engage more with these forms of participation (Deželan 2015; Quaranta 2016; Quintelier 2007; Varela et al. 2015). A number of studies employing

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various methods and drawing upon different sets of cases have concluded young people remain interested in politics (Harris et al. 2010; Henn et al. 2002, 2005; O’Toole et al. 2003; Spannring 2008). Here we are interested in examining how the Great Recession affected these long-term trends. Before moving to a discussion of the effects of the crises on political participation by young people, we are due a short definition of crisis and political exploitation of it (Boin et al. 2005, 2009). As we seek to analyze the effects of the economic crisis on political participation, we begin with a definition of crisis exploitation and framing (Boin et al. 2009). When faced with a severe crisis, party leaders and their followers face five fundamental tasks: sense-making, decision-making, meaning-making, terminating, learning, policy change (Boin et al. 2005). In this chapter we focus on sense-making/framing and policy change/policy choice, which are fundamental tasks associated with a crisis facing political leaders (Boin et al. 2009). When faced with a crisis, political actors produce different interpretations and frames to understand and deal with it that are constrained by their values, interests, and positions. Three situations are possible. A crisis can be defined as a nonevent by claiming the events are the result of an unfortunate accident (Boin et al. 2009, 84) (Type 1). The second (Type 2) occurs when the crisis is acknowledged and understood as a critical threat to the collective good embodied in the status quo, and so there is “a predisposition to defend the status quo (in terms of officeholders or policies) against criticism” (Boin et al. 2009, 84). Finally, when the crisis is understood as a critical opportunity (Type 3), usually by the opposition, there is a tendency to focus blame on status quo agents and dysfunctional policies and to try and mobilize support for their removal and/or substantial change. Type 2 and 3 situations were clearly present in the South European countries during the crisis years, primarily as a result of the severe economic downturns and external interventions (bailouts), although of course they were carried out by different political actors. These situations were not present to such a large extent in the “control countries”—that is, those not so severely affected by the crisis—during these years. Here we focus on how this crisis affected participation by young people in comparison with older age groups. We expect the Great Recession to have had a number of effects on the nature of political participation by young people, with the literature suggesting the crises will affect their participation in a number of ways. First, crises may affect youth participation through the effect on unemployment: this is because youth employment tends to be more sensitive to short-term fluctuations in the economic cycle (Lorda et al. 2016; Serracant 2015; Kern et al. 2015). This was indeed the case in Southern Europe, which was one of the regions of Europe worst affected by the crisis.

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The younger generation was more severely affected because of rising unemployment and higher rates of emigration compared to older groups.2 However, the case of Cyprus was different from the other two countries in Southern Europe because the crisis was caused by a banking sector that was highly exposed to Greek debt and because it came after 2013. In Portugal and Spain the situation was similar, with the crisis hitting these two countries in 2011, or earlier depending on your point of view, with harsh austerity policies that had a severe impact on the population (falling incomes, rising unemployment, cuts to social benefits), especially among the younger group (Freire and Lisi 2016). Except for a relatively short period from 2008–2010, Denmark, Germany, and France were not affected nearly as severely by the crisis, therefore representing a good contrast with the Southern European countries (Bartels and Bermeo 2014). To the extent that crises affect youth unemployment differently and that we should expect unemployment to affect participation, we should not be surprised that crises tend to exacerbate differences in levels of participation between younger and older citizens. Apart from unemployment, one can also expect some correlation between economic crises and political participation through economic voting theories. These theories claim individuals decide how to vote after evaluating the government’s economic performance: they reward incumbents during periods of economic expansion and punish them in periods of economic contraction.3 However, there is disagreement in the literature about whether adverse economic conditions make individuals more or less likely to vote—with many even questioning whether there is such a relationship (Schlozman and Verba 1981; Rosenstone 1982; Tillman 2008; Arcelus and Meltzer 1975; Blais 2000; Blais and Dobrzynska 1998; Fornos et al. 2004; Kinder and Kiewiet 1979; Kostadinova 2003). While these different theoretical frameworks can predict the different effects of the economic crisis on the participation of young people, there remain a few studies that explicitly aim to analyze recent trends in the political participation of young people. Existing studies were published before the economic crisis and therefore fail to appreciate the effect it could have on the participation of young people. These studies found young people tend to be less involved in conventional forms of participation, preferring unconventional participation instead. This difference is found both across time and in comparisons between younger and older citizens (Garcia-Albacete and Cortés 2010; Lima and Artiles 2013). A more recent study by Lima and Artiles (2018) draws upon data from the European Social Survey from 2002 to 2014. However, its principal goal is to analyze changes in the profile of people taking part in protests across Europe, with a specific focus on Portugal and Spain in Southern Europe and Hungary

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and Poland in the east. Moreover, the authors focus on the party linkages, left-right ideology, and trade union involvement of those taking part in protests, as well as on the mediating role of their evaluation of how democracy functions and their trust in the institutions. Consequently, the age differences are of secondary importance. What can be said of the participation of Portuguese youth from a comparative perspective? Existing literature has found young people in Portugal tend to participate at low rates in comparative terms (Magalhães and Moral 2008). Yet, this study was carried out before the Great Recession and does not, therefore, allow evaluation of its impact upon the political participation of young people. This is important since the Great Recession seems to have brought about an increase in the political participation of young people in Portugal (Amador 2013; Viegas et al. 2015). While these studies have given us some insight into the political participation of Portuguese youth, none focuses specifically on the participation of this age cohort. No comprehensive study of how the Great Recession has impacted conventional and unconventional participation of young people in Europe exists. This chapter aims to fill this gap. DATA, METHODOLOGY, AND HYPOTHESES In an effort to fill the lacuna identified above, this chapter focuses on the differences between the period before and after the Great Recession, covering the years 2008–2016. It compares six European countries and takes differences in patterns of conventional and unconventional participation into account. The countries were chosen based on the impact of the economic crisis on the polity and society: Cyprus, Portugal, and Spain, which were most affected and Denmark, France, and Germany, which were less affected. This enables a thorough evaluation of the economic crisis’ impact on political participation by young people in a comparative perspective, with a particular focus on Portugal in the second step. The argument for focusing on Portugal is twofold: first, the country was one of the most affected by the crisis in Europe; second, it has available rich datasets (2008, 2012, 2016) containing the same questions asked over time and with large batteries of questions on political participation. Furthermore, our study relies both on secondary data analysis retrieved from ESS, 2008, 2012, and 2016, rounds 4, 6, and 8 (six countries, except in round 8, when surveys were not carried out in Denmark or Cyprus), and also with data from three national surveys in Portugal (2008, 2012, 2016), which contain some standard variables with the ESS, enabling a comparative analysis between the European studies and the Portuguese national surveys (Freire and Viegas

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2008; Freire et al. 2012, 2016). These rich Portuguese datasets thus provide a more nuanced perspective of the different forms of evolution in the trends of political participation by young people and of how the economic and financial crisis impacted on them. Based on the literature review, we advance a set of four hypotheses. First, we expect participation to increase in all countries analyzed (H1); however, this increase should be more significant in the group of countries more affected by the crisis (H2) because the harshness of the crisis there resulted in the implementation of austerity policies that led to intense political participation (Accornero and Pinto 2015; Baumgarten 2013). Within those countries most affected by the crisis, we expect to see a more considerable increase in unconventional participation compared to conventional participation (H3). Finally, following a number of studies (Deželan 2015; Muxel 2008; Quaranta 2016; Quintelier 2007; Turcotte 2015; Varela et al. 2015) we expect unconventional participation to increase more among the younger generation than in other age groups (H4). FINDINGS Tables 4.1 and 4.2 show the evolution of the indices of conventional and unconventional participation, respectively, between 2008, 2012, and 2016 in the six countries analyzed, as well as the statistical significance of the differences found (t-tests).4 Our first hypothesis states both kinds of participation should have increased in all countries analyzed; however, this is not supported by the data. In some countries we actually witness statistically significant declines in participation, especially during the period 2008–2012. Between 2008 and 2016 there is either stability—in Germany (conventional participation) and Spain (unconventional participation)—or an increase (all other countries) (remember we have no data for Denmark and Cyprus in 2016). The analyses suggest a heterogeneous pattern in political participation within the countries analyzed and/or the periods under consideration (2008–2012, that is, ending at the height of the crisis, versus 2008–2016, that is, ending after the crisis). Our second hypothesis stated both kinds of participation should increase more in countries most affected by the crisis. This hypothesis is only partially supported by the data in relation to conventional participation. Spain and Portugal—two of the countries most significantly affected by the crisis—witnessed just such an increase; however, in Cyprus, the other country severely affected by the crisis, there was a decline in the level of conventional participation.

Portugal

Cyprus

Spain

0.49 0.40 0.51 0.42 0.27 0.46 0.23 0.14 0.26 0.35 0.25 0.38 0.23 0.11 0.26 0.10 0.12 0.10

2012 0.49 0.41 0.51 na na na 0.28 0.21 0.30 0.40 0.36 0.41 na na na 0.41 0.40 0.41

2016

0.06** 0.05 0.07** −0.02 −0.04 −0.00 −0.07*** −0.12*** −0.07*** 0.16*** 0.072** 0.18*** −0.04** −0.08*** −0.05* 0.01* −0.01 0.013*

Difference 2012–2008

0.01 0.01 0.01 na na na 0.04*** 0.07*** 0.04*** 0.04*** 0.11*** 0.03* na na na 0.30*** 0.29*** 0.31***

Difference 2016–2012

Notes: (1) *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. (2) Both Denmark and Cyprus were not studied during the ESS 2016 wave, thus respective cells are not available, or “na.” (3) Index of conventional participation: additive index of the following variables: Contact a politician or government official; work in another organization or association. (4) Young people: people aged 18–30. Each item was measured in term of 1 (success) and 0 (failure). Source: Authors’ calculation based on data from the European Social Survey (ESS) 2008, ESS 2012, and ESS 2016. (The table is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

More affected by the crisis

France

Denmark

0.43 0.35 0.44 0.43 0.31 0.46 0.31 0.26 0.33 0.20 0.18 0.20 0.27 0.19 0.31 0.09 0.12 0.09

Whole population Young people (18–30) Remaining population (31+) Whole population Young people (18–30) Remaining population (31+) Whole population Young people (18–30) Remaining population (31+) Whole population Young people (18–30) Remaining population (31+) Whole population Young people (18–30) Remaining population (31+) Whole population Young people (18–30) Remaining population (31+)

Less affected by the crisis

Germany

2008

x

Index of Conventional Participation Mean

Table 4.1  Conventional Participation in Each of the Six Countries (2008, 2012, and 2016) and Statistical Significance of Differences (t-test) Using ESS Data

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Portugal

Cyprus

Spain

0.80 0.77 0.82 0.55 0.62 0.54 0.72 0.60 0.76 0.76 0.84 0.75 0.25 0.24 0.25 0.17 0.25 0.16

2012 0.85 0.83 0.88 na na na 0.77 0.74 0.78 0.67 0.82 0.64 na na na 0.36 0.41 0.35

2016 0.10 0.06 0.11 −0.10* −0.17 −0.09 −0.04* −0.10 −0.02* 0.36*** 0.39*** 0.35*** 0.11*** 0.13*** 0.09*** 0.06*** 0.07** 0.05***

Difference 2012–2008

0.05* 0.06 0.06 na na na 0.05** 0.15 0.02** −0.09 −0.02 −0.11 na na na 0.18*** 0.17*** 0.19***

Difference 2016–2012

Notes: (1) *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. (2) Both Denmark and Cyprus were not studied during the ESS 2016 wave, thus respective cells are not available, or “na.” (3) Index of unconventional participation: additive index of the following variables: signing a petition; taking part in lawful public demonstration; boycotting products. (4) Young people: people aged 18–30. Each item was measured in term of 1 (success) and 0 (failure). Source: Authors’ calculation based on data from the European Social Survey (ESS) 2008, ESS 2012, and ESS 2016. (The table is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

More affected by the crisis

France

Denmark

0.70 0.72 0.70 0.65 0.79 0.62 0.76 0.70 0.78 0.41 0.45 0.4 0.15 0.11 0.16 0.12 0.18 0.10

Whole population Young people (18–30) Remaining population (31+) Whole population Young people (18–30) Remaining population (31+) Whole population Young people (18–30) Remaining population (31+) Whole population Young people (18–30) Remaining population (31+) Whole population Young people (18–30) Remaining population (31+) Whole population Young people (18–30) Remaining population (31+)

Less affected by the crisis

Germany

2008

Country

Index of Unconventional Participation Mean

Table 4.2  Unconventional Participation in Each of the Six Countries (2008, 2012, and 2016) and Statistical Significance of Differences (t-test) Using ESS data

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The second hypothesis is clearly supported in relation to unconventional participation, from 2008 to the height of the crisis in 2012. None of the cases in the group of countries least affected by the crisis (except Germany and France in 2016: an effect not dependent on the Great Recession) witnessed significant increases in this kind of participation. By way of contrast, all the countries most affected by the crisis experienced statistically significant increases. However, when the endpoint is moved to 2016, that is after the crisis, of the three countries most severely affected by the crisis only Portugal experienced a significant increase in unconventional political participation between 2008 and 2016, while in Spain there are no significant changes (i.e., we witness stabilization), so we can say the effects of the crisis seem to have vanished (note we have no data for Cyprus in 2016). Out third hypothesis stated that in countries most affected by the crisis, unconventional participation should have increased more than conventional participation. This hypothesis is also supported by the data, but especially for the period 2008–2012 while over the period 2008–2016 the pattern is heterogeneous. Unconventional participation increased more than conventional participation in all the three countries included in this group for the period before the crisis (2008) up to the peak of crisis (2012), but not necessarily after the end of crisis—a trend that is true for all groups: the young, the remaining population, and the entire population. Our fourth hypothesis stated unconventional participation should increase more among young people than among the rest of the population. This hypothesis is also supported in the three countries most affected by the crisis, although the pattern is different over the period 2008–2016, with no significant increase in unconventional political participation in Spain (with no data for Cyprus in 2016) for none of the age groups. In Portugal, the 2008–2016 differences remain significant, although the increase is more considerable among the older age groups. These findings mean the positive effects of the Great Recession upon the unconventional political participation of young people seem either to have disappeared (Spain) or no longer set the youth apart from their older peers (Portugal). In the countries least affected by the Great Recession the effects upon unconventional political participation are barely felt (the exception is France, but only for the older group, where there is a decrease in unconventional political participation in the period 2008–2012 and an increase over the period 2008–2016). There is, therefore, no significant and clear pattern for the countries least affected by the Great Recession, with one erratic and minor exception in France. Table 4.3 replicates the analyses using data from surveys of only the Portuguese population between 2008 and 2016, which again allows an appreciation of the evolution of conventional and unconventional participation even after the crisis. The Portuguese data have the clear advantage of allowing the use of

0.89 1.26 0.80

0.97 1.27 0.92

2012 1.47 1.24 1.53

2016 0.08 0.01 0.11*

Difference 2012–2008 0.50*** −0.03 0.61***

Difference 2016–2012 1.99 2.67 1.82

2008 2.48 2.89 2.40

2012

3.83 3.45 3.93

2016

0.48*** 0.21 0.58***

1.35*** 0.56** 1.53***

Difference Difference 2012–2008 2016–2012

Index of Unconventional Participation Mean

Notes: (1) *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. (2) Index of conventional participation: additive index of the following variables: contact a politician directly; collaborate with any political movement. Index of unconventional participation: additive index of the following variables: signing a petition; taking part in lawful public demonstration; boycotting products. (3) As there is not an equivalent item, in the Portuguese questionnaires, to the ESS variable “Worked in political party or action group last 12 months,” the index of conventional participation was run without said variable. (4) Each item was measured in terms of 0 (no participation), 1 (admits participation), and 2 (participated). Source: Authors’ calculation, based on data from the 2008, 2012, and 2016 survey to the Portuguese population (Freire and Viegas 2008; Freire et al. 2012; Freire et al. 2016). (The table is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

Whole population Young people (18–30) Remaining population (31+)

2008

Index of Conventional Participation Mean

Table 4.3  Conventional and Unconventional Participation in Portugal (2008, 2012, and 2016) and Statistical Significance of Differences (t-test) Using Data from the Survey to the Portuguese Population

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richer batteries of indicators for both conventional and unconventional political participation for the two periods, 2008–2012 and 2008–2016. For the first hypothesis, the data presented in table 4.3 supports the prediction only for the older age groups for the period 2008–2012. When the period is extended to cover the years 2008–2016, this effect is felt both among the older age group and the entire population. These results are similar to those found using ESS data, which strengthens our conclusions. The analyses of data presented in table 4.3 also support our second hypothesis, as with ESS data. Unconventional participation in Portugal—a country that was severely affected by the crisis—increased more than conventional participation in both 2008–2012 and 2008–2016, which suggests these effects are not solely dependent upon the crisis. However, the data do not support the third hypothesis: the increase in unconventional participation was actually lower among young people than among the remaining population in both 2008–2012 and 2008–2016. These results, however, contradict those of the ESS data analyses, as shown in table 4.1, for the case of Portugal, but only for the period 2008–2012 and not for the period 2008–2016 (similar pattern Portuguese surveys and ESS). Using the same indicators for unconventional political participation in the Portuguese surveys vis-à-vis the ESS data for the 2008–2012 period allows us to rule out methodological factors as an explanation for those differences (data not shown due to space limitations): when we used precisely the same indicators in the Portuguese surveys compared with the ESS, the impact of the youth factor becomes significant in 2008–2012 (contrary to what we see in table 4.3), but the effect of the older age factor remains more important as in table 4.3, with a richer battery of indicators for the Portuguese surveys, also invalidating hypothesis four. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION This chapter set out to assess the comparative evolution of young people’s participation in Portugal before and after the Great Recession. The analyses are based on a comparison of countries most affected by the crisis and ones that were less affected. To ensure a more in-depth analysis, we focus on two types of datasets: the ESS for the years 2008, 2012, and 2016; and a set of surveys fielded only in Portugal in 2008, 2012, and 2016. The empirical data yielded a set of interesting conclusions. On the one hand, we do not find a single general trend in the evolution of conventional political participation over this period, either within the group of countries most affected by the Great Recession (increases in Portugal and Spain, decrease in Cyprus, 2008–2012) or within the group of countries least affected (increase in Germany, decrease in France, and stability in Denmark, 2008–2012).

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On the other hand, when we specifically focus on unconventional political participation, we do find clear differences between the countries most and least affected by the Great Recession. The countries most affected (Portugal, Spain, and Cyprus) do exhibit an increase in unconventional political participation between 2008 and 2012. This increase is in contrast to events in those countries least affected, where the trend seems to be for a decrease in unconventional participation (a significant decrease in Denmark and France, and stability in Germany, 2008–2012). However, the increase in unconventional participation in the countries most affected by the Great Recession disappears in Spain and continues in Portugal when we consider the period 2008–2016.5 This means we can no longer speak of a general and long-lasting crisis effect. The group of countries most affected also experienced an increase in unconventional participation that tends to be higher among young people than in the remaining population in the period 2008–2012. The fact the increase in unconventional participation in those countries most affected by the Great Recession was always higher among younger people than the remaining population is also in line with the expectations of grievance theories, because young people are more vulnerable to short-term economic fluctuations than the rest of the population (Gurr 1970; Marsh 1990). Moreover, the fact these later effects disappear in Spain and not in Portugal (although they are reversed in this case, with the increase 2008–2016 greater for older than younger people) over the period 2008–2016 means there is no empirical support for the thesis that the Great Recession has had a long and durable effect on unconventional political participation. Finally, the fact that in one of the analyses of data from surveys of the Portuguese population contradict the findings from the analyses of ESS data. Concretely, in the comparison between younger and older age cohorts, 2008– 2012, we find a higher increase for the former in the ESS and higher increase for the later in the Portuguese surveys. This difference raises some issues. In a cross-validating analysis, we used the same variables across the ESS and the Portuguese surveys in an attempt to replicate the results in both datasets: the results were similar, which means they are not dependent on differences in the batteries of indicators used. The fact we have a (weighted) web survey for 2016 and face-to-face surveys in 2008 and 2012 cannot be the reason because the different results from the ESS and Portuguese data are only found in 2008–2012 (when we used face-to-face interviews) and in 2008–2016 (when we used face-to-face interviews in 2008 and the web survey in 2016). This chapter has used data on conventional and unconventional participation at the aggregate level, by country and by year, and then looked deeper into the aggregate results by age group with similar goals and with tried and tested data at the individual level. However, due to space limitations and mainly negative findings, we dropped the individual-level analyses:

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the results for the relevant independent variables were almost always insignificant and imprecise, even returning nulls. However, we contend this is an important approach for future researchers to follow. We also recommend including more countries in future comparisons of those most and least affected by the Great Recession as a means of increasing the external validity of our conclusions.

NOTES 1. English language and formal editing of the present chapter was done by Stewart Lloyd-Jones ([email protected]). 2. See Freire and Lisi (2016) and the individual country chapters in that publication. 3. For a review of economic theories of electoral behavior, see Freire (2001, chapter 3). 4. In the present section we use ESS (European Social Survey) data to test our hypotheses. The indicators measuring political participation in the ESS are rather limited, so we try to make use of them as best as possible, but scarcity is the best word for describing the set of indicators available. Because of this limitation with the ESS data, we also performed an analysis using only Portuguese data, using Portuguese mass surveys with many more indicators on political participation to perform some cross validation tests with increased internal validity for the political participation batteries. Additionally, both in the present section and in the following, we collapsed the indicators on voting from the index of conventional political participation because of the usual youth effect on voting—that is, due to the life cycle effect, young people do not vote as much as older people, but will be more likely to vote the older they get. 5. We have no ESS data for Cyprus in 2016.

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Part 2

PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION BEFORE AND AFTER THE CRISIS

Chapter 5

Ideological and Policy Representation in Portugal before and after the Great Recession, 2008–20171 André Freire and Augusta Correia

INTRODUCTION In a liberal and representative democracy, a fundamental assumption is that in order to have a proper democratic regime, public policies should reflect the ideological and policy preferences of at least a majority of the citizens.2 We expect, therefore, that there will be some congruence between voters and their representatives (MPs), government officials, etc. in terms of ideological and policy preferences, particularly when segmenting voter and MP groups by political parties. It is also to be expected that once elected the MPs will try to implement the electoral commitments they made to their voters. Both are conditions for congruence between the ideological and policy preferences of citizens and public policies, which thus are both conditions determining the quality of democracy. This chapter will seek to discover just what changed in this respect following the 2015 general election and the change of government in terms of congruence on socioeconomic policy matters (issue or policy representation). There are three research questions that take into account what we know about these matters from previous research (left-wing parties being in closer alignment with their constituents on socioeconomic issues, right-wing parties less so, with this symmetrical situation also true on authoritarian-libertarian issues, where the right is in closer alignment with the voters). First, are there signs of greater congruence between voters and MPs on the left on socioeconomic issues? Are there signs of less congruence between voters and MPs on the right on socioeconomic issues? Overall, are there signs of any increase in the quality of democracy in terms of policy congruence? Here, because of space restrictions and data comparability over time, we will focus on socioeconomic topics. 107

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Our second aim is to map ideological representation changes that took place before and after the Great Recession by using left-right self-placement among the voters and MPs to measure ideological congruence between them over time. The research questions are also threefold: first, are there signs of greater congruence between voters and MPs on left-right ideological identities? Are the catch-all parties—the Socialist Party (PS, Partido Socialista) and Social Democratic Party (PSD, Partido Social Democrata)—still more congruent than more ideological parties like the Left Bloc (BE, Bloco de Esquerda) and the Unitary Democratic Coalition (CDU, Coligação Democrática Unitária)3 than they were in 2008 (Belchior and Freire 2013)? Are there any signs, overall, of an improvement in the quality of democracy in terms of ideological congruence? We analyze these issues using a set of voter and MP surveys conducted in 2008, 2012, and 2016, and a new technique for measuring the (relative) congruence between voters and MPs while considering full distributions of preferences (index of socioeconomic issues) and ideological identities (left-right self-placement) for both electors and MPs over time. This is a methodological innovation of this chapter in respect of existing literature on ideological and policy representation in Portugal and uses alternative measures for policy and ideological congruence (between voters and MPs), in particular the measures for collective policy and ideological congruence (many to many) with noncumulative distribution functions, as initially proposed by Golder and Stramski (2010), but with the operationalization tested and adapted by Andeweg (2011). In the second section, we review the findings of studies on policy and ideological representation in Portugal, highlighting the alleged effects of the economic crisis in particular, but with a focus on policy and ideological representation, and set out the chapter’s theoretical underpinnings. In the third section, we present the data and methodologies employed in studying policy and ideological congruence. In the fourth (ideological representation) and fifth (policy representation) section, we analyze how voter-MP congruence on socioeconomic issues (policy representation) and left-right self-placement (ideological representation) developed both before and after the crisis, 2008 and 2016–2017, respectively, using the abovementioned innovative measures for policy and ideological congruence. This will allow us to determine any significant changes in substantive parliamentary representation and ideological linkage functions between voters and MPs after the Great Recession. THE STUDY OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION: THEORETICAL DISCUSSION Powell (2004) divided research on political representation into two main groups (see also Wessels 2007, 2011). The first group includes work

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analyzing relationships between the distribution of electorate preferences for parties in (national) elections and the distribution of parliamentary seats to these parties. This type of research into political representation includes several other topics analyzing the relationship between representatives and those they represent mediated through the electoral and party systems. Much of this type of research has been carried out in Portugal (both as case and comparative studies) and elsewhere (see Freire 2016). The second group of political representation studies follows the path set out by Miller and Stokes (1963), who established a tradition of empirical research into political representation in which the underlying assumption is that the congruence between the political preferences of MPs and those they represent, mainly when the MPs’ preferences correspond with the behavior of legislators in parliament, is a vital aspect of the quality of political representation. That is to say that, while within certain limits and without necessarily violating the principle of the non-imperative mandate, the higher the degree of congruence between voter and MP preferences (ideological and/or policy), the higher the probability the electorate will feel itself well represented and the more likely it is legislators (and the government) will act in accordance with the people’s preferences, which is a fundamental axiom of any representative democracy (Dahl 1998; Manin et al. 1999). In the Portuguese case, such studies are a relatively recent development; nevertheless, they now need to be updated for the postcrisis period (Belchior and Freire 2013; Freire and Belchior 2013; Freire et al. 2016), which is exactly what we are doing here. Moreover, these Portuguese studies are based mainly on issue/policy representation rather than on ideological representation. As with the responsible party model, the congruence model can also be associated with a populist vision of democracy, mainly because of the bottom-up perspective it adopts in respect of the political representation process, which places a much emphasis on the electorate’s preferences and the need for congruence between the actions of MPs and their constituents as a crucial aspect of the quality of political representation. However, some empirical studies have shown there is also a structuring of ideological and/or policy preferences from the top (i.e., by MPs and the parties) which is a type of representation from above (Esaiasson and Holmberg 1996), indicating a vision of democracy that is more top-down. We consider these two models of democracy to be ideal-types and, therefore, not entirely incompatible in practice. Considering what we know from previous studies, there are possibly four scenarios in terms of concurrent voter moves (Esaiasson and Holmberg 1996, 104–105). First, if the position of MPs (2008–2016) moves toward that of voters, and the position of the latter is either stable or strengthened in the same direction, we can talk about bottom-up/from below representation; second, if the position of voters (2008

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to 2016) moves toward that of MPs (2008) and the position of the latter is either stable or strengthened in the same direction, we can talk about topdown/from above representation. Third, confluential dynamic representation exists when the position of both voters and MPs moves together from different starting points. Finally, disconnecting dynamic representation is when voters and deputies move apart from a similar starting point. Since there are few existing studies and longtime series to rely on that can allow us to draft some hypotheses (especially for ideological representation), we consider this to be an exploratory, tentative, and provisional effort to map changes in ideological and policy representation before and after the Great Recession in Portugal. However, we expect more congruence both on left-right identities and on socioeconomic policy issues among MPs representing left-wing parties (BE, CDU, PS) than among those representing right-wing parties PSD and the Social Democratic Center-People’s Party (CDS-PP, Centro Democrático Social-Partido Popular) following the Great Recession, which should reinforce previous situations on this matter, particularly in terms of policy representation. However, please see below about evidence on previous trends. Empirical studies on political representation in Portugal have already highlighted some of the pathologies affecting the quality of democracy (Pinto et al. 2013; Freire et al. 2015, 2016; Zamora and Coller 2014). First, it has been shown parties play a crucial role in shaping the content and character of political representation, notably by playing the role of gatekeepers for candidate selection and policy outputs, while leaving little room for citizen participation (in primaries, etc.). Second, political representation through elections is also undermined due to the inability of major centerleft (PS) and center-right (PSD) parties to present (and implement) clearly distinct alternatives, mainly due to patterns of coalition politics. Given the anti-government nature of radical left parties, at least until late 2015, and the centrist orientation adopted by the PS, there has traditionally been no symmetry between left and right as coalition potential, which has limited the degree of alternation in government and the inclusiveness of the different governmental solutions. Following existing ideological and policy representation studies in Portugal and elsewhere (Belchior 2008, 2010, 2012; Belchior and Freire 2013; Freire and Belchior 2013; Freire et al. 2016; Tsatsanis et al. 2014), the focus of this chapter is threefold. We know from previous studies about Portugal using 2008 and 2012–2013 (voter and MP) surveys that left-wing parties and MPs are in closer alignment with their voters on socioeconomic issues than they are on cultural or libertarian-authoritarian issues than are their peers on the right. Conversely, right-wing parties and MPs are in closer alignment with their voters on cultural or libertarian-authoritarian issues than they are on socioeconomic issues than their peers on the left (Freire and Belchior

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2013; Belchior and Freire 2013). Moreover, we know the mismatch between right-wing MPs/parties and their constituents on socioeconomic issues was aggravated during the Troika years by a significant shift by PSD MPs to a neoliberal position that was not matched by the party’s voters (Freire et al. 2016, 2020). That being the case, the principal aim of this chapter is to discover just what changed in this respect following the 2015 general election and the appointment of a new government. Are there signs of increased congruence on socioeconomic issues between voters and MPs on the left? Are there signs of less congruence on socioeconomic issues between voters and MPs on the right? Overall, are there signs of an increase in the quality of democracy in terms of policy congruence? Based on what we know from the Troika years, with right-wing parties, and the PSD in particular, adopting increasingly neoliberal positions, and leftwing parties taking critical stances in respect of austerity policies and the radical neoliberal move, we expect a positive response to both questions. Overall, considering the mismatch between the policy orientations of the right-wing government during the Troika years (2011–2015) and voter preferences on policy issues, we expect the change of government in late 2015 also produced an improvement in democratic quality (due to further policy congruence, the reversal of austerity policies, and delivery of electoral promises). We also seek to map the changes in ideological representation that took place both before and after the Great Recession by using voter and MP left-right self-placement to measure ideological congruence between them over time. Previous studies on the Portuguese case have tended to focus on policy representation rather than left-right ideological representation (Freire and Belchior 2013; Belchior and Freire 2013; Belchior 2010; Freire et al. 2016, 2020). In terms of left-right ideological representation, previous studies have shown (at least with absolute measures of congruence) that the PS and PSD (the catch-all parties), often joined by the CDS-PP, are the more congruent, and that the more ideological radical left parties (BE and CDU) are the least congruent (Freire and Belchior 2013, 8, figure 2; Belchior and Freire 2013, 281, figure 1; Belchior 2010, 137, table 3). However, existing studies on ideological representation in Portugal, which are based only on the 2008 voter and MP surveys, need to be updated, and this complementary approach is necessary because the picture may be different when analyzing policy representation and ideological representation (for the Italian case, see Pedrazzani and Segatti 2016; Pedrazzani 2016). There are three research questions: are there indications of increased congruence between voters and MPs on left-right ideological identities? Are the catch-all parties, PS and PSD, still more congruent than the more ideological BE and CDU? And are there signs of an increase in the quality of democracy in terms of ideological congruence?

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We are aware from the literature on the left-right divide that left-right self-placement has at least two dimensions: left-right as identification; and as competition. As a dimension of competition, the left-right divide relates more with socioeconomic policies and is more dependent on policy changes (Freire 2015), however, as a dimension of identification, which is particularly important at the mass level, the left-right divide encompasses a more diffuse set of political attitudes and behaviors, with much less policy content. Thus, predictions about changes concerning ideological congruence are less reliable and more difficult to make, so we stick more clearly to the expectations noted above: still more congruence in 2016 (as in 2008) for the catch-all parties than for the more ideological parties. In principle, the changes after the 2015 elections (see Freire 2016), with a new PS minority government supported by the radical left in parliament (and which has proved stable and popular in terms of its reversal of pro-austerity policy orientations), should have increased the levels of ideological congruence between voters and MPs on the left. However, because of the diffuse identity dimension on the left-right divide, predictions are trickier in terms of changes in ideological representation than in terms of policy representation. Thus, we cannot go as far in respect of the former as we did for the latter. The recent crises (financial, economic, social, and political), especially in the European countries that received bailouts, can be viewed as a quasiexperiment to test the effects of earthquake crises on democratic political systems in general and political representation in particular (Freire et al. 2016; Freire 2016; Freire and Lisi 2016). In the Portuguese case, however, following the debt crisis and external intervention, the general election of October 2015 set the stage for significant changes to take place (Freire 2016). Volatility levels and party system format hardly changed in Portugal, which was in stark contrast with events in other Southern European countries, where the debt crisis and devastating (social and economic) effects of austerity policies were followed at the political level by high levels of volatility and party system fragmentation (primarily as a result of the success of new parties entering the political systems). However, the crisis was one of the reasons for the end to the 40-year schism between the PS, PCP, BE, which had never before been able to govern together. Following the October 4, 2015 election, the PS was able to form a minority government with support from the radical left CDU (PCP and PEV) and BE. This government and the political alliance have introduced left-wing policies and complied with European Union rules. Moreover, the government performed well economically and politically, with most left-wing and nonpartisan voters rating it positively. In light of this political change, we expect to see some increase in the level of voter-MP congruence in ideological and policy preferences terms between 2008–2013 and 2016, particularly on the left of the political spectrum.

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DATA AND METHODS: MEASURING IDEOLOGICAL AND POLICY CONGRUENCE We analyze these issues using a set of voter and MP surveys for 2008, 2012, and 2016, and a new technique for measuring (relative) congruence between voters and MPs, considering full distributions of policy preferences (socioeconomic issues) or identities (left-right self-placement) for both voters and MPs over time. In terms of data, to answer these questions we draw on existing research as well as original and recently collected data.4 Similar questionnaires were fielded to MPs, nonelected candidates and voters, including questions on the crisis,5 as well as the ideological dimensions of party competition and voter identification.6 In addition to the MP studies for all data points (2008, 2009, 2012–2013, 2016–2017), we also fielded voter surveys based on representative samples of the population for 2008 and 2012 (Freire and Viegas 2008a; Freire et al. 2012) and the first wave of a panel fielded via the internet with the sample weighted to ensure it was representative of the adult population (Freire et al. 2016a, 2016b). Several methodological issues have to be resolved before proceeding with the analysis of ideological and policy congruence (Andeweg 2011; Belchior and Freire 2013). The first concerns what data and measures to use? Because they are the most appropriate to tackle the existent heterogeneity of preferences at each level, we decided to use both mass and MP surveys (to measure elite positions instead of party manifestos, expert surveys or voter perceptions) to measure voter and elite ideological and policy orientations. Moreover, the choice of left-right self-placement and socioeconomic issue preferences to measure levels of ideological and policy congruence between voters and MPs is related to the centrality of these two dimensions for party competition and voter alignment. In some countries left-right self-placement is only weakly related to substantive issues (as in Portugal), functioning instead as a dimension of identification rather than as a dimension of competition, at least at the voter level (Freire 2015), therefore, the complementary analysis of ideological left-right and socioeconomic policy congruence is clearly justified in the Portuguese case at least.7 A second decision concerns the unity of analysis, the party (in the electorate and parliament) and the voters and their MPs in each district. Since Portugal has a closed list proportional system of representation in which the party is the leading agent in the political representation process, we decided to compare party voters (as measured by party vote) and MPs segmented by parties. The final decision concerned what statistical measures of congruence to use. Here we know relative measures (those taking the spread of preferences

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among the electorate into account) are better than absolute measures (means, percentages, etc.) (Achen 1978; Andeweg 2011; Belchior and Freire 2013). Here we opt for relative measures that take the full distribution at both levels into account, as proposed by Golder and Stramski (2010) and used and adapted by Andeweg (2011) to compare many to many (a plural electorate and plural parliament) with noncumulative distribution functions (following Andeweg’s adapted solution). VOTER-MP CONGRUENCE ON LEFT-RIGHT IDEOLOGICAL IDENTITIES Let us begin with an analysis of the findings in figure 5.1 and table 5.1. In terms of the trend for the period 2008–2016, we see an increase in the level of ideological voter-MP congruence with the BE, CDU, and PSD and a decline with PS and CDS-PP. However, the PS and PSD remain the more congruent in 2016, just as they were in 2008 (when they were joined by the CDS-PP). However, the PS lost that status in 2012, during the Troika period, probably because of its convergence with the right-wing government at the time of the bailout. There are very few studies with which to compare these results because most earlier research focused on policy representation rather than left-right ideological representation.8 Nevertheless, the evolution over the period was not linear. For the whole parliament, between 2008 (83.6 percent) and 2012 (93.7 percent), there was a substantial increase in ideological congruence, while for the period 2008 (83.6 percent) to 2016 (80.5 percent) the level of congruence barely changed. For the whole period, the situation can best be described as stable. So, at least in this respect, the quality of democracy that was dependent upon the level of ideological congruence between representatives and their voters also stayed still. However, the Troika years (2012–2013), with its larger ideological polarization (especially for the contrast between the BE and CDU versus the PSD and CDS-PP) and larger ideological congruence between the MPs and their constituents, seemed to have been beneficial not only to maintain but also to increase the overall level of ideological congruence between representatives and their voters for the parliament as a whole—see table 5.1. In terms of left-right ideological representation, previous studies have shown (at least with absolute measures of congruence) that the PS and the PSD, often joined by the CDS-PP, are the more congruent parties, and that the radical left parties, the BE and CDU, are the least congruent.9 However, considering only previous studies, we know the picture is different when policy representation is at stake, when left-wing parties are more congruent with their constituents on socioeconomic issues than right-wing parties, while the opposite is true on libertarian-authoritarian issues, with both these patterns

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Figure 5.1  Ideological Congruence, 2008, 2012, and 2016, for Portuguese Voters and MPs, by Party. Sources: Congruence 2008: CCS Portugal 2008 (MPs) CCS Portugal 2008 (Voters); CCS Portugal 2012 (MPs) CCS Portugal 2012 (Voters); CCS Portugal 2016 (MPs) and CCS Portugal 2016 (voters) in Freire and Viegas (2008a; 2008b), Freire et al. (2012, voters; 2013, MPs); and Freire et al. (2017a; 2017b). (The figures are author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

2008 2012–2013 2016 2008 2012–2013 2016

Surveys Year 29.2 48.8 32.3 63.5 80.9 79.7

BE (%) 25.8 42.2 56.4 70.3 85.1 82.6

CDU (%)

Left-Wing Parties 73.3 41.4 67.1 87.1 94.6 80.5

PS (%) 50.9 78 65.8 78.8 50.2 60

PSD (%) 62.5 59.8 55.3 75 56.4 51.9

CDS-PP (%)

Right-Wing Parties

83.6 93.7 80.5 55 66.8 76.3

Parliament as a Whole (%)

Sources: Congruence 2008: CCS Portugal 2008 (MPs) CCS Portugal 2008 (Voters); CCS Portugal 2012 (MPs) CCS Portugal 2012 (Voters); CCS Portugal 2016 (MPs) and CCS Portugal 2016 (voters) in Freire and Viegas (2008a; 2008b); Freire et al. 2012 (votes) and 2013 (MPs); Freire et al. (2017a; 2017b). (The table is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

Policy (socioeconomic issues) Congruence

Ideological Congruence

Party-Voter Congruence (Many-to-Many)

Table 5.1  Summary Table of Ideological and Political Congruence before and after Economic Crisis

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reinforced with the Great Recession. Of course, these differences may be due to the fact that left-right ideology has both an identity and policy component (Freire 2015; Sánchez-Ferrer 2018) and that in the case of policy representation we are dealing only with the latter. Political science has long debated the content of the left-right divide, but there has always been a correlation between the left-right dimension and classical economic issues related to the class cleavage, at least at the voter level (Freire 2015). Nevertheless, for a number of factors, such as the relatively low levels of education, political interest, political sophistication, and low polarization at the party level, this correlation has been traditionally weaker in Portugal (Freire and Belchior 2013, 7). Let us now try to understand the changes in ideological congruence over the period 2008, 2012, and 2016 in the Portuguese parliament, by looking at the four scenarios presented above. The increase of congruence within both the BE and the CDU seems best characterized as confluential dynamic representation: PCP, PEV, and BE MPs were less extreme in 2016 (and 2012) than they were in 2008, while the preferences of their voters became more widespread (on the left). The case of the PSD seems best described as top-down/from above representation: the party’s MPs and voters were more concentrated around the center in 2016 (and 2012) than they were in 2008, but the move is toward the MPs’ previous mode. In the case of the parties that experienced a decline in ideological congruence, the situation with the PS and CDS-PP is best described as disconnecting dynamic representation: with less centrist (i.e., more left-wing) voters and stable MPs in the case of the PS, and more right-wing MPs and centrist voters in the case of the CDS-PP. VOTER-MP SOCIOECONOMIC POLICY CONGRUENCE To build the socioeconomic index for 2008, 2012–2013, and 2016–2017 surveys, we posed a set of questions measuring socioeconomic issues to both voters and MPs. The socioeconomic index based on data collected following the 2005 and 2011 elections (in 2008 and 2012–2013, respectively) shares the same five items: (1) Income and wealth should be redistributed to ordinary people; (2) Education should mainly be provided by the state; (3) Health care should mainly be provided by the state; (4) The present levels of social protection must be maintained, even if that means raising taxes; (4) Greater effort should be made to reduce income inequalities; and (5) Economic growth is more important than balancing the state budget.10 To verify whether all items making up the socioeconomic index measure the same underlying concept, we performed a Cronbach’s alpha test on the socioeconomic indexes for both voters and MPs for all years being analyzed.

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As for the data collected in 2008, the results show that the initial Cronbach’s alpha value for the voters’ index was 0.681. After removing the variable “The present levels of social protection must be maintained, even if that means raising taxes” from the index, the Cronbach’s alpha value rose to 0.754. The results of the Cronbach’s alpha test for MPs, using the same set of questions, was initially 0.691; however, after removing the “Greater efforts should be made to reduce income inequalities” variable, the value rose to 0.714. The Cronbach’s alpha tests on the data collected in 2012 show the internal consistency of the initial socioeconomic index was weak among voters (Cronbach’s alpha 0.443). After removing “the present levels of social protection must be maintained, even if that means raising taxes” variable, the internal consistency of the index between voters improved a little to 0.528; however, it remained only acceptable and not necessarily good. Among MPs the Cronbach’s alpha test revealed good internal consistency at 0.850. In respect of the data collected in 2016, the battery of issues used to construct the socioeconomic index was different from those used in 2008 and 2012. In the former, the set of questions were: (1) Providing a stable network of social security should be the primary goal of government; (2) Public companies should not be privatized; (3) The economic consequences of globalization are mainly negative; (4) Voters—the government should take measures to reduce differences in income levels/MPs—Income and wealth should be redistributed toward ordinary people. In this case, the Cronbach’s alpha result was 0.637 for voters and 0.684 for MPs, thus good for both levels. Overall, while the questions in the 2016–2017 index are not the same as those used in the 2012–2013 index, they can all be said to refer to the same underlying concept—socioeconomic issues. Moreover, all the indices show good (or at least reasonable) levels of internal consistency as measured by the Cronbach’s alpha. Thus, in spite of the different questions, we can say both indices are comparable over time and demonstrate good internal consistency. All the questions were also coded in such a way as to ensure higher values always represent more pro-market oriented positions. Nevertheless, we must exercise caution when comparing the levels of congruence across time, comparing 2008 and 2012 with 2016, because the items included in the socioeconomic indices are not the same, which may have some impact on aggregate levels of policy congruence. POLICY CONGRUENCE ON SOCIOECONOMIC ISSUES IN PORTUGAL In figure 5.2, we present the full socioeconomic issue index distribution for both MPs (blue) and voters (red) for the five parties represented in parliament

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in each of the periods before, during, and after the Great Recession (2008, 2012 and 2016, respectively). In terms of socioeconomic policy congruence trends 2008–2016, we see an increase in the level of policy congruence for the BE and the CDU and a fall for the other three parties, which is particularly significant in the case of the CDS-PP and PSD and small in the case of the PS (however, the evolution is not linear for the three periods, but we concentrate on 2008 and 2016 because of their importance in answering our research questions). Contrary to what was found in previous socioeconomic policy congruence studies (both with relative and absolute measures), it can be seen that left-wing parties have, since the 2008 survey, been more congruent with their voters on socioeconomic issues than right-wing parties (Belchior and Freire 2013; Freire and Belchior 2013; Freire et al. 2016), according to our findings using the new measure with full distributions of policy preferences, it is only after the crisis this can be said to be true (before the crisis, 2008, this was only true for the PS, which has always been the more congruent party on socioeconomic matters in the Portuguese system). This difference is not caused by the different items included in the socioeconomic issue index because it also holds true for the comparison between 2008 and 2012. The difference, therefore, is a result of the more refined measure of policy preferences we are using: the noncumulative distribution function. Contrary to what was found for ideological congruence, for the whole parliament and electorate there was a linear increase in policy congruence across the years: 55.0, 66.8, and 76.3 percent (see table 5.1). However, ideological congruence was always higher than policy congruence, although the trend is one of convergence for the latter with the former (see table 5.1). Over time we see that for the three left-wing parties the trends are not linear: the peak in their policy congruence was in 2012—more polarization and more congruence on socioeconomic issues. And while there was an increase in policy congruence in the radical left parties from 2008 to 2016, for the PS, there was a fall (from 87.1 to 80.5 percent). For the right-wing parties, the fall between 2008, 2012, and 2016 was linear for the CDS-PP, but not for the PSD, which recovered slightly between 2012 and 2016 (from 50.2 to 60.0 percent), although with a strong long-term fall (78.8 to 60.0 percent) (see table 5.1). Overall, the left-wing parties remain much more aligned with their voters on socioeconomic issues than the right-wing parties with theirs: a contrast that was aggravated with the right’s neoliberal turn during the Troika years and after. The linear increase in congruence for the whole electorate and parliament, while due to changes on the left, also suggests there has been some increase in the quality of Portuguese democracy. Let us now try to understand the changes in ideological congruence between 2008 and 2016 in the Portuguese parliament. The increase of congruence in

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Figure 5.2  Socioeconomic Policy Congruence, 2008, 2012, and 2016, for Portuguese Voters and MPs, by Party. Sources: Congruence 2008: CCS Portugal 2008 (MPs) CCS Portugal 2008 (Voters); CCS Portugal 2012 (MPs) CCS Portugal 2012 (Voters); CCS Portugal 2016 (MPs) and CCS Portugal 2016 (voters). Freire and Viegas (2008a; 2008b); Freire et al. (2012, voters; 2013, MPs); and Freire et al. (2017a; 2017b). (The figures are author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

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the BE and CDU seems to be best described as bottom-up/from below representation in which both voters and MPs seem to concentrate more on value two over time, where most voters were already concentrated in 2008, and the MPs were by then more dispersed on the socioeconomic scale. By 2016 they had all converged on this left-leaning position of two, apparently with MPs following more than the voters. The evolution over the period 2008 to 2016 is rather linear in this respect. The situation for the PS can best be described as disconnecting dynamic representation: the voters remain aligned on socioeconomic matters (mode in point two) in 2016, as in 2008 and 2012, but MPs are now more centrist (i.e., less left-wing) with almost two modes (one in point two, the true mode, and in point three, the second mode). Of course, this could be due to the different items included in the socioeconomic issue index, and to the fact that the MPs may be more sensitive than voters to these changes. The situation for the PSD and CDS-PP, as with the PS (although for different reasons), can best be described as disconnecting dynamic representation: with a clear move by the PSD and CDS-PP toward more clearly pro-market stance (in the case of the PSD, the MPs’ mode moved from two modes, two and three, in 2008, to a single mode in point three, and a higher proportion of deputies in positions four and five. In the case of the CDS-PP, the MPs’ mode moved from three to a double mode three and four, and with more people on the right that was not fully accompanied by the voters (in the case of the PSD, the voters’ mode moved from two to a double mode, two and three; while in the case of the CDS-PP, the voters’ mode moved from two to three). While the situation is disconnecting dynamic representation, because we have more incongruence in 2016 than in 2008, in a minor case of top-down representation, the voters seem to follow the MPs’ move to the right. Again, this could be due to the different items included in the socioeconomic issue index, and to the fact that MPs may be more sensitive than voters to these changes. Consequently, we recommend caution in interpreting these results. The evolutionary pattern for the three time points—2008, 2012, and 2016—is somewhat similar. CONCLUSIONS Political representation is a growing field of research in Portugal, especially since the onset of the economic crisis. The increasing availability of data has provided an opportunity to fill some significant lacunae and to bring it more into line with international literature and further our understanding both of the specificities of the Portuguese case and of some of the main challenges affecting the quality of the democratic regime in Portugal from a comparative perspective.

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In general, the economic crisis seems to have had a more significant impact on MPs than on the electorate at the socioeconomic policy level between 2008 and 2012: with the latter exhibiting stability on ideological preferences and underlying value orientations in exceptional times and the former showing greater polarization during the Troika years (Freire et al. 2016, 2020). However, the movement toward the right by MP representing the main right-wing governing party on economic policy (already clearly perceived by voters: data not shown) signals a significant representation mismatch on the right due to increasing levels of incongruence in policy preferences between right-wing MPs and their constituents on economic left-right issues. This trend was exacerbated by a countermovement by opposition parties, contributing to a growing polarization among MPs in Portugal, contradicting the image projected during the early stages of the crisis of a political culture among MPs that was based on consensus and mutual accommodation. That notwithstanding, before and after the crisis, left-wing MPs remained more aligned with their constituents on economic left-right issues than right-wing MPs did with their voters. Moreover, the (higher) mismatch on the right was significantly amplified by the PSD adopting a more neoliberal position. Therefore, the picture of a political class more aligned on cultural issues with their voters on the right than on the left remained true in 2016–2017, just as it was in 2008. However, the significant changes brought about by the Great Recession were seen in relation to economic left-right issues, and affected MPs (who became increasingly polarized with the crisis) more than it did voters (who remained rather stable on socioeconomic policy preferences, with a vast majority holding pro-state intervention positions), and the right more so than the left. Thus, the neoliberal drive and the crisis produced more incongruence on economic issues on the right (the MPs exhibited much more pro-market orientations than voters). Here we sought to map out the changes before and after the Great Recession (2008 and 2016, respectively), in both left-right ideological congruence (which is an understudied topic in Portugal) and socioeconomic policy congruence between voters and MPs. To do this, we used an innovative measure for ideological and socioeconomic policy congruence: the comparison of many to many (a comparison of full left-right identity distributions and socioeconomic issue policy preferences with full distributions) that took the heterogeneity of preferences at each level with the noncumulative distribution functions into account. We had three research questions for socioeconomic policy representation: Are there signs of more congruence on socioeconomic issues between voters and MPs on the left? Are there signs of less congruence on socioeconomic issues between voters and MPs the right? Overall, are there signs of an increase in the quality of democracy in terms of policy congruence? In terms of issues, we focused on socioeconomic topics.

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The conclusions are basically three for policy congruence. First, congruence increased among the radical left parties (BE and CDU) but fell (although in a nonlinear fashion) among the PS (slightly) and the PSD and CDS-PP (a lot). Overall, left-wing parties are much more closely aligned with their voters than are the right-wing parties, but this is only true since 2012 and until the last surveys (2016–2017); therefore, unlike the conclusions of previous research (Freire and Belchior 2013; Belchior and Freire 2013), with the exception of the PS (the most congruent party in 2008 and 2012, but overtaken by the CDU in 2016), the right was in closer alignment with its voters on socioeconomic issues in 2008 than was the radical left. These new findings that contradict earlier ones are due to the use of the more refined measure for policy and ideological congruence, and because they were witnessed from 2012 (when the battery was the same as in 2008), not because of changes in the battery of socioeconomic issues. Overall, after the Great Recession the democratic quality of socioeconomic policy representation increased (although not in a linear fashion over the period) on the radical left, remained similar in the case of the PS and fell in the case of the PSD and CDS-PP. The radical left parties converged with their voters in a bottom-up process, while the right diverged from theirs (disconnecting dynamic representation) because of its significant move toward more pro-market positions. Overall, concerning the level of policy congruence for the whole electorate and parliament, there was a linear increase over the period, although due only to changes on the left; therefore, the quality of democracy also increased in this respect. Moreover, for the whole parliament and electorate, while the overall level of policy congruence was always lower than the overall level of ideological congruence, the trend over the period is one of the former converging with the latter. We also had three research questions for left-right ideological representation (i.e., using left-right voter and MP self-placement). Are there signs of more left-right ideological identity congruence between voters and MPs? Are the PS and PSD still more congruent than the BE and CDU in 2016 as they were in 2008? Overall, are there signs of an increase in the quality of democracy in terms of ideological congruence? In this domain, where the findings are relatively different from those found in terms of socioeconomic policy issues, we found that congruence increased (although not in a linear fashion) for the radical left from 2008 to 2016 (due to a process of confluential dynamic representation: less extreme MPs and a wider spread of voters, or, to put it another way, more moderate MPs and more heterogeneous voters) and for the PSD (due to the process of top-down representation: more centrist voters and MPs, but moving toward the former mode in MP positions). On the contrary, leftright congruence declined with the PS (due to a process of disconnecting

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dynamic representation: slightly more left-wing voters, stable MPs on the center-left) and the CDS-PP (also due to a process of disconnecting dynamic representation: more right-wing MPs, more centrist voters). Thus, in leftright ideological terms, the quality of democratic representation increased for the radical left and the PSD and decreased for the PS (slightly) and the CDS-PP. However, overall (and consistent with previous research) (Freire and Belchior 2013), in ideological terms, the catch-all parties remain more congruent than the radical left (and in 2016 than the CDS-PP). For the whole parliament and electorate, the trend is better described as stable than changing, although there was a peak in 2012: more polarization, more ideological congruence, especially with the radical left and the PSD (which was not the case for the PS or the CDS-PP). The results for ideological congruence and policy congruence are, therefore, somehow different, which may be related to the nature of left-right selfplacement, which has both an element influenced by identities (left-right as a dimension of identification: which is less impacted by policy competition) and another more influenced by policy competition (left-right as a dimension of competition) (Freire 2015) in respect of the nature of socioeconomic issues that are clearly more directly related to policy competition. The latter, therefore, should have more weight in the strategic responses (to these situations) of the parties than the former, but this is an element to be developed in future research. Also to be developed in future research is to determine to what extent some of the changes in socioeconomic policy representation are the result of changes in the content of the index (2008 and 2012 compared to 2016). Finally, more research is needed on the relative merits of the new measure for both policy and ideological congruence: the analysis of full (noncumulative) distributions. NOTES 1. English language and formal editing of the present chapter was done by Stewart Lloyd-Jones ([email protected]). 2. Paper presented at ECPR General Conference, in Hamburg, Germany, 2018, in Panel 342, “Political Representation in Post-Crisis Portugal: Change or Continuity?” This paper would not have been possible without the support of the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) Project, 2016–2019, which André Freire coordinates in Portugal (with Marco Lisi and Emmanouil Tsatsanis), “Crisis, Political Representation and Democratic Renewal: The Portuguese Case in the Southern European Context,” PTDC/IVC-CPO/3098/2014. Http://er.cies.iscte-iul.pt/. 3. The CDU is an electoral coalition of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP, Partido Comunista Português) and the Greens (PEV, Partido Ecologista “Os Verdes”).

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4. See “Crisis, Political Representation and Democratic Renewal: The Portuguese Case in the Southern European Context” (PTDC/IVC-CPO/3098/2014), coordinated by Freire, Lisi and Tsatsanis. CIES-IUL and IPRI-FCSH-UNL research project. 5. In both cases, specific questions about the crisis were only included in the 2012–2013 and 2016–2017 questionnaires. Fieldwork for the two MP studies was conducted in 2012–2013 and 2016–2017. 6. For more details on the methodological aspects, see Lima and Silva (2015). 7. For Italy, see Pedrazzani and Segatti (2016) and Pedrazzani (2016). 8. See Freire and Belchior (2013), Belchior and Freire (2013), Belchior (2010) and Freire, Tsatsanis, and Lima (2016). 9. See Freire and Belchior (2013, 8, figure 2), Belchior and Freire (2013, 281, figure 1), and Belchior (2010, 137, table 3). 10. Data elaborated by the authors using the voter and MP surveys in Freire and Viegas (2008a, 2008b) and Freire et al. (2012, 2013).

REFERENCES Achen C. H. 1978. “Measuring Representation.” American Journal of Political Science 22(3): 475–510. Andeweg, R. B. 2011. “Approaching Perfect Policy Congruence. Measurement, Development and Relevance for Political Representation.” In How Democracy Works. Political Representation and Policy Congruence in Modern Societies, edited by M. Rosema, B. Denter and K. Aarts, 39–52. Amsterdam: Pallas Publications – Amsterdam University Press. Belchior, A. 2008. “Party Political Representation in Portugal.” South European Society and Politics 13(4): 457–476. Belchior, A. 2010. “Ideological Congruence among European Political Parties.” The Journal of Legislative Studies 16(1): 121–142. Belchior, A. 2012. “Explaining Left–Right Party Congruence Across European Party Systems: A Test of Micro-, Meso-, and Macro-Level Models.” Comparative Political Studies 46(3): 352–386. Belchior, A. and A. Freire. 2013. “Is Party Type Relevant to an Explanation of Policy Congruence? Catch-all versus Ideological Parties in the Portuguese Case.” International Political Science Review 34(3): 273–288. Dahl, R. 1998. On Democracy. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Esaiasson, P. and S. Holmberg. 1996. Representation from Above. Members of Parliament and Representative Democracy in Sweden. Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing Company. Freire, A. 2015. “Left-Right Ideology as a Dimension of Identification and as a Dimension of Competition.” Journal of Political Ideologies 20(1): 43–68. Freire, A. 2016. “The Condition of Portuguese Democracy during the Troika’s Intervention, 2011–2015, within the Symposium Political Parties, Citizens and the Economic Crisis: the Evolution of Southern European Democracies.” Portuguese Journal of Social Science 15(2): 173–193.

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Freire, A. and A. Belchior. 2013. “Ideological Representation in Portugal: MPsElectors Linkages in Terms of Left-Right Placement and Substantive Meaning.” Journal of Legislative Studies 19(1): 1–21. Freire, A. and J. M. Leite Viegas. 2008a. “Portuguese Voters Survey, 2008,” In Research legislative Election, Research project at ISCTE-IUL and CIES-IUL, Portuguese Deputies in Comparative Perspective: Elections, Leadership, and Political Representation, FCT: PTDC/CPO/64469/2006, Available online at: http://er.cies. iscte-iul.pt/. Freire, A. and J. M. Leite Viegas. 2008b. “Portuguese MPs Survey 2005 Legislative Election” (2008). Distributed by ISCTE-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and CIES-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portuguese. Data Archive. http:// er.cies.iscte-iul.pt/. Freire, A., J. M. Leite Viegas and M. Lisi. 2012. “Portuguese Voters Survey, 2012,” Research project at ISCTE-IUL and CIES-IUL, Elections, Leadership, and Accountability: Political Representation in Portugal in a longitudinal and comparative perspective, FCT: FCT: PTDC/CPJ-CPO/119307/2010, available online at: http://er.cies.iscte-iul.pt/. Freire, A., J. M. Leite Viegas and M. Lisi. 2013. “Portuguese MPs Survey, 2012–2013: 2011 Legislative Election,” Research project at ISCTE-IUL and CIES-IUL, Elections, Leadership, and Accountability: Political Representation in Portugal in a longitudinal and comparative perspective, FCT: FCT: PTDC/CPJCPO/119307/2010, available online at: http://er.cies.iscte-iul.pt/. Freire, A. and M. Lisi. 2016. “Introduction: Political Parties, Institutions and Civil Society: The Economic Crisis and the Evolution of Southern Europe Political Systems.” Portuguese Journal of Social Science 15(2): 153–171. Freire, A., M. Lisi, I. Andreadis and J. M. Leite Viegas. 2016. Political Representation in Times of Bailout: Evidence from Greece and Portugal. London: Routledge. Freire, A., M. Lisi and E. Tsatsanis. 2016. “Portuguese Citizens Survey 2016–2018 (1st Wave: 2016),” In Research project at CIES-IUL and IPRI-NOVA, Crisis, Political Representation and Democratic Renewal: The Portuguese case in the Southern European context, FCT: PTDC/IVC-CPO/3098/2014. Available online at: http://er.cies.iscte-iul.pt/. Freire, A., M. Lisi and E. Tsatsanis. 2017. “Portuguese MPs Surveys 2016–2017,” In Research project at CIES-IUL and IPRI-NOVA, “Crisis, Political Representation and Democratic Renewal: The Portuguese case in the Southern European context,” FCT: PTDC/IVC-CPO/3098/2014. Available online at: http://er.cies.iscte-iul.pt/. Freire, A., M. Lisi and E. Tsatsanis. 2020. “Political Representation in Portugal before and after the ‘Great Recession’: Legitimation and Ideological Linkages between Voters and their Representatives.” In Political Representation in Southern Europe and Latin America: Crisis or Continuing Transformation? edited by A. Freire, M. Barragán, X. Coller, M. Lisi and E. Tsatsanis. London: Routledge (forthcoming). Freire, A., M. Lisi and J. M. Leite Viegas. 2015. Crise Económica, Políticas de Austeridade e Representação Política. Lisbon: Assembleia da República. Freire, A., M. Lisi and J. M. Leite Viegas. 2016. Participação e Representação Políticas na Europa em Crise. Lisbon: Assembleia da República: Coleção Parlamento.

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Freire, A., E. Tsatsanis and I. Lima. 2016. “Portugal in Times of Crisis: Value Change and Policy Representation.” In Values, Economic Crisis and Democracy, edited by M. Voicu, I. C. Mochmann and H. Dülmer, 240–276. Abingdon: Routledge. Golder, M. and J. Stramski. 2010. “Ideological Congruence and Electoral Institutions.” American Journal of Political Science 54(1): 90–106. Lima, I. and S. S. da Silva. 2015. “Procedimento de recolha e tratamento dos dados no estudo da representação política.” In Participação e Representação Políticas na Europa em Crise, edited by A. Freire, M. Lisi and J. M. Leite Viegas, 49–76. Lisbon: Assembleia da República, Coleção Parlamento. Manin, B., S. C. Stokes and A. Przeworski. 1999. “Elections and Representation.” In Democracy, Accountability and Representation, edited by A. Przeworski, S. C. Stokes and B. Manin, 29–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Miller, W. E. and D. E. Stokes. 1963. “Constituency Influence in Congress.” American Political Science Review 57(1): 45–56. Pedrazzani, A. 2016. “La congruenza tra partiti ed elettori sui temi di policy.” In La rappresentanza politica in Italia, edited by A. Di Virgilio and P. Segatti, 235–264. Bologna: Il Mulino. Pedrazzani, A. and P. Segatti. 2016. “La congruenza ideológica tra partiti ed elettori.” In La rappresentanza politica in Italia, edited by A. Di Virgilio and P. Segatti, 207–234. Bologna: Il Mulino. Pinto, A. C., P. Magalhães and L. de Sousa. 2013. A Qualidade da Democracia em Portugal. Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais. Powell, G. B. 2004. “Political Representation in Comparative Politics.” Annual Review of Political Science 7: 273–296. Sánchez-Ferrer, L. 2018. “Ideology: The Reasons behind Placement on the LeftRight Scale.” In Political Power in Spain. The Multiple Divides between MPs and Citizens, edited by X. Coller, A. M. Jaime-Castillo and F. Mota, 225–244. London: Palgrave – Macmillan. Tsatsanis, E., A. Freire and Y. Tsirbas. 2014. “The Impact of the Economic Crisis on the Ideological Space in Portugal and Greece: A Comparison of MPs and Voters.” South European Society and Politics 19(4): 519–540. Wessels, B. 2007. “Political Representation and Democracy.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior, edited by R. J. Dalton and H.-D. Klingemann, 833–850. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wessels, B. 2011. “Performance and Deficits of Present Day Representation.” In The Future of Representative Democracy, edited by S. Alonso, J. Keane and W. Merkel, 96–123. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zamora, A. and X. Coller. 2014. “The Economic Crisis from Within: Evidence from Southern Europe. Special Issue.” American Behavioral Scientist 58(12): 1511–1682.

Chapter 6

Gender and Political Representation before and after the Great Recession, 2008–20171 Ana Prata, André Freire, and Sofia Serra-Silva

INTRODUCTION Since the implementation of gender quotas in Portugal in 2009, the country has experienced one of its most dramatic economic and social crises. Nonetheless, we know very little about how gender policy preferences and ideological positioning on issues have been influenced or are connected to the increasing feminization of the Portuguese parliament. Did female MPs tend to position themselves differently than male MPs, independently of party affiliation, during the economic crisis? Lovenduski argues “an implicit goal of feminist infiltration of parties is to secure changes in attitudes about gender, mainly by increases in understanding and awareness of gender differences and their implications for power relations” (Lovenduski 2010: 33). This implies the political representation of women in parliament is much more than the inclusion of female MPs or gender quotas, and much more about “feminizing party programs and governments.” Some studies support the claim that female legislators tend to prioritize and give visibility to legislation on a variety of women’s issues (Celis et al. 2014: 153) or that the presence of female politicians helps strengthen the position of women’s interests (Wängnerud 2009: 51). While female MPs are expected to be more likely to better represent the interests of female voters because of shared experiences, one can argue that ideology might also matter (or matter more than gender) in their positioning on the different issues.2 The case for women’s political representation is made because the presence of women in politics has been shown to have an impact on what issues are raised, the quality of the policy-making process, and the inclusiveness of the overall political system, which further legitimizes political institutions 129

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(Celis et al. 2014; Verge et al. 2015). This is an issue of particular importance during economic crises because these tend to be the times when political institutions are afflicted with delegitimization. There are several types of political representation: descriptive, substantive, symbolic, etc. (Pitkin 1967; Carroll 2001a; Phillips 1995; Young 2000). While they all contribute to a broader understanding of women’s political representation, there remains a robust causal connection among these various forms of representation. Therefore, what type of political representation is more useful for an understanding of how women are politically represented during times of crisis? A time when women most need political representation, since they are facing severe social and economic challenges. POLITICAL REPRESENTATION AND IDEOLOGICAL CONGRUENCE Women are not a homogenous group, and the impact of the economic and social crisis was not felt the same way by all. Furthermore, if women are impacted differently, they probably also have distinct policy preferences. So, what are some of the implications of these assertions for political representation? Recent comparative research has shown that an increase in women’s descriptive representation can impact policy preferences. This mainly happens when issues have not yet crystalized (Espírito-Santo et al. 2018), and economic and social crises are times when most issues are either new or have not yet crystalized within political parties. However, over the past decade, gender and politics researchers have also challenged the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation and emphasized how this relationship is far more complex, since it is mediated by institutional environments and institutional norms, and has produced mixed results (Wängnerud 2000; Franceschet and Piscopo 2008; Celis and Childs 2008; Tremblay and Pelletier 2000). The argument for the presence of women in politics is that women’s needs, experiences, and interests would be better addressed in a gender-balanced parliament or government rather than in bodies dominated by male politicians (Phillips 1995, 66). For example, the presence of women in politics may impact what issues are raised as well as the quality of the policy-making process (Celis et al. 2014, 150). Researchers have also argued that women’s political representation in parliament signals the inclusiveness of the political system, and further legitimizes and democratizes this political institution (Verge et al. 2015). Other scholars have also introduced the idea of a critical mass, explaining that women in political office do not often end substantively representing because there are simply not enough women in office. Critical

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mass theorists argue that only when women grow from being a token to a considerable minority will they effectively promote women-friendly policies and make a real difference (Grey 2002; Childs and Krook 2008; Kanter 1977; Dahlerup 1988). This view has been popularized in the media and picked up by politicians to further (or implement) gender quotas in parliaments. Over the past decade or so, however, the critical mass theory of political representation has been criticized and a crisis of confidence in the theory has led many to challenge its relevance for understanding the substantive representation of women (Childs 2004; Sawer et al. 2006; Childs and Krook 2006). Challenging the critical mass theory are scholars such as Crowley (2004) who demonstrate that even when women are a tiny minority, they can still make a significant difference. This is because when they are only a few, they are more capable of mobilizing individually and effectively. Carroll (2001b) also demonstrates how an increase in the proportion of women elected actually reduces the likelihood individual female legislators will act on behalf of women as a group. Scholars have long grappled with the idea that simple inclusion, or descriptive representation (numerical), is not substantive representation, since acting as women is not the same as acting for women (Schwindt-Bayer and Mishler 2005; Celis et al. 2008). Likewise, not all female representatives represent women in similar ways, and not all women’s interests are the same. The shift toward understanding what the substantive representation of women really entails has resulted in a focus mainly on women’s policy concerns and how other potential agents can potentially act on behalf of women as a group. Those could be male MPs, women activists, or even state feminists (Childs and Krook 2006; Eisenstein 1996; Sawer 2002; Lovenduski 2005b). As Weldon notes“women’s movements and women’s policy agencies may provide more effective avenues of expression for women’s perspective than the presence of women in the legislatures”(2002, 1153); and while national parliaments are yet often studied to address the issue of women’s presence in politics (Caul 1999; Wängnerud 2000), scholars have established there are a variety of sources, locations, and even modes of political representation (Celis 2006; Lovenduski 2005a; Weldon 2002). Another set of critiques has focused on overcoming the essentialism that only women can substantively represent women, questioning the idea that women’s interests (or feminist interests) are universal. It is, therefore, more useful to focus on what are women’s needs and if women’s distinct policy preferences are in fact-finding representation (even if those acting for women are male MPs or representatives of a particular political party). For that, we look at ideological congruence. In 2006, the Portuguese parliament passed the Parity-Act (Lei Orgânica 3/2006), but the implementation of gender quotas in parliament began only in

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2009, at the onset of the economic crisis. The Parity-Act requires at least a 33 percent representation by women and follows a trend known as the global diffusion of gender quotas (Hughes et al. 2015; Krook 2010). Behind this diffusion process was the idea that increasing women’s descriptive representation (greater numerical parity between male and female MPs) would ultimately increase the substantive representation of all women citizens. Nonetheless, studies on the gender differences of politicians’ attitudes seem to agree gender does have an impact, with the contention generally resting on the strength of that impact (Wängnerud 2009, 62). Our study can shed some light into this literature by looking at how the gender of the MPs impact attitudes on state policies (on a variety of indicators) and if that occurs beyond an MP’s party affiliation. This may reveal whether there is a continuity in MP positioning on policy-making and whether such positioning follows gender lines or party lines during a time of crisis and in the postcrisis period. The concept of ideological congruence is often overlooked in research into women’s substantive representation, but ideological congruence between citizens and their MPs is an essential part of political representation and even more essential for the political representation of women. Most studies on ideological congruence between citizens and elites use median citizen congruence, which does not account for how political elites represent social groups, including women, minorities, or the elderly (Širinić 2015). There is far less research addressing whether women have lower ideological congruence than men, although there is some affirmative evidence of that (Bernauer et al. 2013; Lovenduski and Norris 2003). In reality, we know very little about gender differences in ideological congruence, even though this concept is a good proxy for understanding substantive representation. Thus, in filling this lacuna (in Portugal and elsewhere), we seek to address the following research questions. How has gender-substantive representation evolved during and after the crisis, in terms of socioeconomic indicators (the role of the state in the economy, in reducing economic inequalities, in providing a safety-net), in cultural/libertarian-authoritarian views (the stance on same-sex marriage and immigration), and gender-related issues (e.g., affirmative action favoring women and abortion rights)? First, are there significant differences between Portuguese voters, segmented by gender, in terms of policy preferences (on socioeconomic, authoritarian-libertarian, and gender-related issues)? Second, are these possible gender differences in policy preferences at the voter level also matched at the elite level (i.e., for both elected MPs and nonelected candidates to the Portuguese parliament)? If the answer to both the questions is negative, there are no substantive gender differences to be represented, so in terms of policy preferences, the

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elites simply reflect the will of the voters and gender representation merely is more descriptive. If, however, the responses are both positive, then we can assess substantive gender representation in the Portuguese parliament. If the answer to the first question is positive and to the second negative, then we can speak of a lack of voter preferences being represented at the elite level; while if the answer to the second is positive and to the first negative, we have an elite that is polarized and detached from its voters in gender terms. Finally, do the differences stated in the first and second questions remain even when controlling for such factors as age, education, party preferences, and/ or left-right ideology? If so, then we can speak of proper and specific gender representation; if not, however, gender is only a mediating factor for other explanatory elements. PORTUGAL: AN IDEAL CASESTUDY Previous comparative research on ideological congruence between citizens and MPs shows that Portugal’s representative democracy has one of the highest levels of gender congruence inequality. Širinić (2015) shows that in countries like Austria, where there is low voter-MP congruence, the difference between the congruence of gender groups is nonetheless small, thus indicating low inequality in gender congruence. In Norway, which has a satisfactory median citizen congruence, the gender gap is very large, showing high inequality in gender congruence. Portugal is also positioned at the bottom on this measure, with high gender inequality congruence (31st of 33 countries) (Širinić 2015, 133). This has happened despite the implementation of gender quotas in parliament since 2009. However, one should expect to note that gender inequality congruence decreases as gender parity in parliament increases. While the feminization of parliament increased from 27 percent in 2009 to 35 percent in 2015 (Costa 2019), the political representation of women is not only impacted by the feminization of parliament, with other factors also affecting women’s representation, such as the ongoing economic and social crisis, gender policies, and austerity measures implemented by a constrained government. The question of how economic crises affect political representation and the decline in party-voter congruence has also been addressed by Traber, Giber, and Häuserman (2018). They found that congruence reduced considerably during the recent economic crises (2018, 1116), although their study does not take gender into account, nor does it look at how women fared in political representation compared to men during or after the crisis. We know women were affected disproportionally by the crisis and that they also reported more than men that the crisis affected them negatively.

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The term She-Austerity has been coined to convey the idea that it was among Southern European women that the social and economic impact of the crisis were felt most severely (Alcañiz and Monteiro 2016; Bettio and Verashchagina 2014; Ferreira 2013; Prata 2017). While Southern European women share some similarities in terms of impacts, mainly resulting for their greater compliance with traditional gender roles, some differences among the countries are seen as resulting from each country’s distinct economic structure and social protection regime (Alcañiz and Monteiro 2016, 15). In Portugal, women felt the impact of the crisis and austerity mostly in the labor market, labor relations, and through the restructuring of the welfare state and public sector (Ferreira 2011; Prata 2017). However, the impact was not the same across all social groups. While male unemployment took off first, women’s employment began contracting a year later, due mainly to job losses in agriculture, manufacturing, and private households. As unemployment rose throughout the crisis, it tended to mostly affect women with lower qualifications (Wall et al. 2015, 31; Ferreira 2013, 219). Changes to labor relations (less job security, increased precariousness), the loss of social benefits, cuts to family allowances, and the overall fall in purchasing power all contributed to the reinforcement of the informal welfare society. Given that, women disproportionately carried the burden of being the support mechanism for the most vulnerable in Portuguese society (the unemployed youth, the elderly, and children). Additionally, the overrepresentation of women in the service sector, education, and social services further reinforced gender roles and placed women in feminized jobs, perpetuating gender segregation at work and contributing to a return to traditional gender roles and increase in the gender pay gap (Alcañiz and Monteiro 2016, 16; Prata 2017, 116). Further impacts were felt in the decline of mental health in countries adopting strict fiscal austerity (Karanikolos et al. 2013), and domestic violence increased significantly during the economic crisis and was diagnosed as a health crisis by the state-sponsored 4th National Plan Against Domestic Violence. Following the crisis, the 5th National Plan for Gender Equality, Citizenship, and Nondiscrimination 2014–2017 was implemented. This plan sought to improve the promotion of gender equality across all areas of governance and to intervene in education, health, and the labor market. These were the areas considered worthy of more significant investment after the crisis as a means of improving conditions for women and to promote gender equality. If one social group—women—is mainly affected by the economic and social crisis, and if that same group also has low ideological equality congruence, that is a sign that those most in need of political representation (because of economic and social strains) are also those who are unable to get it. During the Portuguese economic crisis, scholars also noted a clear move

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by Social Democratic Party (PSD, Partido Social Democrata) and, albeit to a lesser extent, Social Democratic Center-Popular Party (CDS-PP, Centro Democrático e Social-Partido Popular) MPs toward economically right-wing positions, leading to growing right-left polarization at the elite level (Freire et al. 2016, 251). MPs representing the PSD, which was in coalition with the right-wing conservative CDS-PP, were mostly responsible for the move to the right and for contributing to the left-right polarization in 2012–2013 compared to 2008. After the crisis, with the new left-wing alliance—a center-left minority Socialist Party (PS, Partido Socialista) government, supported in parliament by the radical left Left Bloc (BE, Bloco de Esquerda) and the Unitary Democratic Coalition (CDU, Coligação Democrática Unitária)3—that was elected to office in November 2015 (following the elections of 4 October that year) more gender-friendly policies were expected and implemented. While these changes have been studied mostly in terms of how they impacted the congruence between the positions of MPs and voters on economic and cultural issues, we argue they can also help us to understand the dynamics of gender representation in parliament. Were women MPs from both right- and left-wing parties positioning themselves in an increasingly polarized manner? Or, unlike their male counterparts, did women MPs demonstrate more stability during the crisis both in terms of ideological preferences and underlying value orientations? These questions matter for gender representation because they shed light on how consensus is generated within parties in parliament. If women MPs position themselves differently from their male peers, would a more gender-equal parliament make a difference to polarization? If women across different party lines exhibit similar preferences to their male counterparts, can we argue that women MPs have only descriptive or formalistic representation while still lacking substantive representation in parliament? DATA AND METHODS We drew on data on issue positions (or policy preferences) from 5,456 Portuguese voters who were interviewed in 2008, 2012, and 2016, and from 770 MPs and nonelected candidates to the Portuguese parliament in the 2009, 2011, and 2015 general elections (interviewed in 2009–2010, 2012, and 2016, respectively).4 About the sample sizes and their respective gender balance, we can say the following. For 2008–2009 we have a sample of 1,350 voters (57.2 percent women, 42.8 percent men) and 207 elected and nonelected candidates (78.1 percent men, 21.9 percent women); for 2012, we have a sample of 1,209 voters (58.7 percent women, 41.3 percent men) and a slightly larger sample

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of elected and nonelected candidates, 257 (71.7 percent men, 28.3 percent women); finally, for 2016, we have 2,897 voters (51 percent women, 49 percent men) and 306 elected and nonelected candidates (63.6 percent men, 36.4 percent women). In total, our analysis is based on two large merged samples of voters (5,456) and elected and nonelected candidates (700).5 The voter studies were fielded through face-to-face interviews (2008 and 2012) and a panel web survey (2016, first wave),6 and were always weighted to correct for the differences between the correspondent adult population (18 and older) living in continental Portugal. The reason for using candidates (elected and nonelected) instead of just MPs is practical, since the total number of MPs for the smaller parties (BE, CDU, and CDS-PP) is already relatively small, but since we wish to introduce gender breakdowns by party (parliamentary group) across the three years (legislatures)—before, during, and after the crisis—we would otherwise end up with too small a sample for statistical analysis. Furthermore, the nonelected candidates are also representatives of the people, socialized within the party ranks, and are ready to serve in parliament at any moment, particularly in a closed-list proportional representation system like that used in Portugal, where many MP replacements take place during each term/legislature. Therefore, in substantive terms, this option should not introduce any significant bias. INDICATORS OF POLICY PREFERENCES We used thirteen indicators of policy preferences in our dataset. Nine were grouped into two indices, while others were kept separate on both theoretical and methodological (reliability scaling) grounds. The first index concerns economic left-right issues. To build the economic left-right index for 2008, 2012–2013, and 2016–2017, we used a set of questions measuring socioeconomic issues that were posed to both voters and political elites.7 Since the questions measuring socioeconomic issues were not the same across all surveys, we chose the questions that were most similar for measuring economic left-right issues across time. The issues asked both in 2008 and 2012–2013 were the following: “income and wealth should be redistributed toward ordinary people”; “education should mainly be provided by the state”; “health care should mainly be provided by the state”; “greater efforts would have to be made to reduce income inequalities”; “economic growth is more important than balancing the state budget”; and “the present levels of social protection must be kept the same even if that means increasing taxes.” For the years 2016–2017, the following issues were considered: “providing a stable network of social security should be the prime goal of government”; “public companies should not be privatized”; “the economic consequences of

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globalization are eminently negative”; “greater efforts would have to be made to reduce income inequalities.” Although the questions within the index for 2016–2017 are not the same as those used in the 2008/2012–2013 index, they can all be said to refer to the same underlying concept: socioeconomic (left-right) issues. Moreover, both indices show reasonable levels of internal consistency as measured by the Cronbach’s alpha (voters 2008=0.7483,8 and 2012=0.5169; elected and nonelected candidates 2008= 0.765 and 2012=0.843) Thus, in spite of the differences in the issue questions we can say all indices are comparable across time and show good internal consistency.10 The second group of items includes two items that theoretically measure, to some extent, the dichotomy of authoritarian-libertarian values that were kept separate on methodological grounds. These items are comparable across time, 2008, 2012, and 2016 but, given the poor internal consistency in the different years and samples, they were kept separate.11 The issues analyzed are “same-sex marriages should be prohibited by law” and “immigrants are good for Portugal’s economy.” The remaining two indicators operationalize issues that mainly affect women (gender-related issues): namely, positive discrimination toward women (in the labor market)—“women should be given preferential treatment when applying for jobs and promotions” (2008 and 2016) and women’s freedom to choose in the case of abortion—“women should be free to decide on matters of abortion” (2008, 2012, and 2016). All items were coded in a way that implies lower values always mean liberal/progressive, left-wing and/or libertarian positions, while higher values always mean conservative, right-wing and/or authoritarian positions (on a scale from 1 to 5). We look at the differences between the average positions of voters and political elites in each of the six indicators described above (table 6.1), year by year. To do this, either overall or within parties, we use the t-test (for independent samples) or its corresponding nonparametric alternative (the Mann–Whitney test) when the assumptions for the t-test are not met. In addition, we focus our analysis on the impact of time to assess whether there were differences across the years as the economic crisis developed. Gender differences among voters and political elites in each of the six indicators/indexes across years were thus tested separately. THE MODELS The analysis proceeded in two steps. In the first step, differences between the average positions of women and men in each of the indicators/indices

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Table 6.1  Differences between Male and Female Political Elites and Voters in Terms of Policy Preferences, in Each Year Elected and Nonelected Candidates Economic left-right values index Authoritarian-libertarian value issues Same-sex marriages should be prohibited by law Immigrants are good for Portugal’s economy Issues that particularly affect women Women should be free to decide on matters of abortion Women should be given preferential treatment when applying for jobs and promotions

Voters

2008 2012 2016

Female 2.131 2.172 2.331

Male 2.164 2.118 2.338

Female 1.894** 2.067 2.340*

Male 1.975** 2.091 2.382*

2008 2012 2016 2008 2012 2016

2.6061 2.2073 1.5164 2.0606 2.1098 1.8279

2.4741 2.4114 1.6464 1.9111 1.9600 1.8242

3.4100 3.0243 1.9763*** 2.5515 2.4631 2.8064**

3.3557 3.0559 2.3754*** 2.5337 2.4628 2.7345**

2008 2012 2016 2008 2012 2016

2.273 2.159 1.713** 3.879

2.452 2.399 2.050** 3.882 – 3.619

2.268 1.954 2.229** 2.975***

2.293 1.963 2.341** 3.223*** – 3.451***

3.639

3.176***

Notes: (1) ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05. (2) In the cells, the mean values of each sample/year for every index are shown. The scale ranges from 1 to 5. Lower values always mean “liberal/progressive, left-wing and/or libertarian” positions, and higher values always mean “conservative, right-wing and/or authoritarian” positions. Sources: Data elaborated by the authors relying upon the mass and elite surveys fielded within the research projects directed by Freire and Viegas (2008a and 2008b), Freire et al. (2012 and 2013), and Freire et al. (2017a and 2017b), and the correspondent datasets (merged by Augusta Correia). (The table is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

described above were tested for both voters and political elites separately (see table 6.1). To do this, we used the t-test (for independent samples) or its corresponding nonparametric alternative (the Wilcoxon Mann–Whitney test) when the assumptions for the t-test are not met. We also tested whether these gender differences occur within parties. These tests are not shown but are available upon request. In the second step, we test whether gender continues to play a role in policy preference differences across years after controlling for sociodemographic and ideological variables. Linear regressions were performed using each individual’s position on each issue as the dependent variable for each year, both for voters and political elites separately (tables 6.2 and 6.3). The independent variables were gender, our central explanatory factor in the present chapter, and a set of control variables for age, education, church attendance, and left-right self-placement. The idea behind the procedures

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in the second part is to determine whether the gender differences in policy preferences found in table 6.1 (without controls) remain when we control for social, cultural, and political variables that explain policy preference variations. For tables 6.2 and 6.3, we perform these multiple regressions with control variables in the equations when we found significant gender differences in policy preferences (table 6.1). In 2008 there were only tests for voters (socioeconomic and gender-related issues), while in 2012 there were no tests and in 2016 there were tests for both voters (authoritarian-libertarian, economic left-right and gender-related issues) and the political elite (genderrelated issues). TESTING FOR GENDER DIFFERENCES IN POLICY PREFERENCES Here we concentrate on mapping the (absolute) differences between men and women among voters and the political elites (always taken separately) in terms of policy preferences for each year. Looking at table 6.1, we clearly see more significant gender differences among voters than among the political elite. In fact, the only policy issue in which there are statisticallysignificant gender differences within the political elite is on one of the two issues that mainly affect women: “women should be free to decide on matters of abortion” (only in 2016). In table 6.1, the cells in which we found a significant effect have been highlighted in gray. While controlling for party (data not shown due to space constraints), these differences only remain in the cases of the PSD and PS, which may reflect either lower levels of crystallization on these issues for these two parties when compared with the other parties, and/ or larger samples of candidates for these two parties.12 Among voters, there is clearly more polarization between men and women than there is among the elite. For socioeconomic issues (economic left-right values) there are significant gender differences, with males positioning themselves farther to the right in 2008 and 2016. However, when we introduce controls for parties, these differences vanish, which means gender differences are mediated by party preferences. On authoritarian-libertarian issues, gender differences are only significant in 2016: men are more conservative than women in terms of tolerance to same-sex marriage, which is a difference found for all parties except the CDU; on the immigration issue it is the other way around, with men more tolerant than women, although this difference vanishes when we introduce controls for parties. For women-related issues, there are gender differences among voters, with men always more conservative than women both in terms of abortion liberalization (only in 2016) and affirmative action for women when applying for jobs (2008 and 2016). We

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also found there to be no gender differences within parties, which means the gender effects are entirely mediated by partisan politics (in fact, this is a left-right crystallized issue). On affirmative action, gender differences remain significant within the PS, PSD, and CDS-PP. Overall, the conclusions from this section’s empirical analysis are threefold. First, male/female polarization on policy preferences is mainly present among voters. Thus, gender is clearly important in explaining the policy preferences of voters, but this polarization is not translated to the elites; therefore, we have a case of poor gender representation. Even though some gender differences among voters are mediated by party preferences, others are not translated to political elites, which demonstrates poor substantive representation. This happens despite the high gender inequality in Portugal, the severe impact of the austerity crisis on women, and the growing feminization of the Portuguese parliament. Second, the effects of the crisis in gender differences on policy preferences are not apparent, even among voters. For some issues, such as left-right socioeconomic and affirmative action for women, gender polarization exists before and after the crisis. It was only for some cultural issues (like same-sex marriages, immigration, and abortion), which were not so clearly related to the Great Recession (Freire et al. 2016), that gender differences became relevant only after the crisis, meaning the causal connection is not clear. ASSESSING THE POWER OF GENDER ON POLICY PREFERENCES Do the significant gender differences in policy preferences found above, especially among voters, remain when we control for sociodemographic and ideological variables? To answer this question, we performed a set of linear regressions for the years and issues in which we had found statistical differences (tables 6.1–6.3). For these sets of multiple regressions, we considered the answers to each of the issues or sets of issues (indices) as our dependent variables, always segmented by level (voter and elite) and year. The independent variables are the usual suspects: gender, age, education, church attendance, and left-right self-placement—that is to say, we control for other social and political factors relevant for explaining variations in policy preferences. We begin with those issues in which there are significant gender differences in 2008 (table 6.2) and 2016 (tables 6.3), which is the case only for voters. When we consider the socioeconomic issues, gender differences vanish when we introduce the control variables: in 2008 only age has a significant effect, with older people being more right-wing in socioeconomic policy, while in

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Table 6.2  Explaining Variation in Policy Preferences of Voters in 2008 (OLS Regressions) Voters 2008

Independent variables Gender (0=Male) Age Education Church attendance Left-right self-placement Observations R2

Economic left-right values index, B (b)

Women should be given preferential treatment when applying for jobs and promotions, B (b)

−0.040 (−0.038) 0.001 (0.045)** 0.040 (0.133) 0.001 (0.005) 0.001 (0.004) 888 0.120 (12%)

−0.180 (−0.094)** 0.004 (0.067) 0.098 (0.179)*** −0.052 (−0.098)** −0.023 (−0.050) 866 0.058 (5.8%)

Notes: (1) ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05. (2) In the cells, non-standardized regression coefficients are shown; standardized beta coefficients are inside the brackets. Sources: Data elaborated by the authors relying upon the mass and elite surveys fielded within the research projects directed by Freire and Viegas (2008a and 2008b), Freire et al. (2012, 2013), and Freire et al. (2017a and 2017b), and the correspondent datasets (merged by Augusta Correia). (The table is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

2016 the only significant variable is left-right self-placement, with right-wing voters being more socioeconomically neoliberal (0.032). So, despite the poor substantive representation, we can see that some of the gender differences are mediated by age and ideology, which means that gender differences are partially translated at the upper level through traditional party channels. For women’s affirmative action, gender differences are more resilient to the introduction of controls, with women always being more progressive than men, although education and church attendance (2008) or age and education (2016) also matter. People who are older (0.006) and more educated (0.117) are always more conservative on this issue, but the contrary is true for the more religious people (−0.005), who are more favorable to affirmative action (note that higher values on the dependent variables always mean more conservative positions). In any case, gender differences are clearly more resilient in women-related issues, as was found elsewhere (Espírito-Santo et al. 2018). We now turn to issues that show significant gender differences only in 2016. Gender differences are more resilient only for same-sex marriages (again, a gender-related issue) in the case of voters: women remain more progressive than men (−0.400) even when we control for other factors. The other significant control variables are age (older people are less liberal: – 0.010), education (more educated people are more liberal: −0.070), church attendance (more religious people are more conservative: – 0.144), and left-right selfplacement (more right-wing people are less liberal: – 0.069). There is another women-related issue with significant gender differences for voters and elites—abortion; however, it is only among the elite that gender differences

Independent variables 0.070 (0.032) −0.010 (−0.135)*** −0.031 (−0.045) −0.018 (−0.031) −0.002 (−0.005) 1,567 0.020 (2%)

−0.400 (−0.174)*** 0.010 (0.112)*** −0.070 (−0.085)** 0.144 (0.202)*** 0.069 (0.129)*** 1,567 0.120 (12%)

−0.026 (−0.028) −0.001 (−0.041) 0.001 (0.004) 0.000 (0.002) 0.032 (0.147)*** 1,567 0.024 (2.4%)

Economic left-right values index, B (b)

Economic Left-Right Issues

−0.333 (−0.158)*** 0.006 (0.074)** 0.117 (0.155)*** −0.005 (−0.007) 0.009 (0.017) 1,567 0.046 (4.6%)

Women should be given preferential treatment when applying for jobs and promotions, B (b)

−0.088 (−0.041) −0.003 (−0.38) −0.004 (−0.006) 0.155 (0.231)*** 0.044 (0.087)*** 1,567 0.067 (6.7%)

Women should be free to decide on matters of abortion, B (b)

Issues That Particularly Affect Women

−0.370 (−0.161)** 0.009 (0.092) 0.070 (0.084) 0.160 (0.285)*** 0.187 (0.374)*** 185 0.358 (35.8%)

Women should be free to decide on matters of abortion, B (b)

Candidates 2016

Notes: (1) ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05. (2) In the cells, non-standardized regression coefficients are shown; standardized beta coefficients are inside the brackets. Sources: Data elaborated by the authors from mass and elite surveys fielded by research projects directed by Freire and Viegas (2008a; 2008b), Freire et al. (2012; 2013), and Freire et al. (2017a; 2017b), and the corresponding datasets (merged by Augusta Correia). (The table is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

Observations R2

Left-right self-placement

Church attendance

Education

Age

Gender (0=Male)

Immigrants are good for Portugal’s economy, B (b)

Same-sex marriages should be prohibited by law, B (b)

Authoritarian-Libertarian Value Issues

Voters 2016

Table 6.3  Explaining Variation in Policy Preferences of Voters and Political Elites in 2016 (OLS Regressions)

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remain significant after controls are introduced (although sharing the effects with church attendance and ideology, all impact in the expected direction). Women candidates are more liberal than their male counterparts on matters that mainly affect women, such as abortion (−0.370). This seems to be in line with most empirical studies that find, when compared to male politicians, female politicians tend to act in a more feminist direction: that is, they adopt the gender equality position (Campbell et al. 2010; Childs 2004; Childs and Webb 2012; Conway et a. 1997; Diaz 2005; Kittilson 2008; Lovenduski and Norris 2003; Macdonald and O’Brien 2011; Wängnerud and Sundell 2012). However, there are also studies that conclude otherwise (Tremblay and Pelletier 2000; Studlar and McAllister 2002). Nevertheless, gender differences vanish among voters after the addition of such controls as church attendance and ideology (in the expected direction: the more religious and/or more right-wing the voter, the less liberal they are on the abortion issue). Finally, on immigration, gender differences among voters also lose statistical significance after we control for age, meaning older people are more in favor of immigration (−0.010). Overall, this section shows that on gender-related issues (affirmative action toward women, same-sex marriage, and abortion, although the latter only for the political elites) the effects of gender on policy preferences remain after the introduction of social and political controls, which means gender-specific differences are important for these subjects. In all other cases, the significant effects of gender at the bivariate level vanish when we introduce controls, which means they are mediated by other variables (social class, church attendance, ideology, and age), meaning we can argue poor gender-substantive representation is perhaps mitigated by mediated representation through other traditional party channels. CONCLUSION This study posed three basic questions. First, we wanted to know if there are significant gender differences among Portuguese voters in terms of policy preferences on socioeconomic, authoritarian-libertarian, and gender-related issues. The answer was clearly positive for all these issues or sets of issues (indices), especially in 2016 but also in 2008 (socioeconomic left-right and affirmative action toward women). Our second question was to determine whether these gender differences on issue preferences among voters are translated to the political elite level (MPs and unsuccessful parliamentary candidates), and the answer here was clearly negative, except on the issue of abortion. This means Portugal is an example of poor substantive political representation in gender terms. Our third research question was to determine whether those gender differences in policy preferences among voters and elites remain even after we control for other factors. Here the answers are mixed: yes, they are pretty

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resilient on gender-related issues but not on socioeconomic or immigration issues. For the latter issues, they are primarily mediated by other factors (social class, religion, ideology, and age) which means that, first, the gender differences noted above are not really gender specific and so, second, poor gender-substantive representation is somehow mitigated through representation across traditional party channels. Overall, we found there to be more gender-based issue polarization at the voter level than at the elite level, which is why we classified Portugal as an example of poor substantive political representation in gender terms. What could be a theoretical justification for the fact polarization seems to exist more among voters and less among political elites? We cannot fully answer this question here and believe this is clearly a topic for future research on gender representation in Portugal. However, two tentative explanations come to mind. First, political elites are more constrained by party discipline than voters, particularly on crystalized issues, so for this reason alone, it makes sense to find it less within party gender dissent among political elites than among voters. Second, much of the gender dissent among voters vanishes when we control for other factors, which means the gender differences noted above are not really gender-specific but are due to social, cultural, and ideological heterogeneity among party voters of both genders, and that this heterogeneity is much smaller among the political elite within each party. Finally, we wanted to know how, and if, gender-substantive representation changed with the crisis. We found no evidence of the effects of the Great Recession since there were no significant changes to the significance of gender differences between voters and candidates over time. Here we argue that ideological congruence between citizens and MPs is a useful concept for understanding how women or any other social group is adequately represented. However, in Portugal and elsewhere, most research on ideological congruence uses median citizen congruence, which does not account for how political elites represent social groups, particularly women, in substantive terms. We have clearly shown that this is a promising avenue for future research in Portugal and comparatively. Further research could address how MPs might differ from unsuccessful parliamentary candidates and include more variables on women-related issues as a means of better assessing policy preferences across a more comprehensive set of issues that are of interest to women as a social group. NOTES 1. English language and formal editing of the present chapter was done by Stewart Lloyd-Jones ([email protected]).

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2. Class and age can also influence how MPs position themselves across a wide range of indicators. 3. An electoral coalition of the Communist Party (PCP, Partido Comunista Português) and the Greens (PEV, Partido Ecologista “Os Verdes”). 4. For further details about the data and data collection methods used, see the introduction to the present volume and Freire and Viegas (2008a, 2008b); Freire et al. (2012, 2013), and Freire et al. (2016, 2017). 5. Data elaborated by the authors using the voter and deputy surveys in Freire and Viegas (2008a, 2008b), Freire et al. (2012, 2013), and Freire et al. (2016, 2017). 6. The voter surveys were fielded by TNS: Euroteste (2008), Metris - GFK (2012) and Netquest (2016): see Freire and Viegas (2008a), Freire et al. (2012, 2017), for complete references. 7. The only exception is the question about fighting inequalities that, while can be said to refer basically to the same underlying concept (the fight against inequalities), has a different formulation for MPs and voters. 8. 2008 voters index—Cronbach’s alpha: 0.674 (after removing the variable for the creation of the economic left-right index 2008: “The present levels of social protection must be kept the same even if that means increasing taxes.” Cronbach’s alpha increased to 0.748). 9. 2012 Voter index—Cronbach’s alpha: 0.425 (after removing the variable for the creation of the economic left-right index 2008: “The present levels of social protection must be kept the same even if that means increasing taxes.” Cronbach’s alpha increased to 0.516). 10. Although the index is less reliable in the 2012 and 2016 voter samples, we still have reasonable reliability for this instrument because it is almost equal to 0.600 (DeVellis 1991). 11. Different sets of indicators were tested to build an authoritarian-libertarian values index; however, we could not make an index with reasonable internal consistency valid for the three years. 12. See Espírito-Santo et al. (2018) for more on issue crystallization at the party level.

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Chapter 7

Opening the Black Box of “Constraining Dissensus” Euroskepticism and Intraparty Dissent in Portugal before and after the Crisis1 Marco Lisi and Vera Ramalhete

INTRODUCTION The economic and financial crisis that hit Europe in 2008 heightened the relevance of Euroskepticism at both the mass and party levels. While we observed growing negative attitudes of national electorates vis-à-vis European integration, there were also signs of a shift in party positions. On the one hand, mainstream parties have become more prone to adopt “soft euroskepticism.” On the other, “hard-euroskeptic” parties have enjoyed an electoral boost. This shift came to the surface primarily during the 2014 European elections, leading to a sharp rise in EU opposition among MEPs. The analysis of party stances vis-à-vis Europe is pertinent to a number of research questions. First, it may affect interparty competition since challenger parties tend to exploit issues on which there is considerable dissent within governing parties, notably European integration (van de Wardt et al. 2014). Second, intraparty cohesion2 may be consequential for legislative success and coalition behavior and can also impact government stability (Saalfeld 2009; Pedersen 2010). Yet, there are very few studies that link intraparty dissent to distinct party families and that examine its evolution over time. This is of the utmost importance especially in Southern Europe, the region that most suffered the impact of the Eurocrisis. Since the democratic transition, the “European option” has been a constant feature of Portuguese foreign policy and of the programmatic orientations of the main parties. This was a highly consensual issue among both the political elite and public opinion, and this general belief was linked not only to 151

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the process of democratic consolidation but also to economic modernization (Lobo and Magalhães 2011). However, the financial and economic crisis that exploded in 2008 was to break up this consensus. Like other Southern European democracies, Portugal was severely affected by the crisis and was forced to request financial assistance in 2011. Therefore, the main governing parties agreed to ask for a 78 billion euro bailout from the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission (EC), and the assistance program included a number of “structural reforms,” that is unpopular and painful austerity measures with a far-reaching impact on the welfare state and the public sector. This huge exogenous shock had a dramatic effect at both the political and societal levels. Changes also emerged in citizens’ attitudes toward the European Union (EU); at the peak of the crisis (2013), almost 80 percent of Portuguese believed that their voice was not heard in the EU, while only 25 percent of respondents had a positive image of the EU (see Freire et al. 2015). These data are in stark contrast with the enthusiasm about the European integration process that characterized public opinion in the period before the crisis. For example, the percentage for negative opinions on EU membership and the benefits it offers a country was in single figures in the 1980s and 1990s (Verney 2011, 18–19). After the end of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and the 2015 legislative elections, another remarkable change took place. In terms of economic indicators, country performance gradually improved as shown by the fall in unemployment rates (from 16.2 in 2013 to 8.9 percent in 2017), the control of the public deficit and a significant increase in GDP (from −4 percent in 2012 to 2.7 percent in 2017). At the political level, there was an important innovation in the Portuguese party system when the two radical left parties—which have traditionally been considered anti-government parties— decided to cooperate with the Socialists and to support a minority government led by the PS (Partido Socialista, Socialist Party) leader António Costa (see Lisi 2016; Fernandes et al. 2018). This chapter uses the case of Portugal to show how intraparty dissent may vary in a fast-changing environment. To what extent do attitudes toward the process of European integration vary across distinct parties? How has intraparty dissent toward Europe evolved in this changing political and economic environment? Is it possible to identify specific conditions that facilitate intraparty dissent? These are the main questions addressed in this study. Given the fundamental change that has occurred in Portugal over the past decade, the longitudinal analysis of intraparty dissent in Portuguese parties provides an excellent opportunity to deepen our knowledge on this neglected topic and to shed more light on the evolution of party stances on EU matters. Our main hypothesis states that, all other things being equal, intraparty dissent

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has increased since the onset of the economic crisis. We test this hypothesis using a new dataset that relies on candidate surveys in Portugal for the period 2008–2017. In contrast to data based on experts’ evaluations or strategic documents from the parties themselves (party manifestos), our data allows us to study directly the position taken by the political elite and to explore variations within parties regarding the EU. Taking intraparty dissent as an important aspect in the context of growing Euroskepticism, this study argues that the impact of past (organizational and ideological) legacy on European issues is stronger than exogenous shocks favoring a shift in political elites’ positions on European integration. Yet, external shocks have also been consequential, especially for smaller parties. Overall, this study innovates extant research in several ways. On theoretical grounds, it contributes to a better understanding of the interaction between the political and economic context and intraparty dissent. Empirically, this work aims to go beyond the literature that focuses on European issues as one single dimension by disentangling the concept of Euroskepticism. Last but not least, it adds to existing studies by examining an understudied case. The chapter is structured as follows. The next section reviews findings of previous studies on party stances toward Euroskepticism during the Great Recession. In the following section, we examine the Portuguese case in detail and present the main hypotheses to be tested in the empirical part. The third section describes our data and the main variables used to investigate our research questions, as well as the methods we employ. The empirical analysis consists of two steps. First, we examine the evolution of parties’ stances on European integration over time. Second, we test our hypotheses by using multivariate analysis. The conclusions summarize the main findings and discuss some avenues for future research. EUROSKEPTICISM, INTRAPARTY DISSENT, AND THE CRISIS: LITERATURE REVIEW The analysis of party and voter stances on Europe is now a consistent body of research within comparative politics (e.g., Leruth et al. 2017). This topic is of the utmost importance not only because of the emergence of new actors that politicized this new issue, but also because of the consequences in terms of multilevel politics and democratic governance. Indeed, conventional research has argued that European issues have restructured contemporary party systems. From this viewpoint, this new dimension of competition is deemed to cut across the traditional left-right cleavage (e.g., Hooghe et al. 2002; Kriesi et al. 2008), thus fostering deep intraparty conflicts (Franklin et al. 1996).

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An important line of research has studied the role of intraparty dissent in shaping the stance of political parties on Europe and the salience of these issues. A party is ideologically homogeneous when its members share the same opinions and beliefs. To investigate this phenomenon, scholars commonly employ the term “party dissent.” With respect to European issues, this concept has been traditionally defined as the internal divisions within political parties around the issue of European integration (Franklin et al. 1994; Ray 2003; Steenbergen 2007).3 Dissent is generally related to intraparty cohesion, since it often implies disagreements within parties at the leadership level or among grassroots (activists, sympathizers, or voters). To the best of our knowledge, two key studies examined intraparty cohesion on Europe. The first was the pioneering work on middle-level elites— operationalized as the delegates attending party congresses or conferences (Reif et al. 1980)—which sought to examine how parties diverge on the European integration process according to the opinions expressed by party activists. This research, however, is now dated and no subsequent studies have attempted to update the findings or expand this object of study. The issue of party dissent on European issues was also studied in the framework of the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) project covering the period 1984–2017. Overall, the findings suggest that intraparty dissent has increased over time, and that there are important country differences. In particular, the UK displays higher levels of dissent (5.31 on average in the period 1984–2002, on a 0–10 scale where 0 is complete cohesion and 10 is the maximum division), while Southern European countries (Greece and Spain) show the highest level of internal homogeneity. Portugal has an intermediate position with an average of 3.47, slightly below the European mean (3.66). However, more recent data (collected in 2017, fifteen European countries) show that the overall level of dissent has decreased, and Portugal presents one of the highest levels of intraparty divergences (2.72), well above other Southern European countries (the mean for Spain is 2.15, Italy registers a value of 2.12, and Greece 2.05). In addition to country differences, empirical research has also shown that there are distinct patterns across party types or families. Euroskeptic parties tend to be more internally cohesive and to give more salience to these topics, with the expectation of obtaining electoral benefits. There is also evidence that bigger parties are most likely to show higher levels of party dissent, that is, have relatively heterogeneous positions regarding European issues. By contrast, small parties—receiving less than 5 percent of the vote—are more cohesive (Gabel and Scheeve 2007). It is also worth noting that European matters do not represent a single political issue. Rather, some items focus on the “constitutive” side of integration—such as general references to the EU or European integration—while

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other studies examine the EU’s performance more directly—in terms of institutions, policies, etc. Indeed, Szczerbiak and Taggart’s (2008) seminal study showed that Euroskepticism can take different forms and can be interpreted in distinct ways (see also Vasilopoulou 2009). One of the goals of this research is to disentangle party stances on Europe according to different dimensions. Intraparty dissent may vary according to distinct (European) policy dimensions. While we should find more intraparty dissent on constitutive issues (i.e., “generalized support”) in mainstream parties, it is unclear whether this pattern holds in terms of satisfaction with the EU (“specific support”). In this case the pattern may even be the opposite, especially when parties aim to strategically differentiate their positions visà-vis other moderate parties, thus signaling to public opinion a shift toward more responsive positions. How has the European crisis affected the preferences of public opinion and political parties? The European crisis has certainly aroused more public and academic interest in the subject. This was a multifaceted crisis that entailed not only the economic turmoil originated from the financial crisis, but also the migration problem that affected both public opinion and the European level of governance. Two specific strands of research have been developed. While great scholarly attention has been dedicated to the analysis of the impact of the crisis on political competition, as well as citizens’ attitudes toward the political system (see, for instance, Armingeon and Guthmann 2014; Torcal 2014), another line of inquiry has focused on the changing stances of political parties in terms of specific policies during the crisis (e.g., Charalambous et al. 2018; Plescia et al. 2019). Empirical research has found that the crisis has challenged the identity of mainstream parties. On the one hand, austerity politics has forced left-wing actors to redefine their strategies and programmatic stances (see March and Keith 2016). On the other, the issue of European integration has become highly divisive within moderate parties. Both issues are key to understanding the success of challenger parties in the euro zone (Hobolt and Tilley 2016). Therefore, one important outcome of the Eurocrisis might be the decrease in internal ideological homogeneity, that is representatives belonging to the same party are more likely to display different attitudes or political preferences. The study of public opinion’s response to the economic crisis has highlighted the evolution of Euroskepticism from the margins to the mainstream of national political systems (Brack and Startin 2015). The global economic crisis and the ensuing Eurozone crisis have highlighted the redistributive effects of monetary integration. Consequently, Euroskeptic parties in most member states were able to exploit the prevailing sense of disconnection and hostility toward European institutions and policy. The crisis has thus

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deepened divisions within Europe, as shown not only at the public opinion level (e.g., Braimbridge 2017) but also in terms of media debates (e.g., Michailidou 2015). In other words, the European crisis has led to the end of the “permissive consensus” phase and the emergence of a new era characterized by “constraining dissensus.” Moreover, research also shows that public attitudes toward the EU are increasingly driven by utilitarian considerations, whereas identity concerns have become less important. Voters have become more sensitive to a cost–benefit analysis of European economic governance, rather than relying on national attachments (Hobolt and Wratil 2015). Moving to the supply-side of political competition, Whitefield and Rohrschneider (2016) provide the most comprehensive study addressing the political parties’ shift toward the EU. This study shows that mainstream parties did not substantially change their stances during the crisis. Conversely, more extreme parties—from both the left and the right—have been more responsive to the increase in voters’ Euroskepticism. These findings were also confirmed for Southern European countries, which have displayed a growing polarization of European orientations since the onset of the Great Recession (Charalambous et al. 2018). This has important implications for party-voter alignments as it decreases the congruence between mainstream parties and their electoral supporters, thus strengthening the performance and success of more Euroskeptic parties. To sum up, we can draw three conclusions from this literature review. First, intraparty cohesion has become an important phenomenon for understanding how stances on Europe have evolved and their potential effects on national political systems. Second, the European crisis is a critical juncture that has fundamentally altered attitudes and behaviors regarding the integration process. Third, explaining intraparty dissent not only entails disentangling this complex phenomenon across different dimensions, but also examining party differences and their evolution over time. The next section explains why the Portuguese case is suitable to validate existing theories and to further our knowledge on the topic. In doing so, we will also outline the context of the Portuguese case by describing the evolution of its party system during and after (i.e., since the end of the MoU in 2014) the Eurozone crisis. THE EVOLUTION OF EUROSKEPTICISM BEFORE AND AFTER THE CRISIS: THE PORTUGUESE CASE Portugal provides an interesting case to explore intraparty dissent on European issues. First, Portugal has long been considered a clearly pro-European country and one of the best supporters of European integration. Second, the country is one of the few cases that experienced external conditionality

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during the crisis, with a significant intervention from European and international actors in domestic politics. Furthermore, Portugal is also one of the few countries with a long-lasting radical left that have maintained relatively high electoral support (between 15 and 20 percent). From this viewpoint, by looking at the variation and evolution of intraparty stances on Europe displayed by Portuguese actors it will not only be possible to validate extant theories but also to develop new hypotheses that can be applied in other countries displaying similar characteristics. All moderate parties that emerged after the Portuguese democratic transition displayed positive attitudes toward the European integration process. For the two main governing parties (PS, center-left, and PSD [Social Democratic Party, Partido Social Democrata], center-right), Europe was the hallmark of their democratic and Western credentials. The orientation adopted by the right-wing CDS-PP (Centro Democrático e Social-Partido Popular [Social and Democratic Center-Popular Party], conservative right) was somewhat distinct, especially due to its emphasis on the ties to Portuguese-speaking countries and the Atlantic axis. Yet, this nuance did not mean that the party questioned the overall strategy of Portuguese governments or the overwhelming support of the public opinion for European integration. The consensus on the prospect of accession to the EC was broken only by the position taken by the PCP. The Communists opposed accession and displayed very critical attitudes toward European policies. The PCP considered that the costs of joining the EEC (European Economic Community) by far exceeded the benefits of the European funds channeled to the country and opposed the strengthening of the relations between Portugal and Europe. Indeed, the PCP was the only party that voted in Parliament against both the Accession Treaty and the Single European Act. As far as we know, there are no studies addressing the issue of intraparty dissent on European issues in Portugal. Previous studies have focused on the comparison between voters’ and MPs’ attitudes on this subject, achieving the following results. First, there was an increase in Euroskeptic attitudes during the crisis, especially among left voters (Freire et al. 2015). Second, this research found that the evaluation of the MoU was an important factor that influenced voters’ and MPs’ attitudes. Nevertheless, a recent study points out that MPs’ stances on Europe displayed remarkable stability during the crisis and they did not follow the general pattern of increasing Euroskepticism that emerges when we look at parties’ public orientations (Charalambous et al. 2018). And yet this stability may hide a more heterogeneous distribution of preferences within the parties. Despite the great cohesion of parliamentary groups in Portugal, MPs sometimes decide to vote against the party line.4 This is particularly true for bigger parties (PS and PSD) and Europe is one of the issues on which party dissent emerged.

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Several works associate intraparty dissent to the dynamics of interparty competition and the salience of European issues (Steenbergen and Scott 2004). In the Portuguese case, European issues have not been a core dimension for party competition. The depoliticization of this subject stems from the consensus between the main governing parties, as well in public opinion, on support for the EU. However, during the crisis there was an increase in the salience attributed by political parties to this topic. According to the CHES, the average salience for all parties was 5.9 in 2006, and increased substantially during the implementation of the MoU, reaching a peak in 2014 (7.2). Nevertheless, this issue was removed from the 2015 election campaign in a strategic move that anticipated the cooperation between left parties (see also Fernandes et al. 2018, 9). Given the above considerations, we thus expect that: H1: During the crisis period intraparty dissent on EU issues increased for mainstream parties.

A variation of this first hypothesis refers specifically to the PS. During the Socialist minority government led by José Sócrates (2009–2011), Portugal experienced an explosive combination of an economic and political crisis. Economically, the country went into a situation of bankruptcy, leading the main governing parties—PS, PSD, and CDS-PP—to sign the MoU with the so-called Troika in May 2011. As a consequence, a comprehensive package of austerity measures was implemented, which significantly deteriorated economic indicators.5 Roberts reminds (2017, 5–6) us that typically economic crises not only erode the consensus around previous policies but also make governing parties take unpopular measures and market-based adjustment policies. In addition, the European dimension emerged as a crucial constraint in the context of the Great Recession that limited sovereign control over fiscal, monetary, and exchange rates. This situation is likely to foster programmatic de-alignment when structural reforms are implemented by an established party of the left. The “neo-liberal” convergence during the Troika period also had important implications for the traditional euro-enthusiasm shown by the Socialists. First, the PS aligned with the radical left in support of the renegotiation of the public debt, while the PSD firmly rejected this hypothesis (Fernandes and Santana-Pereira 2014, 91). Second, the Socialists were against permanent cuts in pensions and reforms, which were key measures advocated by European institutions to resolve the country’s bankruptcy. Finally, it is also worth noting that the PS experienced a leadership change in 2014, when Costa replaced António José Seguro through a primary election. The new leader was seen as more leftist than the previous secretary-general, less inclined to compromise with the right-wing government and European institutions and

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more critical of the consensus on austerity measures. Given all these conditions, we hypothesize the following: H1a: Intraparty dissent on European issues increases mostly for the Socialist party after 2011.

The literature also points out the differences between generalized and specific support for the EU. Although we do not have clear expectations on the differences in intraparty dissent between these two dimensions, their dependence on external factors should lead to distinct trends over time. While the first dimension is associated with ideology and is anchored in more long-term values, specific support is more context-dependent and is influenced by shortterm factors. As a consequence, we expect to find a growing intraparty dissent with regard to specific support, regardless of the party family. H2: Intraparty dissent is likely to increase more for the “instrumental” dimension of European support (satisfaction with the EU), compared to the dimensions of generalized support.

We also test a number of hypotheses that aim to explain the cohesion of parties on European integration. Although only a few empirical studies address this question (Garry 1995; Cowley 2002; Giannetti and Pedrazzani 2016), two rival theories have been tested for explaining intraparty dissent. On the one hand, representatives that are ideologically distant (on the left-right dimension) from their party are also more likely to display less cohesive positions (H3a). This seems to make sense since party activists with higher levels of political interest and engagement are less likely to display (leftright) ideological congruence, showing a stronger probability of taking different positions and defecting from the party line (Köll and Polk 2017). On the other, we can hypothesize that consensus among party elites in public office depends on their background. Drawing on socialization theories, the hypothesis stems from the decisive influence that personal trajectories and networks have on the formation of political attitudes. From this standpoint, those MPs with a party career, in other words, “professional politicians,” will be more likely to display coherent positions toward their respective party. Vice versa, those candidates who are relatively “new” to party politics— that is they do not have any relevant experience in terms of public or party office—are more prone to display higher levels of dissent (H3b). Finally, we aim to investigate whether the Great Recession had an impact on intraparty dissent, independently from the previous theories. As such, we posit that the crisis is likely to increase intraparty divergences, regardless of party affiliation (H3c).

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H3a: MPs and candidates ideologically closer (on the left-right dimension) to their respective parties are less likely to show dissident attitudes toward the EU. H3b: MPs and candidates holding a party office and senior representatives are expected to show lower levels of intraparty dissent. H3c: The crisis has a positive effect on intraparty dissent, regardless of party affiliation.

Our last hypothesis concerns the differences between candidates and MPs. We expect the former group to show higher levels of party dissent on European issues given their ideological heterogeneity and their lack of political socialization. Both factors are likely to reduce intraparty cohesion on issues that have a low salience. H3d: Prospective MPs (candidates) tend to present a higher level of dissent on European issues than elected MPs.

DATA AND METHODS To test these hypotheses, we draw on a new longitudinal dataset of surveys applied to Portuguese candidates. The same questions on representatives’ attitudes toward EU were applied in 2008, 2012–2013, and 2016–2017. The data were collected mainly through face-to-face interviews with candidates based on a structured questionnaire, and the dataset has a representative distribution of the five main Portuguese parties (weights were applied when necessary). The fieldwork was conducted from March to July 2008, from June 2012 to May 2013, and from September 2016 to March 2017. To measure Euroskepticism and candidates’ attitudes toward the EU, we use three variables that concern different dimensions. First, we look at the standard measure for EU support (Henkaj et al. 2012) that asks for a static opinion regarding the country’s membership through the question “Generally speaking, do you think that Portugal’s membership of the EU is a good thing, a bad thing, or neither good nor bad?” A different approach to generalized support focuses on a more dynamic perspective (Rose and Borse 2016) and asks the following question: “Some say European unification should be pushed further. Others say it has already gone too far. What is your opinion?” on a scale between 0 and 10, where 0 represents “has already gone too far” and 10 means “should be pushed further.” Finally, there is also an indicator of the evaluation of the EU performance: “All in all, are you very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied or not at all satisfied with the way democracy works in the European Union?”

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We first look at the evolution of these three variables over time and by party. In addition to the evolution of Euroskeptic attitudes, we focus on intraparty dissent on these issues. After the descriptive analysis of the evolution of Portuguese parties’ dissent on Euroskeptic attitudes, we look at the individual level and use multivariate analysis to explain why some candidates are more prone to present divergent positions from their respective parties on European issues. Drawing on original data collected before and after the crisis, we use as dependent variable the distance of prospective candidates’ positions visà-vis their party’s mean position6 in each question about the EU (taking only the degree of dissent into consideration and not its direction). As for the independent variables, we use left-right ideological congruence and party experience as well as some sociodemographic control variables (gender and age) and district magnitude.7 We operationalize (left-right) ideological congruence by measuring the distance between candidates’ selfplacement on the left-right scale (ranging from 0 to 10) and candidates’ perception of the placement of their respective party.8 As for party experience, we test two different operationalizations. The first is a dichotomous variable based on whether candidates have ever held a national party office, whereas the second is an indicator of candidates’ experience in local office (as mayor or president of the parish council). Finally, we include dummies for each year of the survey in order to control for period effects. RESULTS According to the public opinion surveys conducted before and after the crisis (2008–2017), there was a slight increase in Euroskepticism among Portuguese citizens during the crisis followed in the post crisis (after 2014) by a small recovery in support of the EU. The generalized support for EU membership (“EU membership is neither good or bad”) decreases from an average of 2.4 in 2008 to 2.1 in 2012, and then recovers slightly to 2.2 in the 2016 survey. In terms of EU integration, the mean position is also in the middle of the scale: 5.1 in 2008, with a fall to 3.9 toward less unification during the crisis, and back to 4.9 in 2016. On the contrary, satisfaction with EU democracy shows a clear negative trend: from 2.6 in 2008 to 2.1 in 2012 and remained virtually unchanged in 2016. To what extent do representatives show the same pattern? Overall, our data show that during the crisis there was an increase in Euroskeptic positions for both “generalized support” dimensions (membership and integration process). Although support for the EU remains generally quite high, candidates’ positive evaluations of the EU throughout this period show a slight decline (see figure 7.1). The assessment of EU membership as a good thing decreased

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on average from 2.7 to 2.5 between 2008 and 2016. Attitudes toward satisfaction with EU democracy follow the same pattern (declining from 2.3 to 2). Finally, we observe a curvilinear trend with regard to the evaluation of the European integration process. Overall, positive opinions increased between 2008 and 2012, but this was followed by a significant fall to the lowest score of 5.2. Although these shifts are difficult to interpret, they might be associated with the circumstantial debate on the EU and with political elites taking some time to form their opinions. As a result, H1 is only partially confirmed. It is also worth noting that there are manifest differences between candidates and MPs, with the latter group more likely to show lower levels of Euroskepticism (always statistically significant, p < .001).9 Moving to the analysis of intraparty dissent before and after the crisis (see right side of figure 7.1), three points are worthy of note. First, in general parties display a relatively low degree of dissent, with no significant differences between the three dimensions under consideration. Second, there are no big shifts over the period, especially with regard to the dimensions of generalized support. The results seem to contradict our second hypothesis given that satisfaction with EU democracy does not reveal growing intraparty conflicts. Finally, intraparty cohesion is stronger when we only consider MPs; candidates show more heterogeneous opinions. Looking in detail at the evaluation of EU membership, it is not surprising to find a widespread and generalized consensus among the main governing parties on the positive assessment of EU membership (table 7.1).10 The PCP presents the opposite picture as negative opinions prevail, whereas the BE is an intermediate case with more diverse views on the subject. The data also show that the assessment of the EU as a bad thing increased for radical left forces, in particular (especially in the case of PCP where there is unanimity

Figure 7.1  Candidates’ Attitudes toward Europe and Intraparty Dissent (2008–2016). Note: Mean of candidates’ answers, weighted by parliamentary representation. Questions have different scales: membership evaluation as a good or bad thing is a 3-point scale, democracy satisfaction is measured in a 4-point scale, and unification is assessed in a 11-point scale. Source: Freire and Viegas (2008); Freire et al. (2013, 2017). (The figures are author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

2.64 0.51

1.47 0.52

6.60 2.09

1.84 0.49

6.08 2.09

2012

2.76 0.36

2008

3.16 2.53

1.31 0.44

1.95 0.58

2016

5.11 1.89

2.43 0.46

2.72 0.42

2008

6.27 2.21

2.32 0.60

2.78 0.35

2012

CDS-PP

5.86 1.93

2.29 0.41

2.90 0.18

2016

Source: See figure 7.1. (The table is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

Membership (1–3) Mean Intraparty dissent Satisfaction with EU (1–4) Mean Intraparty dissent European integration (1–10) Mean Intraparty dissent

Survey

BE

1.06 1.34

1.25 0.38

1.38 1.38

2008

Table 7.1  Candidates’ Attitudes toward Europe, by Party and Year (2008–2016)

1.52 1.78

1.41 0.48

1.36 1.36

2012

PCP

0.94 1.15

1.39 0.52

1.17 1.17

2016

8.18 1.26

2.52 0.57

3.0 0

2008

7.88 1.73

2.15 0.47

2.95 0.10

2012

PS

7.53 1.95

2.09 0.40

2.96 0.08

2016

6.51 1.88

2.77 0.46

2.98 0.04

2008

3.0 0

7.89 7.01 1.35 1.37

2.76 2.65 0.57 0.49

2.98 0.04

2012 2016

PSD

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on a negative assessment) or went from “good” to “neither good or bad” (the case of BE). Conversely, the PS, PSD, and CDS-PP positive view of EU membership remained stable (and even increased in case of the CDS-PP). Finally, it is worth noting that there are differences between candidates and elected MPs, with the former group displaying lower levels of EU (generalized) support. However, this difference only achieves statistical significance in 2008 and 2016 (p < 0.05 and p < 0.001, respectively). The BE registers the highest score of intraparty dissent, followed by the PCP, while the Socialists show the highest level of cohesion. The left-libertarian party also displays an increase in divergences over time, while dissent decreases for CDS-PP and PCP. Finally, candidates register greater heterogeneity on this dimension with each year. Moving to the second question (“satisfaction with the EU”), the findings confirm the different positions of Portuguese parties toward EU issues (table 7.1). Indeed, PSD candidates show more positive views, followed by prospective MPs from CDS-PP and PS. Communist representatives clearly make a negative evaluation of EU performance, while the BE presents more moderate positions. Regarding longitudinal trends, most parties’ evaluation of EU democracy decreases, notably that of BE (−29 percent in the party’s average evaluation between 2008 and 2016) and PS (−20 percent). The only exception to this pattern is the PCP, whose positive evaluation of EU democracy improves between 2008 and 2012, and then declines slightly in 2016. As far as intraparty dissent with regard to EU performance is concerned, the PCP is still the most cohesive party, while more divergences emerge in the two rightist forces (CDS-PP and PSD). In terms of longitudinal evolution, we do not find a linear trend. The CDS-PP and PS display a growing intraparty consensus, but PCP candidates’ preferences are characterized by an increase in internal divergences. The BE and the PSD do not present a clear trend, with a higher degree of intraparty dissent in 2012 and a slight decrease in the postcrisis period. Finally, it should be noted that it is in this dimension that most differences emerge between candidates and MPs (always significant at p < .001 level). Generally speaking, these findings seem to confirm H3d. Attitudes related to the European integration process only become less positive over time for the PS (from 8.2 to 7.5), while the remaining parties display a curvilinear trend. The biggest shift occurred for BE candidates, declining from 6.6 to 3.2 between 2012 and 2016. If we look at the evolution of intraparty dissent with regard to the “unification” variable, two findings are worth highlighting. First, bigger parties (PS and PSD) show a relatively high degree of consensus, but it is the Communists that display the highest degree of consensus. By contrast, the left-libertarian party seems more internally divided on this issue, followed by the CDS-PP. Second, there is not a clear longitudinal trend as some parties (BE and PS) show a slight increase

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in intraparty dissent, while other forces (namely PCP and CDS-PP) display a curvilinear trend over time, with an increase in internal divergences between 2008 and 2012 and a recovery in the subsequent period. Considering the differences between parties in terms of intraparty dissent, H1a is only partially supported. The Socialists display the greatest increase in internal divergences only for the “unification” variable, while the BE shows the biggest shifts with regard to EU membership and the Communists for satisfaction with the EU. These results allow us to qualify previous findings obtained by the CHES data, which confirm the difficulty of finding a common pattern. Indeed, according to the expert data collected in 2017, the general trend after the bailout shows a decrease in internal divergences, especially for the PS, which moved from 3.7 to 2.7. The only exception to this pattern is the PCP, which displayed an increase in dissent toward Europe. After mapping the evolution of party stances on EU issues and the trends of intraparty dissent, we seek to explain the determinants of intraparty cohesion through a multivariate analysis. As explained in the previous section, the dependent variable is the distance of candidates from the mean position of their respective parties on the two main dimensions of support for the EU, namely generalized and specific support.11 This model includes two main independent variables—left-right ideological congruence and party experience12—and three control variables—gender, age, and district magnitude.13 We also include party membership (taking PCP, the most cohesive party, as the reference category), and the year of the survey (dichotomous variable, 2016 is the year of reference). The first general finding is that the model has little explanatory power for the two dependent variables (see table 7.2). This might be because there is not much to explain as intraparty dissent is quite low for all parties. In other words, with a few exceptions, European matters are not a dividing issue for Portuguese parties, and this may also help explain the overall stability of the party system during the crisis period. Looking at each of the dependent variables separately, the model has several variables for dissent on satisfaction with EU democracy that significantly affect candidates’ attitudes. First, left-right ideological congruence correlates positively with more homogeneous positions of prospective MPs. This means that the greater the ideological distance, the stronger the probability of showing intraparty dissent. By contrast, neither of the party socialization variables is statistically correlated with specific support toward Europe. More interestingly, both survey years reach statistical significance. The coefficient is positive for both years, suggesting that intraparty dissent is lower in 2016 than for the two previous years. As for the control variables, age is positively associated with both our dependent variable (young candidates tend to display more intraparty dissent), and belonging to the CDS-PP. This seems to be

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Table 7.2  Explaining Candidates’ Intraparty Dissent (OLS Regression) Dependent Variable Independent Variable Constant Ideological congruence Party office Local office District magnitude Gender Age BE CDS-PP PS PSD PEV 2008 2012 R2

Satisfaction with EU Democracy

EU Integration

B

Std. Error

B

Std. Error

−3.214 0.026*

(2.124) (0.015)

3.605 0.117*

(9.300) (0.67)

−0.014 – 0.029 −0.006 0.002* 0.006 0.083* 0.007 0.045 0.030 0.062* 0.079**

(0.028) – (0.017) (0.027) (0.001) (0.047) (0.049) (0.049) (0.046) (0.081) (0.034) (0.030)

0.039 (N = 648)

– (0.241) −0.302* (0.175) 0.033 (0.074) 0.022 (0.119) −0.001 (0.005) 0.702*** (0.203) 0.561 ** (0.209) 0.271 (0.207) 0.039 (0.196) 0.389 (0.351) 0.030 (0.161) −0.013 (0.133) 0.049 (N = 648)

Notes: (1) 2016 and PCP as reference categories; (2) *p < 0.1, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001. Source: see figure 7.1. (The table is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

in line with the CHES data, for which the right-wing party shows the highest level of EU dissent. In the model for EU integration—the dependent variable registering higher levels of dissent—(left-right) ideological congruence also shows significant results. It is no surprise that both BE and CDS-PP have a significant impact on intraparty dissent. Compared to “specific support,” this model shows two important differences. On the one hand, party experience affects intraparty dissent. In particular, holding a local office tends to reduce the probability of showing intraparty dissent. On the other, country years do not display any significant impact on the way candidates see European integration. Overall, H3a is confirmed, except for the case of EU membership: prospective MPs ideologically distant from their respective parties are more likely to show dissident attitudes toward the EU. Party experience only seems important in the case of satisfaction with EU, although taking the opposite direction to expected. Consequently, H3b is only partially confirmed. One can hypothesize that senior officials are able to display different views because they already have a more consolidated position in the party; however, the results are not strong and further research is therefore needed on this aspect. Along with (left-right) ideological congruence, the party is the best predictor in the models. Results confirm the expectation that the PCP is a very

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cohesive party. In contrast, BE candidates hold more diverse positions about the EU. This shows that internal conflicts on European issues are not a question of belonging to the radical left spectrum or a matter of party family: two radical left parties show opposite patterns of intraparty dissent.14 Finally, the longitudinal analysis shows significant effects only for satisfaction with the EU, but not in terms of generalized support which remains relatively stable over time. From this viewpoint, H3c is only partially confirmed. CONCLUSION This paper offers a preliminary analysis of party stances on European issues before and after the crisis. Relying on an original dataset, the study allows us to draw interesting conclusions on the evolution of candidates’ attitudes toward the EU. Its main contribution is twofold. First, it maps the evolution of Euroskepticism in Portugal over the past decade, a period characterized by a growing politicization of European matters in the political debate. Second, it assesses intraparty dissent on different components of Euroskepticism by examining how political elites shift their opinions on Europe between 2008 and 2016. The descriptive data analysis of prospective MPs’ attitudes toward the EU has revealed some important findings. On the one hand, our results suggest that there is a significant divide between radical left parties and mainstream forces. Regardless of the specific items considered to evaluate candidates’ preferences, both BE and PCP candidates display more negative opinions than representatives belonging to governing parties. Furthermore, this divide persists even after the U-turn in the alliance strategy of leftist parties that occurred after the 2015 elections. On the other hand, our findings show that the crisis largely had a short-term impact and particularly affected specific support for the EU. Although satisfaction with the EU decreases steadily for all parties, there are no significant shifts in party stances on EU membership; only small and more radical parties show some changes with regard to EU membership. Moreover, the negative impact of the crisis was mainly felt between 2008 and 2012, suggesting that the erosion of (specific and diffuse) support for the EU is circumstantial and linked to the deterioration of economic indicators. Finally, our paper shows that differences between candidates and MPs are more important than differences across parties. As has already been noted (Charalambous et al. 2018), this divergence can lead to a growing incongruence between party leadership and lower echelons of party organizations. We believe that these results are closely related and are both dependent on three important legacies of party Euroskepticism in Portugal. First, European

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issues have displayed a relatively low salience in party competition and public opinion debates, so it comes as no surprise that the crisis has an overall moderate impact on party stances and the preferences of prospective MPs. Second, criticism of Europe is part of the ideological identity of the radical left—especially for the PCP—and this helps immunize party and candidates’ stands on the subject. However—and this is our third point—Europe has traditionally represented a “valence” issue and has been one of the main axes of Portuguese governments; it is therefore plausible that the crisis has threatened this consensus even in the more pro-European parties. As regards the determinants of intraparty dissent, our results indicate that (left-right) ideological congruence matters and has the strongest explanatory impact in the multivariate analysis. In addition, partisanship is a significant factor but party experience is only related to generalized support for the EU. We also tested whether the crisis was responsible for shifts in intraparty dissent. Our findings suggest that external shocks have been consequential only in the case of specific support, with a decrease in intraparty dissent in the postcrisis period. On the other hand, political experience or education has no impact on intraparty dissent. Finally, age only seems to have a significant impact on satisfaction with the EU. As noted above, we can question how the model could be improved given the overall low explanatory power. Regardless of the limitations of the dependent variables used in this study,15 there are at least two independent variables that may affect intraparty dissent on Europe and could be included in future studies. The type of recruitment is an important variable that could not be tested, although it seems to be a significant factor in shaping MPs’ attitudes toward the EU (Giannetti and Pedrazzani 2016). In the Portuguese case, this is probably one of the most important factors that explain why candidates’ attitudes have remained quite homogeneous over time, given that party leadership traditionally keeps a tight control on candidate selection and thus prevents adverse selection. The second independent variable is related to campaign effects, notably whether issue salience or party competition deters candidates from taking divergent positions on the EU. Admittedly, this is a challenging topic that may be difficult to test using cross-sectional survey data. Indeed, other types of data (panel and/or experimental) are more suited to gauging the importance of this kind of effect. The results suggest that further research is required on this topic to fully understand intraparty dissent on EU issues. More specifically, three distinct lines of research might be promising. The first line involves making comparisons with other countries in order to test our hypotheses more systematically and to achieve broader generalizations. The second line is the investigation of party-voter congruence on EU matters, that is to what extent parties’ evolution and positions match those of their respective constituencies. Finally, the

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third line of research should focus on the consequences of intraparty dissent on parliamentary behavior and the process of political representation. NOTES 1. This study was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), by a grant within the framework of the project “From Representation to Legitimacy: Political Parties and Interest Groups in Southern Europe” (PTDC/ IVC-CPO/1864/2014). 2. In the text, we use party cohesion (or party homogeneity) to mean the opposite of party dissent (see the theoretical section for a clarification of these terms). 3. We should distinguish between party unity and party cohesion. The first refers to the actual behavior of representatives, and it is sometimes used as synonym of party discipline (see Close 2018). The second is based on shared preferences within a party, that is, attitudes toward specific policies. This study focuses on the latter approach, considering the homogeneity of preferences within a party (see also van Vonno et al. 2014: 4). 4. See the website www.hemiciclo.pt, which reports the individual vote of each MP across different types of issues. 5. GDP fell abruptly between 2010 and 2013, unemployment figures skyrocketed from 8.5 in 2008 to 16.2 percent in 2013, while both the public deficit and the public debt hit record levels. 6. Studies usually use the mean or the median to measure ideological or policy distance. In our case, both measures coincide for all parties, except for the BE and the CDS-PP in the dimension regarding EU unification (but with a very small difference for both). Due to the size of scales and answers, we opt in favor of integer values in order to avoid creating artificial dissent. 7. Party experience was coded as a dichotomous variable (0: did not hold a national party office; 1: held a national party office); district magnitude distinguishes three categories (1: small; 2: medium; 3: large), while gender assumes the value of 1 for male and 2 for female. 8. We also test ideological congruence by taking the distance between candidates’ self-placement on the left-right scale and the average placement of candidates within each party, but this operationalization does not affect substantially the results. 9. See figure A.1 in the appendix. Complete statistical results are not shown due to editorial limitations, but they are available upon request. 10. The analysis is limited to the five main parliamentary groups, thus excluding PEV, PAN and independents, which have a small number of respondents in our surveys (N is always below 30). 11. The multivariate analysis excludes the variable on European membership for two reasons. First, there is not a significant variation across distinct parties; second, the variable is highly correlated with the dimension on the European integration. Moreover, the findings are very similar to those reported for “unification” (or integration), so we do not show the complete results for the sake of parsimony.

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12. Due to the high correlation between party experience and being an MP, it is not possible to include in the model a variable that distinguishes between candidates and elected representatives. However, when we include this variable in the model its impact is always significant, indicating that candidates are more likely to display higher levels of intraparty conflicts. 13. Gender is a dichotomous variable (0: man; 1: woman); Age is a continuous variable; District magnitude is a categorical variable (1: small; 2: medium; 3: large districts). 14. We also tested this variable in the model, as well as the division between mainstream parties and outsider parties, and the party holds as the best explicative variable for dissent. The number of MPs is also not significant; the results show that smaller parliamentary groups are not necessarily more cohesive. 15. There are, of course, other items included in international survey that allow examining Euroskepticism, though these questions are usually applied at the mass level.

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Chapter 8

Legislative Activities before and after the Great Recession An Analysis of Unemployment and Social Welfare Issues1 Enrico Borghetto and Marco Lisi

INTRODUCTION The Eurocrisis hit the European periphery particularly hard, causing a huge fall in GDP growth, growing levels of unemployment, and the explosion of the public debt. In the wake of what has become known as the Great Recession, governments implemented far-reaching changes in labor market regulations, bargaining systems, public sector employment, and welfare states (e.g., Guillén and Pavolini 2015; de la Porte and Heins 2016). The impact of these austerity policies has been felt both on the socioeconomic and political fronts. First, on the backdrop of a substantial cutback in public investments, they helped tilt the balance between capital and labor in favor of the former (Lapavitsas et al. 2012; Parker and Tsarouhas 2018a). The loss of jobs, the expansion of precariousness, and the worsening of living conditions have been the “sub-product” of the Great Recession, making “bread and butter” issues key concerns in the public opinion. Second, they had important political consequences, insofar as they contributed to decreasing mainstream parties’ popularity and to boosting mass protests, both reflecting growing popular discontent (Bosco and Verney 2016; Morlino and Raniolo 2017). In fact, institutional trust dropped significantly in Southern Europe during the Great Recession, widening the gap between citizens and national (and European) institutions (Torcal 2014; Muro and Vidal 2017). In addition, austerity policies have led to deep changes in the functioning of political institutions and their interaction with public opinion. On the one hand, national governments and parliaments have been increasingly constrained by European institutions 173

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and neoliberal economic forces. This means that the crisis restrained the leeway of political actors in responding to the economic recession. On the other, new issues have been politicized, influencing the main dimensions of competition and the relations between representatives and the electorate. This chapter contributes to this literature by examining how the economic crisis has affected party issue emphasis in the Portuguese parliament. In particular, we focus on employment and social welfare (ESW) issues, one of the areas which were most affected both directly and indirectly by the assistance program agreed with the Troika negotiators (representing the European Commission [EC], the European Central Bank [ECB], and the International Monetary Fund [IMF]). Our aim is to test whether policy-makers have responded to the changing economic and political conditions and the growing concerns in the public opinion by devoting more attention to ESW issues, thus fulfilling their representation role. Although it is too early to assess the long-term effects of the crisis, the analysis also aims to cast light on the first postcrisis years. By doing so, it contributes to existing studies that studied the responsiveness of parties during the crisis (Borghetto and Russo 2018). The main puzzle this study aims to address is whether political actors’ attention on specific issues depends more on economic factors than partisan/ ideological differences. Our core hypothesis is that, all other factors being equal, a significant economic downturn will impact policy-makers’ activities, regardless of party ideology. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to disentangle the effects of the economic crisis on legislative activities and to further our understanding of the shifts caused by economic oscillations, before and after a major economic crisis. Our study innovates the debate on MPs’ individual activities and extends the findings of previous studies from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view. First, the Portuguese case allows us to analyze the longitudinal evolution of legislative activities over a decade and to test the importance of “critical junctures” such as the economic and financial crisis. Second, by using a unique data set including more than 28,000 observations, we are able to specify MPs’ activities and to examine the policy content of both parliamentary questions (oral and written) and bills. Comparing activities across different parliamentary tools both strengthens the generalizability of our findings and allows us to study party issue competition in different parliamentary arenas. Finally, we examine an understudied topic, ESW, that has been at the center of public policies implemented by Portuguese governments over the past decade, thus shedding more light on one of the main dimensions of party competition. Our empirical analysis focuses on the Portuguese case, which presents several interesting features. First, Portugal was one of the countries hardest hit by the Eurozone crisis as it suffered external intervention by the Troika between

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2011 and 2014. Second, the institutional setting has remained extremely stable, with a very resilient party system based on government alternation between the main moderate mainstream parties. Third, the ideological composition of governments before and after the crisis has varied significantly, allowing us to better disentangle the impact of the crisis controlling for the color of party governments. Finally, MPs’ questioning activity varies significantly, not only at the individual level but also across parties. Therefore, the Portuguese case posits interesting puzzles worthy of investigation and allows us to examine the impact of the crisis on MPs’ behavior, especially with regard to unemployment and welfare issues, thus providing a fresh look at the content of political representation. In the following, we first review the literature on legislators’ behavior and the impact of the crisis on policy-makers’ activities, and we elaborate our main hypotheses. We then contextualize the Portuguese case and present our research design and data, as well as the operationalization of the dependent and independent variables. In section four, we run several statistical models to test whether the Great Recession has affected the content of the institutional agenda. The final section summarizes the findings and discusses their implications. LITERATURE AND HYPOTHESES The study of policy attention dynamics has contributed extensively to our knowledge of the functioning of legislative bodies and of representative democracies more generally. Detecting patterns of issue prioritization in government and legislative agendas offers a vantage point to answer questions (among many others) on political representation (e.g., voter-MP connections), government-opposition dynamics, and democratic responsiveness (Jones and Baumgartner 2005; Soroka and Wlezien 2010; Green-Pedersen and Walgrave 2014). This study sets out to explain how and why legislative activities—measured through the share of parliamentary (oral and written) questions and bills—on unemployment and social welfare have varied, disentangling in particular the impact of the crisis, on the one hand, and of partisan ideological preferences, on the other. Several mechanisms potentially connect the agendas of citizens and their representatives. Most accounts on democratic responsiveness converge on the fact that the goal of reelection is the most common factor driving MPs to follow shifts in public opinion. Faced with mounting social pressures or sudden significant changes in the public opinion agenda, MPs may decide to send signals to voters that they are catering to their needs, thus avoiding punishment in the coming elections. These signals can take several forms, spanning

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from media declarations to increased attention to the problematic topic in the MP’s parliamentary work. The following analysis focuses on this second type of signal, which we refer to as institutional agenda. As Mair (2011) magisterially argued, mainstream parties are increasingly facing significant external constraints that restrict their room for policy maneuver, paving the way for the emergence of new (populist) parties that try to fulfill the responsiveness function. This happens especially in times of crisis as governing parties have difficulties in “delivering,” whereas new parties claim to be able to represent citizens’ demands on substantive issues by taking up the “grievances of a specific part of the population” (Kriesi 2014, 369). As a consequence, external constraints—such as multilevel governance—may not only create a strong tension between responsiveness to public opinion, on the one hand, and governing responsibility, on the other, but also affect party competition and the behavior of parliamentary actors, leading representatives to react to the oscillation in the salience of distinct policy issues. Following this logic, we should expect an increased convergence between parties and voters’ attention on economic issues during economic crises. The general public should be greatly concerned about the state of the economy and this should be reflected in an institutional agenda overwhelmingly concentrated on economic issues to the detriment of other policy areas. However, we do not know to what extent this process also holds true in domains other than the economy. In particular, the study of issue attention on unemployment and welfare has been understudied from an institutional standpoint. This is the main topic examined in this chapter. Evidence from party manifestos suggests there is a long-term tendency to downplay labor-related issues (Katz and Mair 2018, 85–87). In fact, these scholars found there are fewer references to this kind of issue in election manifestos in the 1991–2005 period compared to in the early postwar era (1950– 1970). This trend is primarily related to the ideological and programmatic transformations of mainstream parties, and the trend toward the cartelization of political competition, which implies the increasing importance of valence issues. But how has the crisis shifted the issue attention of policy-makers? The Great Recession is expected to have increased the politicization of laborrelated issues for a number of reasons. First, austerity policies in all the (Southern) European periphery were at the center of a harsh political conflict (Hutter et al. 2018). Indeed, the Great Recession has not only revitalized the debate on the role of the State in the management of the economy, but it has also strengthened the position of employers to the detriment of employees. Second, European institutions fostered neoliberal reforms in the labor market in order to lower employment protection, cut wages, and reduce nonwage labor costs (Parker and Tsarouhas 2018b). Given the distributional consequences associated with this kind of reform, parties are likely to react in different ways

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according to their institutional position (i.e., government vs. opposition) and their basis of electoral support. However, it is unknown whether the 2008 global crisis has changed this trend, or how it affected the institutional agenda. As far as the Portuguese case is concerned, it should be noticed that EWS issues have been key concerns for citizens. According to the post-electoral survey conducted by the Institute of Social Science (University of Lisbon), unemployment and the negative economic situation were the two most important problems in 2005 and 2009. Health has also been one relevant issue in public opinion, as well as education. In the 2011 elections, however, the main problems were grouped by Portuguese voters under the term “crisis.” Indeed, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) included several goals in the areas of the labor market, employment, and welfare (Cardoso and Branco 2018; Stoleroff 2019). First, it aimed to introduce or strengthen labor flexibility in the legal system. Second, the agreement contained measures to implement active labor policies to promote the employment of specific groups, such as youth and the long-term unemployed. The third objective was to reduce the costs associated with employment contracts. While the PSD (Social Democratic Party, Partido Social Democrata) / CDS-PP (Social Democratic Center-Popular Party, Centro Democrático Social-Partido Popular) government that came to power in 2011 went to work to put the MoU into effect, the constitutional court blocked several measures, for example preventing the cut in the incomes of the Portuguese. In addition, some of the most effective demonstrations that took place during the crisis focused on labor issues such as the Social Security Contribution (TSU case).2 Whether this confirms the centrality of parliament (Seguro 2016) or not, the evidence suggests that labor-related issues moved center stage during the economic crisis. As a consequence, our first hypothesis is the following: H1a: Legislative activities focusing on unemployment and social welfare increased in response to the crisis.

Ideological differences among parties are also supposed to affect policy dynamics and the prioritization of specific issues. The Portuguese case again provides an interesting case for studying whether ideological preferences consistently shape legislative activities and issue attention. Together with the orthodox communist party (PCP, Partido Comunista Português), the Left Bloc (BE, Bloco de Esquerda) has competed with moderate and centrist parties, innovating the policy space by displaying leftist orientations on the socioeconomic axis and libertarian values on the cultural dimension. As several studies have shown (Jalali 2007; Lisi 2015), policy orientations and programs of more leftist forces are clearly distinct from governing parties. Overall, we expect significant differences between ideologically distinct

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parties, namely between the radical left and the remaining parties. This leads to our second hypothesis: H1b: Legislative activities focusing on unemployment and social welfare increased in response to the crisis especially for the radical left parties.

The Portuguese case is also interesting because of the changes experienced in the governmental arena. After the 2015 legislative elections, the center-right coalition between the PSD and CDS-PP failed to form a new government, which was rejected by a parliamentary majority formed by all leftist forces (PS, PCP, PEV [Partido Ecologista “Os Verdes,” the Greens] and BE). Consequently, for the first time ever the radical left decided to support a Socialist minority government (so-called Geringonça, literally “Contraption”). This unexpected alliance aimed not only to remove Passos Coelho (PSD leader) from government, but also to restore the incomes of the Portuguese by turning the page of austerity (Lisi 2016). Indeed, the agreements, signed in November 2015 between the four left-wing parties, aimed basically to restore “the status quo” before the bailout by unfreezing pensions, raising the national minimum wage and strengthening welfare policies (education, health, etc.) (Fernandes et al. 2018). Government action went beyond these initial pledges by introducing measures to protect the lowest income groups and to improve self-employment and precarious jobs. Moreover, during the thirteenth legislature (2015–2019), the two radical parties (BE and PCP) have been able to push a larger number of bills through in important domains, especially welfare policies (Dias and De Giorgi 2019). The political shift was also accompanied by a change in the economic outlook of the country. The economic environment showed a significant improvement after the end of the “adjustment program.” GDP has grown steadily, while the budget deficit stood at 1.2 percent (of GDP) in 2017, one of the lowest figures in decades. In addition, the unemployment rate, which had reached historical highs during the Great Recession, went below seven percent in mid-2018, the lowest since 2004. In sum, the economic context relaxed some of the main concerns of Portuguese voters, given the general improvement in the economic and social environment. Overall, it is difficult to formulate clear expectations regarding the postcrisis period. While the improvement in the economy suggests a decline in issue attention regarding unemployment and welfare, the ideological preferences of governing parties seem to indicate the opposite scenario. We posit, however, economic conditions to be stronger than partisan priorities. Therefore, our third hypothesis is as follows: H1c: Institutional activities focusing on unemployment and social welfare issues decreased in the postcrisis period (2014–2017).

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Our last hypothesis refers to the different use of parliamentary tools available to MPs in their day-to-day activity. As mentioned before, the data allow us to consider the strategic use of three instruments, namely oral and written questions, as well as bills. Oral questions are a type of nonlegislative activity that is particularly relevant for parties because they can use them strategically to influence the public agenda and to gain visibility in the media arena (Martin and Rozenberg 2012; Otjes and Louwerse 2018). Oral questions may lead the party to obtain rewards in terms of popularity from showing how strongly it is committed to society’s major problems. Drawing on these considerations, we expect this tool to vary more substantially according to the changing political and economic condition. Consequently, the last hypothesis reads as follows: H2: Issue emphasis on unemployment and social welfare policies increased in response to the crisis especially for oral questions.

DATA AND METHODS The following analysis relies on a newly collected data set resulting from the topic-coding of parliamentary activities of Portuguese MPs (Belchior and Borghetto 2019). The time frame spans 10 years (2007–2017) corresponding to ten legislative sessions (Portuguese legislative terms are divided into four 1-year sessions starting approximately in September each year). Only the eleventh (2009–2011) and twelfth (2011–2015) legislatures are considered in their entirety. Conversely, we considered the last two sessions of the tenth legislature (2007–2009) due to a reform of the parliamentary standing order in 2007 which substantially altered the procedures regulating written and oral questions (Filipe 2009); and the first two sessions of the thirteenth legislature (2015–2017) since the term is still ongoing at the time of writing. Over this decade, different majorities alternated in power. Portugal had a Socialist government during the second-half of the tenth and the whole eleventh legislature. During the twelfth legislature (2011–2015), a coalition of the PSD and CDS-PP was in charge. Finally, the Socialist party formed a minority government in 2015 with the unprecedented external support of the PCP and the BE. As already mentioned, this chapter analyzes variation in parliamentary attention by focusing on three types of parliamentary tool: bills, written, and oral questions. As we know that parties use each instrument for different purposes, considering all three of them helps strengthen the generalizability of our findings. Furthermore, they provide advantages with respect to surveybased data on MP preferences and agendas: data about all MPs are readily

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available in text format, thus alleviating problems of replicability and selection bias. As for bills, the power to initiate legislation is vested in citizens, the legislative assemblies of the Autonomous Regions, individual MPs, parliamentary groups, and the executive. Since we are interested in the response of parliamentary actors to the crisis, in the following we will only consider bills presented by MPs and parliamentary groups, which the literature usually refers to as private initiative. It must be noted that the rationale for private initiative is not, in general, to introduce or change legislation: the success rate of these parliamentary initiatives is low in most systems and the Portuguese case is no exception.3 Rather, they are normally used either to stake out positions, influence the party system agenda or signal priorities to local constituents (Brunner 2013). In other words, they are mostly vote-seeking rather than policy-seeking tools. Similar to bills, MPs use parliamentary questions for position-taking and signaling. But, the main function of parliamentary questions is to keep tabs on the executive and extract relevant information. We selected two of the different oversight tools established after the 2007 reform. In terms of written questions, we decided to focus on the questions to the government (QT, perguntas ao governo). Contrary to other written questions like requests (requerimentos), these are exclusively directed to members of the cabinet and not to local officials. This should make them more politically salient, especially in a rather centralized political system like Portugal. From a procedural point of view, there are no formal limits to the number of questions. While some of the questions might still be coordinated at the parliamentary group level, this implies some margin of freedom for individual MPs to build their own agenda. Although it is difficult to draw comparisons between authoring (or signing) a question and authoring other kinds of documents (such as the text of a bill) in terms of time-consumption, figures suggest that this has progressively turned into one of the most frequent activities in a typical MP’s agenda (not least because cabinets are obliged to answer them within 30 days or accept their publication in a public list of unanswered questions). We used the debates with the Prime Minister (PM) to analyze oral questions.4 While some form of question time with the PM already existed before 2007, the new regulation turned it into a biweekly appointment and changed its format. Nowadays, these debates are regular feats in the parliamentary calendar and receive a fair amount of attention by new and old media (they are also televised). As a rule, only parliamentary frontbenchers take the floor because of time constraints. They have a preset amount of time which they can use to address one or more questions. Two formats of question time alternate: type A envisaged a short speech by the PM on a topic of his/her choice,

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followed by questions; type B starts with questions from the floor followed by the PM’s responses. Data preparation involved two steps. First, we extracted information on all bills, oral and written questions to the government from the parliamentary website. For bills, we filtered out bills related to the creation or redenomination of cities or villages (almost 10 percent). In the case of oral questions, we downloaded the text of the biweekly debate with the PM and isolated all questions asked by MPs. For written questions, we obtained details on all questions tabled by MPs and filtered out those that were not addressed to ministers (e.g., we dropped questions to junior ministers), were repeated (e.g., the same question is automatically duplicated when addressed to two different ministries), or had only minimal changes in the title (e.g., the same MP could submit fifty similar questions on the same day asking for information on fifty different hospitals).5 Table 8.1 reports the distribution of our three selected types of activity across the five main parties. Apart from questions submitted during question time, which are distributed fairly equally among parties, more than 60 percent of the activity concerning bills and written questions is carried out by the two left-wing fringe parties, BE and PCP. As neither has ever had own representatives in the cabinet, one can argue that they are forced to rely on these instruments to signal their policy positions to their voters. Second, we had two trained coders working simultaneously on the same documents to code their policy content using one of the 230 policy codes making up the Portuguese Policy Agendas codebook (codes can be aggregated into twenty-one major policy areas, see the complete codebook at: https​ ://ww​w.com​parat​iveag​endas​.net/​datas​ets_c​odebo​oks).​6 Disagreements on topic assignment were discussed on a case-by-case basis. This content coding allowed detecting those questions related to unemployment and welfare; these correspond to two major policy areas of the codebook: labor & employment and social welfare. Figure 8.1 plots the share of ESW (as a percentage) for each activity across legislature and party. Starting from bills, both right and left-wing parties are among the most active depending on the legislature; however, a closer look at the content Table 8.1  MPs’ Parliamentary Activity in Portugal, 2007–2018 Instruments Bills Oral questions Written questions

BE

PCP

PEV

30 (718) 29 (706) 6 (135) 18 (259) 18 (255) 13 (195) 22 (5,393) 40 (9,630) 5 (1,213)

PS

CDS-PP

PSD

10 (254) 15 (373) 10 (234) 15 (222) 19 (269) 17 (252) 8 (1,997) 13 (3,103) 12 (2,880)

Note: Cells show percentages (absolute figures in parentheses). Source: Belchior and Borghetto (2019). (The table is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

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Figure 8.1  Distribution of Parliamentary Activities on EWS Issues by Party and Legislature. Source: Belchior and Borghetto (2019). (The figures are author generated using data from the source indicated.)

of bills reveals that they tend to focus on different areas, respectively social security and employment. Conversely, in the twelfth legislature (namely at the peak of the crisis), we can observe all parties marginally shifting their attention to other issues. This is particularly apparent for the CDS-PP and PSD, which made up the governing coalition at the time and worked jointly with the executive to implement their policy program. As for oral questions, both left-wing challenger parties devoted much attention to ESW topics, especially the PCP. Interestingly, this gap gets smaller during the twelfth “crisis” legislature when all parties were more prone to be active in the policy area. Finally, as far as written questions are concerned, we notice two recurring patterns across time: first, regardless of the party, ESW questions never exceeded 15 percent of the total; second, the two large mainstream parties, PS and PSD, consistently show less interest in ESW issues. In the following, we supplement the insights gained from this exploratory analysis with a formal test of our four hypotheses. Our dependent variable is the share of ESW questions asked in a month by a party.7 To test the impact of the economic crisis on Portugal, we use the mean unemployment rate (UNEMPLOYMENT) during the preceding month (data

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from the OECD). In comparison with other indicators, it is a measure of the impact of the crisis on the real economy, it is easily observable by citizens, and it has tangible consequences for a country’s welfare system by activating countercyclical measures such as unemployment benefits. As a result, we hypothesize that a worsening of employment should have a significant effect on attention to ESW issues in parliament. The mean unemployment rate over the ten sessions is 12.3 percent (standard deviation of 2.5). At the beginning of our series, it hovered around 8.6 percent, reached a peak during the second session of the twelfth legislature (16.9 percent), and then continued to decrease until 2017 when it went back to 9.7 percent. The remaining main predictors are straightforward. Radical left parties (RADICAL) takes 1 when the first sponsor of the bill or the questioner is affiliated to either the BE, PCP or PEV. Secondly, we created a categorical variable where the months of the twelfth legislature were coded as “CRISIS” (the Passos Coelho cabinet was in office when Portugal received the assistance program which started officially in May 2011 and ended in June 2014), the preceding four sessions (tenth and eleventh legislature) as “PRECRISIS,” and the remaining two sessions (thirteenth legislature) as “POSTCRISIS.” We also included a control (OPPOSITION), taking 1 when the party of the sponsor is in opposition, 0 when in government. Finally, we controlled for the ideological position of parties using the Chapel Hill Expert Survey estimates of party position (Polk et al. 2017; Bakker et al. 2015) on the left-right scale (where 0 corresponds to extreme left and 10 to extreme right). ANALYSIS Table 8.2 presents the results of the multivariate analyses, respectively, for our three types of activity. Although we could have used a conventional linear regression to model proportion data, the strictly bounded nature of our dependent variable (running potentially from 0 when none of the activities addresses ESW issues and 1 when they receive the totality of attention) warrants the use of a generalized linear model where the logit link function ensures linearity.8 We ran a logistic regression with standard errors clustered for parties to take into account that observations are correlated within parties. Starting from H1a, which hypothesized that issue emphasis on ESW increased in response to the crisis regardless of the party characteristics, we found that none of the coefficients (see models 1, 3, 5) describing the effect of a unit increase in unemployment rates is statistically significant at conventional levels. As regards the direction of the effects, as expected, it is positive for both types of question and bills. To make better sense of this finding and

(660) −529.700 1,073.400

−1.925*** (0.242) −0.071*** (0.025) 0.124 (0.151) −0.476* (0.249) 0.197*** (0.028) −0.649*** (0.150) −0.272*** (0.073) 0.147*** (0.030) (660) −526.619 1,069.238

−3.137*** (0.257) 0.031 (0.020) 0.302 (0.265) 1.106*** (0.292) 0.181*** (0.037) −0.602*** (0.148) −0.259*** (0.070) (468) −388.858 791.716

(4) −2.788*** (0.674) 0.095 (0.079) −0.031 (0.178) 1.081 (0.823) −0.050* (0.030) −0.038 (0.421) −0.130 (0.201) −0.056 (0.050) (468) −388.377 792.754

Oral Questions −2.418*** (0.494) 0.064 (0.068) −0.083 (0.274) 0.451 (0.437) −0.041 (0.033) −0.043 (0.421) −0.127 (0.197)

(3)

(720) −1,285.781 2,585.562

−3.999*** (0.523) 0.005 (0.020) 0.527*** (0.155) 1.307*** (0.301) 0.145** (0.063) −0.009 (0.131) −0.028 (0.248)

−3.910*** (0.584) −0.001 (0.028) 0.511*** (0.130) 1.216** (0.480) 0.144** (0.063) −0.011 (0.132) −0.029 (0.249) 0.007 (0.034) (720) −1,285.729 2,587.458

(6)

Written Questions (5)

Notes: (1) * p < 0.1;** p < 0.05;*** p < 0.01; (2) Coefficients are from logit regressions with clustered (by party) standard errors in parentheses. AIC = Akaike information criterion. Source: see table 8.1. (The table is author generated using data from the sources indicated.)

CONSTANT UNEMPLOYMENT OPPOSITION RADICAL LEFT-RIGHT PRECRISIS CRISIS UNEMPLOYMENT*RADICAL (N) Log Likelihood AIC

(2)

Dependent Variable: Share of Attention for ESW Issues in a Month

(1)

Bills

Table 8.2  Explaining MPs’ Activity on ESW Issues

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test whether the crisis had a different impact on the social agenda of radical left and mainstream parties, respectively, (H1b), models 2, 4, and 6 added an interaction term between RADICAL (the reference term is the category of mainstream parties) and UNEMPLOYMENT. Indeed, the positive and significant coefficient of model 2 indicates that the two categories of party reacted differently as far as private initiative is concerned to the deterioration of the crisis. Whereas attention in ESW increased for the radical left, it plummeted for mainstream parties. In quantitative terms, our model estimates that a standard deviation increase in the unemployment rate (around 2.4 points) translates into an increase of 3.9 percent in the attention of radical left parties and a 1.8 percent decrease in the attention of mainstream parties. In part, this latter result stems from the substantial decrease in the legislative initiative of the smaller coalition member, CDS-PP, whose MPs were first signatories of only eighteen bills during the 4-year twelfth legislature (they had submitted 280 bills in the previous 4 years in opposition). In part, we speculate, this could result from the fact that the three parties signed an assistance program committing them to relevant ESW reforms, thus they felt more constrained by the policy directives agreed with international lenders in this core area. From this viewpoint, it might have felt more coherent to shift their legislative agenda toward other policy areas. In line with H2, UNEMPLOYMENT has a higher coefficient for oral questions than written questions and bills, indicating that parties—no matter their ideology—display a greater tendency to use the visibility of question time sessions to send signals or take positions on ESW when unemployment rates increase. However, H2 is only partially supported because none of the coefficients reaches statistical significance. As regards H1c, which expected a decrease in the salience of ESW issues after the end of the assistance program, the three types of activities exhibit similar patterns. Controlling for the potential impact of other factors, it seems that the postcrisis led to an increase in attention to ESW, although only the CRISIS coefficients for bills are statistically significant. This finding reveals that the post-Troika period saw attention to ESW issues increase on average; thus, H1c should be rejected. Our explanation for this pattern calls into question coalition considerations. In the Portuguese post-Troika context, the Costa government received the external support of radical left parties based on a popular anti-austerity platform and, we argue, ESW policies represent one of the most important policy dimensions in which left parties decided to compete with each other. While the PS could rely on executive-sponsored decisions, the other left parties could only count on available legislative and oversight instruments. As a result, both BE and PCP increased or maintained their attention for ESW at a very high level in the thirteenth legislature, regardless of the instrument.

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CONCLUSIONS Focusing on MPs’ parliamentary activities in Portugal, this chapter examined whether and to what extent the economic crisis impacted patterns of parliamentary attention on EWS issues. This question is relevant because, based on the models of democratic responsiveness, we expect representatives to react to the worsening of economic conditions by increasing attention given to possible solutions. Empirically, parties should devote more of their institutional work to EWS issues in times of economic crisis. Relying on the content coding of three types of parliamentary tool—namely, bills, oral and written questions—over a decade, we were able to test different hypotheses on party issue attention. Our first question focused on the impact of the economic crisis, measured through unemployment rates, on attention for EWS. We found that although an increase in unemployment rates is not statistically associated with a surge in attention for EWS, the association between unemployment statistics and the share of attention devoted to EWS issues is positive, in line with our expectations; this hints at a partial expansion of legislative initiatives on EWS during the crisis. We show that this originates from radical left-wing parties, whereas the parties that signed the MoU decreased their legislative activity. When we compare the legislature when the assistance program was implemented and the years immediately after, we detect a surge in attention on EWS. We explain this finding with reference to intra-coalition competition. While the intuition that electoral incentives may shape MPs’ behavior is not entirely new (Borghetto and Lisi 2018), we believe this is an unexpected result worth highlighting. In other words, coalition considerations may interact with party ideology to explain distinct patterns of MP behavior. Finally, we partially confirmed that attention measured through oral questions is more sensitive to changes in economic conditions. These results help us to reflect on the representative function developed by Portuguese parties and how political actors faced the challenges raised by the Great Recession. From this viewpoint, two considerations need to be underlined. The first is that opposition parties, namely the radical left, have been able to channel some of the key concerns of Portuguese citizens to the institutional arena. This contributes to explaining not only their important representative function—confirming Mair’s dilemma between responsibility and representativeness—but also the stability of the Portuguese party system. In our view, the importance these parties gave to EWS played an important role to absorb social protest and to avoid the emergence of new actors. Second, the political response that emerged after the 2015 elections was important to improve political representation and the quality of democracy. The increase in the satisfaction with democracy and institutional trust registered since 2015

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(see Fernandes et al. 2018) was not only related to economic performance but also to the prioritization of EWS. Indeed, the Geringonça has been responsible for the implementation of significant reforms in these domains, such as the protection of precarious jobs, the new law on the health system, and the approval of new subsidies to reduce inequalities. This is not to say that during the “left-left government” (2015–2019), the radical left and the Socialists have become closer in terms of policy positions on EWS issues. Although these parties tend to agree with the expansion and strengthening of welfare policies, there are still relevant divergences regarding labor issues, as shown by the opposition of both BE and PCP to the new labor code approved in 2019.9 The mixed findings achieved in this study lead us to recommend that future studies in this area explore the impact of other explanatory variables. For example, it would also be interesting to test the impact MPs’ individual characteristics have on promoting specific issues in their parliamentary work (Borghetto et al. 2019). More research is also required on the strategy of MPs on using different tools in order to better understand why and how parliamentary activities vary. Finally, it would be useful to explore the patterns of variation in other areas of the institutional agenda such as health or energy. NOTES 1. This study was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), by a grant within the framework of the project “From Representation to Legitimacy: Political Parties and Interest Groups in Southern Europe” (PTDC/ IVC-CPO/1864/2014). 2. On this point, see chapter 2 in this volume. 3. According to the data collected by Dias and De Giorgi (2019), in the period under study only 23.5 percent (653) of the 2,782 private bills were adopted, vis-à-vis a 94.7 percent (523 out of 552) success rate of the government. 4. Parliamentary rules of procedures also provide for ministers to attend plenary sitting at least once per legislative session, but we decided to drop these observations as these meetings were not held regularly. 5. In this latter case, we retained only a representative sample of three questions since our goal is to measure attention. We assume that after three questions, any question is about the same topic and therefore redundant. 6. Data were collected and coded using funding from two projects: “Public Preferences and Policy Decision-Making: A Longitudinal and Comparative Analysis”—PTDC/IVC-CPO/3921/2012 (2013–2015) coordinated by Ana Maria Belchior; and “Portuguese Parliament: Agenda-Setting and Law-making”—IF/00382/2014 (2016–2020) coordinated by Enrico Borghetto. 7. We only consider months when at least a party asked a question or introduced a bill, so the number of observations differs across legislative instruments: 110 for bills, 78 for oral questions, and 120 for parliamentary questions.

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8. Since the logistic curve asymptotes at 0 and 1, it prevents negative predictions or predictions of more than 100 percent. 9. The radical left parties requested prior review by the Constitutional Court. Labor issues are also a dividing theme in the campaign for the 2019 legislative elections.

REFERENCES Bakker, R. et al. 2015. “Measuring Party Positions in Europe The Chapel Hill Expert Survey Trend File, 1999–2010.” Party Politics 21(1): 143–152. Belchior, A. M. and E. Borghetto. 2019. “The Portuguese Policy Agendas Project.” In Comparative Policy Agendas: Theory, Tools, Data, edited by F. R. Baumgartner, C. Breunig and E. Grossman, 145–151. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Borghetto, E. and M. Lisi. 2018. “Productivity and Reselection in a Party-based Environment: Evidence from the Portuguese Case.” Parliamentary Affairs 71(4): 868–887. Borghetto, E. and F. Russo. 2018. “From Agenda Setters to Agenda Takers? The Determinants of Party Issue Attention in Times of Crisis.” Party Politics 24(1): 65–77. Borghetto E., J. Santana‐Pereira and A. Freire. 2019. “Parliamentary Questions as an Instrument for Geographic Representation: The Hard Case of Portugal.” Swiss Political Science Review. DOI: 10.1111/spsr.12387. Bosco, A. and S. Verney. 2016. “From Electoral Epidemic to Government Epidemic: The Next Level of the Crisis in Southern Europe.” South European Society and Politics 21(4): 383–406. Brunner, M. 2013. Parliaments and Legislative Activity: Motivations for Bill Introduction. Wiesbaden: Springer. Cardoso, D. and R. Branco. 2018. “Liberalised Dualisation. Labour Market Reforms and the Crisis in Portugal: A New Departure.” European Journal of Social Security 20(1): 31–48. De Giorgi, E. and A. L. Dias. 2019. Portuguese Observatory on Parliamentary Dynamics Database (POPaD): Information on Legislative Process, Scrutiny Activity and Speeches in the Portuguese Parliament (Development version) [Datafile and Codebook]. Retrieved from https://popad.org. de la Porte, C. and E. Heins (eds.). 2016. The Sovereign Debt Crisis, the EU and Welfare State Reform. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Dias, A. and E. De Giorgi. 2019. “ Geringonça deu poder legislativo a BE e PCP.” Diário de Notícias, July 21, 2019. Fernandes, J. M., P. C. Magalhães and J. Santana-Pereira. 2018. “Portugal’s Leftist Government: From Sick Man to Poster Boy?” South European Society and Politics 23(4): 503–524. Filipe, A. 2009. “The 2007 Reform of the Portuguese Parliament: What Has Really Changed?” The Journal of Legislative Studies 15(1): 1–9. Green-Pedersen, C. and S. Walgrave (eds.). 2014. Agenda Setting, Policies, and Political Systems: A Comparative Approach. Chicago; London: Chicago University Press.

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Guillén, A. M. and E. Pavolini. 2015. “Welfare States Under Strain in Southern Europe: Overview of the Special Issue.” European Journal of Social Security 17(2): 147–157. Hutter, S., H. Kriesi and G. Vidal. 2018. “Old versus New Politics: The Political Spaces in Southern Europe in Times of Crises.” Party Politics 24(1): 10–22. Jalali, C. 2007. Partidos e democracia em Portugal: 1974–2005. Lisbon: Instituto Ciencias Sociais. Jones, B. D. and F. R. Baumgartner. 2005. The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Katz, R. S. and P. Mair. 2018. Democracy and the Cartelization of Political Parties. Comparative Politics. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Kriesi, H. 2014. “The Populist Challenge.” West European Politics 37(2): 361–378. Lapavitsas, C. et al. 2012. Crisis in the Eurozone. London: Verso. Lisi, M. 2015. Party Change, Recent Democracies, and Portugal: Comparative Perspectives. Lexington Books. Lisi, M. 2016. “U-Turn: The Portuguese Radical Left from Marginality to Government Support.” South European Society & Politics 21(4): 541–601. Martin, S. and O. Rozenberg (eds.). 2012. The Roles and Function of Parliamentary Questions. Abingdon: Routledge. Morlino, L. and F. Raniolo. 2017. The Impact of the Economic Crisis on South European Democracies. New York: Springer. Muro, D. and G. Vidal. 2017. “Political Mistrust in Southern Europe since the Great Recession.” Mediterranean Politics 22(2): 197–217. Otjes, S. and T. Louwerse. 2018. “Parliamentary Questions as Strategic Party Tools.” West European Politics 41(2): 496–516. Parker, O. and D. Tsarouhas (eds.). 2018. Crisis in the Eurozone Periphery. The Political Economies of Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal. London: Palgrave. Polk, J. et al. 2017. “Explaining the Salience of Anti-Elitism and Reducing Political Corruption for Political Parties in Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey Data.” Research & Politics 4(1): 2053168016686915. https​://do​i.org​/10.1​177/2​ 05316​80166​86915​. Seguro, A. J. Martins. 2016. A Reforma Do Parlamento Português. Lisbon: Quetzal Editores. Soroka, S. N. and C. Wlezien. 2010. Degrees of Democracy. Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press. Stoleroff, A. 2019. “Trade Union Representation and Industrial Relations in Portugal Before, During and Following the Economic and Financial Crises.” In Political Institutions and Democracy in Portugal: Assessing the Impact of the Eurocrisis, edited by A. Costa Pinto and C. Pequito Teixeira, 167–193. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https​://do​i.org​/10.1​007/9​78-3-​319-9​8152-​9_9. Torcal, M. 2014. “The Decline of Political Trust in Spain and Portugal: Economic Performance or Political Responsiveness?” American Behavioral Scientist 58(12): 1542–1567.

Chapter 9

Conclusions Marco Lisi, André Freire, and Emmanouil Tsatsanis

INTRODUCTION Political systems across Europe have experienced extraordinary changes in the past decade. The Eurocrisis that emerged in 2007 was a major shock that had a huge impact on people’s attitudes and behavior. In particular, the full-blown recession had both direct and indirect effects on European political systems. On the one hand, the crisis affected citizens’ attitudes toward representative democracies (Bermeo and Bartels 2014; Matthijs 2014). On the other hand, the recession limited the effectiveness of democratic regimes by reducing their capacity to deliver expected outputs and by giving rise to austerity policies that displeased citizens and went against core principles of Western democracies (for instance, in terms of legitimacy and welfare policies; Mair 2013; Guardiola, Picazo-Tadeo, and Rojas 2015). Most works on the impact of the crisis have used cross-sectional data, thus offering a partial and limited view of the dynamics this shock has triggered in terms of political representation. One of the main contributions of this volume is to separate the short vs. long-term impact of the crisis, and to put the recent transformations into a broader perspective by disentangling gradual and systematic changes taking place primarily at the societal or economic level from political transformations led by the action of politicians or party leadership. As a result, all contributions adopt a longitudinal analysis to examine the evolution of key dimensions of participation and democratic representation. The analysis of the Portuguese case allows us not only to use datasets with reach and comprehensive information, but also to investigate the shift from democratic crisis to democratic renewal. From this viewpoint, our first objective is simply to depict the broad changes that took place at the level of the political system through the empirical analysis of citizens’ and representatives’ 191

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attitudes and behaviors. Our starting point is that the complexity of the political system calls for a multidimensional approach and that we cannot obtain generalizations by employing simple trend data for some limited dimensions. Democratic crises, as noted throughout this volume, are primarily about the failure of representative institutions and the growing disconnections between citizens and their representatives. By contrast, democratic renewal, as stated in the introductory chapter, involves emphasizing a new course of action or a major shift that has broad and systematic implications for the functioning of representative democracies by improving the performance of institutions and the overall evaluation of representatives. The duration of this process can vary; that is, it can be more or less short-lived depending on the complex interaction of distinct factors. The chapters in this volume offer “snapshots” into different aspects of the field, building on distinct theoretical and methodological choices. It is clearly not possible to examine every way in which citizens and political actors can respond to major exogenous shocks. Indeed, bearing in mind the scope of the book and the constraints of data availability, we have been obliged to focus on the attitudes and behaviors that are susceptible to systematic and sustained empirical analysis across time in order to map and make sense of the impact of the crisis. We have therefore concentrated our efforts on two areas: key attitudes toward representative democracy, and key behavioral dimensions. One of the main contributions of the volume is that it takes into account not only the response from citizens but also the political elites’ action and their interaction with individuals. From this point of view, this study complements recent contributions that look at the role played by veto players to enact—or try to enact—policy reversals in Southern Europe (Moury and Afonso 2019; Moury, Cardoso, and Gago 2019). The next section delves into the main highlights of the book in an attempt to draw out key theoretical insights and findings of the empirical research. The final part of the chapter identifies what could have been afforded more emphasis and developed in the future. EMPIRICAL FINDINGS: THE IMPACT OF THE CRISIS IN PORTUGAL Portugal stands apart from other Southern European democracies in terms of the political consequences of the economic crisis. While, on the one hand, the vulnerabilities of the Portuguese economy and the policy solutions prescribed by the three institutions that formed the infamous Troika (European Union, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund) were not that different to those of the other ailing economies of the Southern European

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periphery, the political reverberations did not extend to the rise of new parties and party system change. The initial political fallout appeared to follow the same pattern as Greece and Spain. Socialist incumbents were punished by voters following the outbreak of the economic crisis. Discontent with incumbents and other establishment actors quickly shifted from the ballot box to the streets, where massive mobilizations were staged. Trust in political institutions plummeted, but polarization at both the mass and elite level increased. Last but not least, the center-right government that implemented the memorandum of understanding aimed to go “beyond the Troika,” thereby impairing not only the standard of living but also the very notion of democracy (Freire 2016; Moury and Standring 2017). However, this is where the similarities end. Unlike the other countries, the political tremors in Portugal did not translate to an electoral earthquake accompanied by the appearance of new challenger parties. Portugal eventually became a negative case in comparative studies of populism (Lisi and Borghetto 2018). In addition, low electoral volatility strengthened party system stasis. The party system remained stable in the electoral arena, even though its properties changed in crucial ways at the governmental level. In particular, while one might consider the 2015 legislative elections to be like previous elections, they produced different results. We make the point that insofar as one could talk about a process of “democratic renewal” in the case of Portugal, the seeds have to be sought for a complex dialectical relationship between the economic crisis and party system change that unfolded differently from that of other crisis-ridden European democracies. In particular, we argue that “democratic renewal” emerged through two related steps. The first was the elite agreement between left-wing parties, which broke a tradition of lack of cooperation. The second was the implementation of redistributive policies that aimed to turn the page on austerity, a shift made possible only through the improvement of economic conditions. The exploration of the Portuguese case started from two main premises. On the one hand, political representation is conceptualized mainly through the representatives’ responsiveness to citizens, that is, the congruence between the preferences of voters and those elected to represent these opinions. While this may be the core of political representation, there is certainly something more. We believe that political representation entails multiple dimensions and is not only restricted to responsiveness, so we adopted a broader framework that includes, for instance, political participation, accountability, and also policy-making. On the other hand, we start from the assumption that the Great Recession that started in 2008 had a huge impact on democratic political systems (Traber, Giger, and Häusermann 2017), by deteriorating the quality of their results (e.g., satisfaction), the quality of their procedures (e.g., rule of law, accountability), and the quality of their outputs (contents) (Morlino

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2012; Morlino and Raniolo 2017). Updating and broadening the scope of the evidence and developing more insights into the causes and consequences of these phenomena was our main goal. Chapter 1 demonstrates how the historic collaboration between the Socialist party and the two parties of the left came about as a reaction to the imposition of austerity and the perception that the PSD swerved to the right by fully adopting the reform agenda of the Troika, and even going beyond it. This collaboration was not the result of a process of ideological convergence; it was the by-product of the austerity policies eagerly imposed by the rightwing coalition government. The PSD/CDS-PP government could never have imposed such a harsh reform agenda if it had not been for the conditionalities attached to the bailout loan. The fact, however, that it fully embraced and reproduced the narrative that there were no policy alternatives to spending cuts and internal devaluation strategies (as a means to placate “the market” and increase economic competitiveness) paradoxically opened up space for the creation of an anti-austerity front that restored a sense that there were real political alternatives on offer. Ironically, this anti-austerity front was formed with more clarity after the first postcrisis election had already taken place and was largely the result of post-electoral coalition politics. In broad terms, the economic crisis became the trigger that kick-started a period with both negative and positive implications for Portuguese democracy. On the one hand, the economic crisis and the austerity policies that followed led to an explosion of political discontent, as in other European democracies, particularly in Southern Europe. That discontent was captured in mass opinion surveys, which showed that trust in national (chapter 3) and European political institutions (chapter 7) had plummeted during the peak of the crisis; moreover, Portugal witnessed a swell of protest mobilizations and unconventional political participations that were accompanied by a decrease in conventional forms of political participation—voting in particular (chapters 2 and 4). Furthermore, the zeal with which the right-wing coalition government pursued economic reforms that impacted a large percentage of the Portuguese population created a “deficit of representation” on socioeconomic issues between the government parties and their electoral base during the crisis (chapter 5), and this compounded already existing problems of poor substantive representation in other respects, such as political representation along gender lines (chapter 6). These negative developments for the quality of democracy in Portugal functioned to some extent as prerequisites for a new chapter of “democratic renewal,” at least in that they restored the feeling that actual change can be achieved via democratic channels. The post-electoral coalition negotiations and final pact between the PS and the two parties of the radical left (plus the Greens) were crucial in this respect. The leaders of the parties overcame their

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hard-wired differences on a number of issues and, in particular, their stances toward the European Union; this dimension had gained salience for the first time in Portugal during the crisis and yet the perspectives of the parties of the left had not really changed (chapter 7). However, it would not be entirely true to say that the historic collaboration between the PS and the two parties of the left was produced out of thin air by leadership decisions, even though that is certainly a part of the story. As chapter 2 argues, the seeds of the collaboration between mainstream and radical forces of the left had already been planted at the level of civil society during the protest cycle of 2011–2012. These protest mobilizations should not only be seen as the anti-systemic counterpart to conventional political participation but also as a significant cohort experience that socialized into politics a large part of a mostly apathetic younger generation. The election of a new government also brought with it an improvement in the quality of political representation, at least as regards unemployment and social welfare issues (chapter 8). In terms of citizens’ attitudes toward the political system and the regime at large, chapter 3 shows that the end of the bailout program followed by the reversal of key austerity policies imposed by the center-right government led to the partial restoration of citizens’ trust toward government and other national political institutions. Nevertheless, the commitment of the Portuguese toward democracy does not appear to have waivered even during the most difficult period of the crisis, an interesting and revealing fact about the resilience of democratic values in a third-wave democracy like Portugal. This could be attributed in part to socialization effects in a consolidated democracy in conjunction with the lack of attractive alternatives to democracy. On the other hand, popular support for “democracy” can mean support for different concrete understandings of the democratic ideal, especially given the current competition between populist and liberal models of democracy worldwide. CHALLENGES FOR POLITICAL REPRESENTATION AND FUTURE RESEARCH PROSPECTS As outlined in our introduction and in the previous section, Portugal has thus far remained an island of stability in the European context, characterized by huge voting shifts and the emergence of new populist parties. But political representation is something deeper and more complex than the electoral choice of citizens. We see throughout the volume that the distance between (the preferences of) voters and parties appears through feelings of dissatisfaction and, above all, disaffection. The crisis has certainly had a significant impact on citizens’ political attitudes concerning the functioning of the

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political system, but this did not produce an “electoral catharsis” like in other Southern European countries (e.g., Greece in 2012, Italy in 2013, or Spain in 2015). Although this is not the main objective of the volume, our work contributes to providing some answers to this puzzle. One of the main goals of our enterprise was to examine whether the Great Recession had short or more lasting effects on political representation. Overall, our findings indicate that most of the changes were temporary and that the crisis did not trigger a long-lasting failure of political representation qua responsiveness. Two factors seem particularly important to explain this situation. The first is the impact of the economy. Economic crises are not only responsible for growing (political) discontent, but they also represent an opportunity for political actors to achieve policy goals that may bring electoral payoffs (Moury and Afonso 2019). The second is the role of parties and, in particular, of political elites to shape the links between voters and their representatives. While there are numerous studies addressing the first dimension, extant research has paid less attention to the latter. As explained in the introduction, the main political change took place on the left side of the political spectrum, with a new pattern of coalition politics (following the 2015 legislative elections, the left-wing parties were able to achieve a compromise for national government after around 40 years of being incapable of coalescing). The new Socialist minority government supported by the radical left was able to govern with stability (the full four-year term came to an end in October 2019), and reversed the pattern of both violating electoral commitments and asymmetrical austerity (that marked the rightwing government during the Troika intervention), while complying with EU rules and balanced public finances, notably the public deficit (Fernandes, Magalhães, and Santana-Pereira 2018). Indeed, several studies included in this volume document that, after the crisis (2016–2017), there was a decline in political protest, voters’ presented positive evaluations of the new leftwing alliance and its performance, there was a significant recover in several indicators of democratic legitimacy, and there was an overall increase in policy congruence (MPs-voters) triggered mostly by improvements on the left side of the political spectrum. All in all, these are clear indicators of democratic renewal in Portugal. However, these changes were all documented primarily at the aggregate level (despite using individual level data) and we are still missing the analysis of the panel survey (2016–2017 until 2018–2019) produced by the research project behind the enterprise of this (and other) book(s); this will provide a better understanding of the individual links between the evaluations of the left-wing government alliance and the various indicators of democratic renewal at the level of citizens’ attitudes and behavior. Moreover, the changes in the patterns of protest politics in Portugal before, during, and after the

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Troika intervention still need to be further studied and understood. These are all issues for future research. The legislative elections held on October 6, 2019, confirm the dynamism of political representation and the gradual adaptation of the political system. Certainly, the Portuguese case can still be considered as an outlier in the European landscape, especially if we consider the resilience of the two mainstream parties, which gathered 64 percent of the votes (36.3 percent for the PS and 27.8 percent for the PSD). But the 2019 legislative elections brought some new actors in the Parliament. The most important innovation was the election of one MP of a radical right party (Chega, literally “Enough”), with a populist and antiestablishment discourse. In addition, two new parties were also able to elect one MP each, the Liberal Initiative (Iniciativa Liberal) and Livre (Free). The former is a right-wing party, with liberal orientations on the socioeconomic dimension and more progressive values in the cultural domain. The latter is left-libertarian party with pro-European stances and a strong environmentalist agenda. Finally, the PAN (People, Animals, and Nature party) increased its representation by electing four MPs. It is impossible to know whether these changes will improve the quality of the political system. Certainly, the strategy of political entrepreneurs has been key to foster party system change, whether or not there is continuity in the party choice of most voters. This means that in the context of generalized mistrust toward the political system (signaled by the extremely low turnout rates and public opinion surveys), the role of leaders may take central stage in the circuit of political representation. From a theoretical point of view, the study of political parties and leadership calls for a reconceptualization of political representation. While most studies have framed this concept as a many-to-many relationship (i.e., voters-representatives), it is also important to consider other perspectives, such as many to one, given the relevance that leadership strategies and choices have assumed in contemporary democracies (Vieira 2016; Urbinati 2019). Most of the findings included in the different chapters cannot, of course, be generalized as they are limited to the analysis of a case study. In this respect, future comparative works might shed more light on the trends (and causes) of democratic crisis and renewal, thus validating and expanding our findings. Besides the need to pursue comparative works, this collective effort calls for further research on a number of understudied topics. For example, little attention has been paid until now to the political context and its impact on the functioning of the political system. A promising topic for future research, especially in the Southern European context, is the impact of inequalities— understood in a broader sense—on civic engagement and political representation (Gallego 2015). From this viewpoint, a key point related to our case study is that of understanding how the level of polarization can affect both the relationship between voters and their representatives, and the change in

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citizens’ attitudes and beliefs. At the macro-level, the period associated with the Geringonça was also associated with the new trends in trade unionism. In fact, the unprecedented collaboration between the Socialists and the radical left led to a more collaborative stance from the main trade unions (CGTP and UGT), while fostering the emergence of new, independent, labor organizations. During the thirteenth legislature (2015–2019), a number of strikes endangered the government’s action and reputation in key sectors of public services, such as education, health, and justice. In summer 2019, the Socialist government had to face one of the worst strikes (led by independent unions, i.e., aligned with neither of the two union confederations, CGTP or UGT) when the fuel drivers decided to stop for several days; this resulted in the executive declaring an energy crisis and imposing fuel rationing. These are new phenomena associated with the new equilibrium at the institutional level and the new relationship between the left and labor movements, which will surely occupy central stage also in the years to come. Moving to the micro dimension, it would be interesting to study the change in the social bases of parties in greater detail, for example by disaggregating voters into partisans and independents. Besides the use of traditional categories used in representation studies (gender, class, etc.), we believe that the distance between these two groups of voters and the main parties differ substantially, and this obscures a different way of thinking and relating with the political system. This is of the utmost importance especially in a context characterized by a deep political change that has generated new patterns of alliances and cooperation between parties. Moreover, even if mainstream parties have kept their hold on government office, Portugal is not immune to partisan dealignment and anti-party (or anti-politics) feelings, as shown by the extremely high levels of abstention. Finally, more research is needed on the way new digital communication tools impact the links between citizens and foster new modes of political participation. It would also be useful to examine other cultural orientations rather than democratic attitudes. Although these beliefs are crucial for the legitimacy of the political system, it is also important to look at citizen interest, protest activism, and the way citizens relate to political institutions and actors in order to have a broader understanding of the transformations experienced at the individual level. Against the anxiety about a democratic erosion in modern democracies and widespread public disaffection, we need to continue our effort to examine both theories and practices of democracy. REFERENCES Bermeo, N. and L. M. Bartels (eds.). 2014. Mass Politics in Tough Times: Opinions, Votes, and Protest in the Great Recession. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Fernandes, J. M., P. C. Magalhães and J. Santana-Pereira. 2018. “Portugal’s Leftist Government: From Sick Man to Poster Boy?” South European Society and Politics: 1–22. doi:10.1080/13608746.2018.1525914. Freire, A. 2016. “The Condition of Portuguese Democracy during the Troika’s Intervention, 2011–15.” Portuguese Journal of Social Science 15(2): 173–193. Gallego, A. 2015. Unequal Political Participation Worldwide. New York: Cambridge. Guardiola, J., A. J. Picazo-Tadeo and M. Rojas. 2015. “Economic Crisis and WellBeing in Europe: Introduction.” Social Indicators Research 120(2): 319–322. Lisi, M. and E. Borghetto. 2018. “Populism, Blame Shifting and the Crisis: Discourse Strategies in Portuguese Political Parties.” South European Society and Politics 23(4): 405–427. Mair, P. 2013. Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy. London: Verso. Matthijs, M. 2014. “Mediterranean Blues: The Crisis in Southern Europe.” Journal of Democracy 25(1): 101–115. Morlino, L. 2012. Changes for Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Morlino, L. and F. Raniolo. 2017. The Impact of the Economic Crisis on South European Democracies. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Moury, C. and A. Afonso. 2019. “Beyond Conditionality: Policy Reversals in Southern Europe in the Aftermath of the Eurozone Crisis.” South European Society and Politics 24(2): 155–176. Moury, C., D. Cardoso and A. Gago. 2019. “When the Lenders Leave Town: Veto Players, Electoral Calculations and Vested Interests as Determinants of Policy Reversals in Spain and Portugal.” South European Society and Politics 24(2): 177–204. Moury, C. and A. Standring. 2017. “‘Going beyond the Troika’: Power and Discourse in Portuguese Austerity Politics.” European Journal of Political Research 56(3): 660–679. Traber, D., N. Giger and S. Häusermann. 2017. “How Economic Crises Affect Political Representation: Declining Party‒Voter Congruence in Times of Constrained Government.” West European Politics. doi:10.1080/01402382.2017.1378984. Urbinati, N. 2019. Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy. Boston: Harvard University Press. Vieira, M. Brito (ed.). 2016. Reclaiming Representation: Contemporary Advances in the Theory of Political Representation. Abingdon: Routledge.

Appendix

DATA COLLECTED WITHIN THE PROJECTS ON POLITICAL REPRESENTATION, 2008–2017 Although other data sources are also used for the empirical analysis in the different chapters, the fundamental source of empirical data are primarily the three mass surveys 2008, 2012, and 2016 (the latter was in fact a panel that included a first and a second wave, mid-2016 and mid-2018), and the three elite surveys 2008, 2012–2013, and 2016–2017 conducted under the umbrella of the three political representation studies directed by André Freire, José Manuel Leite Viegas, Marco Lisi, and Emmanouil Tsatsanis from 2007 until 2019. See http://er.cies.iscte-iul.pt/ for a comprehensive overview. Some words about these data and methods are due given their importance in the different chapters. Data on various topics (the crisis, issue position, ideology, and so on) are based on surveys of 5,456 Portuguese voters, interviewed in 2008, 2012, and 2016; and 770 elected (MPs) and nonelected (unsuccessful MPs) candidates to the Portuguese parliament in the 2009, 2011, and 2015 national elections, although the interviews were conducted a little later in each case (2009–2010, 2012, 2016). Data were collected between 2008–2009 and 2016 through the consecutive projects of Freire and Viegas (2008a, 2008b); Freire, Viegas, and Lisi (2012, 2013); and Freire, Lisi, and Tsatsanis (2016, 2017). For the year of 2008–2009, we have a sample of 1,350 voters and 207 elected and nonelected candidates; for the year of 2012, we have a sample of 1,209 voters and a slightly larger sample of 257 elected and nonelected candidates; finally, for 2016, our sample comprises 2,897 voters and 306 elected and nonelected candidates. In total the analyses are based on two large merged samples of voters (5,456) and elected and nonelected candidates (770).1 The voter studies were fielded through face-to-face interviews (2008 201

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Figure A.1  Portuguese MPs’ Attitudes toward European Union. Note: Mean of MPs answers, weighted by parliamentary representation. Questions have different scales: membership evaluation as a good or bad thing is a 3-point scale, democracy satisfaction is measured in a 4-point scale, and unification is assessed in a 11-point scale. Source: Freire and Viegas (2008); Freire et al. (2013; 2017). Table A.1  Policy Sectors and EU Involvement EU Involvement

Policy Sector

No involvement

Civil Rights, Minority Issues and Civil Liberties Law, Crime Community Development and Housing Issues Government operations Health Education Social welfare Defense Public Lands and Water Management Culture Labor and employment Environment Energy Immigration Transportation Space, Science, Technology, and Communications International affairs and foreign aid Domestic Macroeconomic Issues Banking, Finance, and Domestic Commerce Agriculture Foreign trade

Limited involvement

Shared responsibility between the EU and member country

Considerable involvement Broad involvement

Source: Adapted from De Giorgi (2016).

and 2012) and a panel web-survey (2016, first wave),2 and they were always weighted to correct for differences vis-à-vis the correspondent adult population (eighteen years old and over) living in the mainland (Portugal Continental). The elite surveys were usually based on face-to-face interviews for

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Appendix Table A.2  Logistic Regression Coefficients Dependent Variable

Consensus

Legislature = 11 Legislature = 12 Legislature = 13 Labor EU involvement Number of originating bills Days since beginning of legislature Legislature 11 * labor Legislature 12 * labor Legislature 13 * labor Legislature 11 * EU involvement Legislature 12 * EU involvement Legislature 13 * EU involvement Constant Observations Log Likelihood Akaike Inf. Crit.

0.331 (0.512) –0.393 (0.253) 1.749*** (0.382) –1.752*** (0.528) 0.040 (0.062) 0.228 (0.196) –0.0002 (0.001) 1.796* (1.040) –0.066 (0.739) 2.407*** (0.830) –0.143 (0.176) –0.338*** (0.100) 0.041 (0.132) –0.988*** (0.274) 2,061 –986.397 2,000.80

Note: (1) *p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01. (The table is author generated using data from Belchior and Borghetto 2019.)

the MPs and mail surveys for the nonelected candidates (unsuccessful prospective MPs), except in 2009 when all the candidates (MPs and nonelected candidates) were interviewed by mail questionnaire. The face-to-face elite interviews were conducted by social and political science graduate students under the supervision of the research team coordinators, and also by research assistants (Filipa Seiceira, Inês Lima, Augusta Correia, and Vera Ramalhete). Despite the small number of elite interviews, it was considered reasonable in comparative terms and we were able to well encompass the full partisan diversity in the Portuguese Parliament (i.e., for the parties that achieved representation in the national legislature each year). NOTES 1. Sources: Data elaborated by the authors using the voter and deputy surveys in Freire and Viegas (2008a, 2008b) and Freire et al. (2012, 2013); Freire et al. (2016, 2017). 2. The voter surveys were fielded by TNS—Euroteste (2008), Metris—GFK (2012), and Netquest (2016).

REFERENCES Freire, A. and J. M. Leite Viegas. 2008a. “Portuguese citizens survey 2008” (2008). Distributed by ISCTE-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and CIES-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portuguese. Data Archive. http://er.cies.iscte-iul.pt/.

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Freire, A. and J. M. Leite Viegas. 2008b. “Portuguese MPs survey 2005 legislative election” (2008). Distributed by ISCTE-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and CIES-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portuguese. Data Archive. http:// er.cies.iscte-iul.pt/. Freire, A., J. M. Leite Viegas and M. Lisi. 2012. “Portuguese voters survey, 2012,” Research project at ISCTE-IUL and CIES-IUL, Elections, Leadership, and Accountability: Political Representation in Portugal in a longitudinal and comparative perspective, FCT: FCT: PTDC/CPJ-CPO/119307/2010, available online at: http://er.cies.iscte-iul.pt/. Freire, A., J. M. Leite Viegas and M. Lisi. 2013. “Portuguese MPs survey, 2012–2013: 2011 legislative election,” Research project at ISCTE-IUL and CIES-IUL, Elections, Leadership, and Accountability: Political Representation in Portugal in a longitudinal and comparative perspective, FCT: FCT: PTDC/CPJ-CPO/119307/2010, available online at: http://er.cies.iscte-iul.pt/. Freire, A., M. Lisi and E. Tsatsanis. 2016. “Portuguese MPs surveys 2016–2017” (2016) Distributed by ISCTE-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and CIESIUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portuguese. Data Archive. http://er.cies. iscte-iul.pt/. Freire, A., M. Lisi and E. Tsatsanis. 2017. “Portuguese citizens survey 2016–2018” (2017) Distributed by ISCTE-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and CIESIUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portuguese. Data Archive http://er.cies. iscte-iul.pt/.

Index

Accession Treaty, 157 accountability, 10, 13, 74, 193 agenda, 17, 47, 63, 180; institutional, 175–77, 180, 185, 187, 194; MPs, 180; neoliberal, 27; pro-Europe, 54; public opinion, 175, 179; social, 185 anti-austerity, 7, 46, 49, 52–60, 62, 64n11, 185, 194. See also austerity antiestablishment discourse, 197 anti-system parties, 8, 63, 195 austerity, 4, 6–9, 12, 26–29, 33, 36, 39, 41, 45–46, 48–49, 51, 54–60, 62, 73, 77, 90, 92, 111–12, 133–34, 140, 152, 155, 158–59, 173, 176, 178, 191, 193–96. See also anti-austerity autonomous regions, 180 bailout, 4, 6, 8, 17, 37, 51, 59, 73, 77, 79, 114, 152, 165, 178, 194–95. See also memorandum of understanding; Troika BE (Bloco de Esquerda, Left Bloc), 4–8, 12, 14–17, 25, 29–30, 32–33, 35–37, 40, 42n5, 46, 48, 51–55, 58, 61–62, 82, 108, 110–14, 116–19, 121–23, 135–36, 162–68, 169n6, 177–81, 183, 185 Brazil, 63n1

candidate, 17, 53, 113, 132, 135–39, 143–44, 159–68, 169n8, 170n12; selection, 110, 168; survey, 153 CDU (Coligação Democrática Unitária), 5, 5–7, 32–36, 41n1, 52, 82, 108, 110–12, 114–17, 119, 121, 123, 124n3, 135–36, 139. See also PCP; PEV CGTP (Confederação Geral dos Trabalhadores Portugueses), 50–52, 54, 198. See also trade unions; UGT Chega (Enough), 5, 64n16, 197 Church, 56; attendance, 138, 140–43 citizenship, 134 civil society, 6, 13, 46, 56, 60, 62, 64n11, 195 cleavage, 47, 62, 117, 153. See also left-right coalition politics, 7–8, 27, 56–57, 110, 194, 196 cognitive mobilization, 15, 72, 75, 81, 83 cohort, 15, 70, 76–78, 82–83, 87, 91, 98, 195. See also generation; young Comparative Agendas Project, 17, 38–39, 42n7 Comparative Candidate Survey, 115–16, 120 confidence, 6, 8, 78, 80–81, 131. See also political institutions, trust

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Index

congruence, 15–16, 107–11, 122, 131–35, 161, 165–66, 193, 196; absolute measure of, 111, 114; gender, 133; ideological, 108, 112, 114, 116, 117, 119, 122–24, 130, 144, 168, 169n7; policy, 111, 116, 118, 122–24; relative measure of, 111, 113–14 constitutional: court, 15; reforms, 9; rules, 27, 71 corruption, 12–13 Costa, António, 55, 152, 158, 185 crisis: confidence, 131; democratic, 2, 12, 69, 191, 197. See also democracy; economic and financial, 1–11, 25–30, 33, 37, 40–41, 43–49, 55–61, 69–70, 73, 75–79, 81–83, 89–98, 108, 112–13, 119, 121–22, 129–37, 140, 144, 151–62, 165, 167–68, 171–86, 191–96; energy, 198; housing, 60–61; political, 49, 51; political representation, 3, 6–8; refugees, 1, 3 critical: citizens, 72, 75; junctures, 156, 174; mass, 130–31 Cyprus, 15, 88, 90–95, 97–99 delegitimization, 71, 130. See also legitimacy democracy: crisis. See crisis; disaffection, 2, 69–70, 72, 195, 198; dissatisfaction, 2, 5, 72–73, 75, 195; populist vision of, 109, 195; quality of, 2, 9, 12, 107–11, 114, 119, 121, 123–24, 129–30, 186, 193–95, 197; renewal, 1–2, 8–16, 25, 191–94, 196–97; support, 81–83 democratic deficit, 74 democratization (of Portugal), 57–62 demonstrations, 49–54, 56, 60, 94, 96 Denmark, 17n1, 88, 90–92, 93–94, 97–98 depolitization, 158 disaffection. See democracy discontent, 5–6, 50, 72, 173, 194, 196 dissatisfaction (of democracy). See democracy distribution function, 108; cumulative, 108; noncumulative, 114, 119, 122

Easton, David, 10, 71, 73, 81, 83 economic crisis. See crisis election manifesto, 176. See also party manifesto elections: campaign, 3, 158, 168, 188n9; European, 7, 13, 151; legislative, 4–5, 7, 13, 52, 152, 188n9, 193, 196–97 environment, 197 European Economic Community, 157 European Central Bank, 4, 152, 174, 192. See also Troika European Commission, 4, 34, 152, 174. See also Troika ESS (European Social Survey), 52, 91, 93–94, 96–99 Europeanization, 3 European Union (EU): attitudes toward, 33, 35, 152, 156–59, 164–68, 202; membership, 30, 162, 165; satisfaction with, 155, 164–68; support for, 157–62, 164–68 Euroskepticism, 151, 153, 155–57, 160–62, 167. See also political parties Eurozone: countries, 80–81; crisis, 8, 45, 155–56, 174 expert survey, 9, 12–13, 26, 31, 113, 154, 165, 183 France, 5, 9, 15, 88, 90–95, 97–98 gender, 129–44, 161, 165, 194; quotas, 129, 131, 133; roles, 134, 140 generation, 15, 51, 76–78, 82, 90, 92, 195. See also cohort; young Geração à Rasca, 50–51 Geringonça, 8, 10, 25, 178, 187, 198 Germany, 9, 15, 88, 90–98 globalization, 3, 118, 137 Great Recession, 2, 6–7, 9, 14–16, 88–89, 91, 95, 97–98, 108, 110–11, 117, 119, 122–23, 140, 144, 153, 156, 158–59, 173–76, 178, 186, 191, 193, 196. See also Eurozone, crisis Greece, 5–7, 17n1, 46, 49, 60, 63n3, 77, 154, 193, 196

Index

IMF (International Monetary Fund), 4, 73, 152, 174, 192. See also Troika Indignados, 51. See also demonstrations institutional agenda. See agenda intraparty: cohesion, 16–17, 151–68, 169nn2–3; democracy, 54; dissent, 162, 166 issues: left-libertarian, 107, 110, 114, 132, 137–39, 142, 143–44, 145nn8–9; socioeconomic, 1, 15–16, 27, 34–36, 39, 107–8, 110–24, 132, 136–40, 143–44, 177, 194, 197 Italy, 5, 9, 60, 125n7, 154, 196 leadership, 7, 11–12, 71, 154, 158, 167–68, 191, 195, 197 left-right, 14, 28–29, 32, 123, 135, 140, 143, 153, 159–61, 169n8, 183; identification, 32, 82, 112–13, 124; self-placement, 16, 40, 124, 138, 140–41, 161. See also cleavage legislative: activities, 17, 31, 174–75, 177–78, 185–86, 187n4; agenda, 175; elections. See elections legitimacy, 6, 11, 48, 51, 191; democratic, 1, 69, 71, 75, 80, 196; regime, 70–71, 83, 198 Lipset, M. Seymour, 10, 71 Livre, 54, 197 Mair, Peter, 176 memorandum of understanding (MoU), 28, 45, 152, 177, 193. See also bailout MEPs (Members of European Parliament), 151 Movimento 12 de Março (M12M), 51 Norris, Pippa, 72 PàF (Portugal à Frente), 5, 7 PAN (Pessoas-Animais-Natureza), 5, 169n10, 197 Parity-Act, 131–32 parliament (of Portugal), 4, 7, 12, 16, 30–31, 37–38, 41, 51, 58, 77–78, 80,

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109, 112–14, 117–19, 123, 129–33, 135–36, 140, 157, 174, 177, 183, 197 parliamentary questions, 17, 174–75, 179–87 participation, 2, 5–6, 11–15, 46, 48, 52, 54–55, 60, 62, 70, 72, 87–99, 110, 193–95; conventional, 6, 15, 48, 52, 72, 87–99, 194–95; unconventional, 3, 5–6, 15, 46, 48, 52, 70, 87–88, 90–98, 194 partisanship, 11, 74–75, 82–83, 168 party discipline, 144, 169n3 party identification, 15, 53, 70, 75, 78, 82. See also left-right, identification; partisanship party manifesto, 29–30, 113, 153 party system, 15; change, 37; of Portugal, 3–9 Passos Coelho, Pedro, 8, 37, 178, 183 PCP (Partido Comunista Português), 4, 7–8, 12, 14–17, 25, 29, 36–40, 46, 48, 54–58, 61–63, 112, 117, 124n3, 145n3, 157, 162–68, 177–87 PEV (Partido Ecologista “Os Verdes,” the Greens), 4, 25, 28–29, 41n1, 124n3, 145n3, 178 Podemos, 7, 46. See also Spain polarization, 135. See also left-right politicization, 16, 167, 176 political institutions, 1, 6, 8, 70–75, 78, 129–30, 192; European, 6, 10–12, 46–47, 155, 158, 173, 176, 192, 194; trust, 69, 77, 80, 91, 193, 195 political participation, 5–6, 11, 13, 15, 52, 62, 70, 72, 87–98, 99n4, 193–95 political parties: catch-all parties, 108, 111–12, 124; challenger parties, 4–7, 151, 155, 182, 193; crisis (of), 24; democracy and, 1–2; democratization and, 48; euroskeptic, 151; ideological parties, 108, 112; mainstream parties, 3–4, 17, 26–30, 33, 40–41, 49, 53, 151, 155–58, 167, 170n14, 173, 175–76, 182, 185, 195, 197–98; opposition parties, 5–8, 26, 30, 122, 186–87; protest parties, 2, 10

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Index

political representation, 2–3, 12–15, 108–10, 112–13, 121, 129–34, 143–44, 175, 186, 191, 193–97 political support: democratic, 14, 70–71, 73–79, 81, 83; diffuse, 15, 70–71, 73–83, 155, 159, 167; specific, 15, 70–71, 73–83, 155, 159, 165–68. See also legitimacy populism, 13, 193 primaries, 110 PS (Partido Socialista), 4–7, 12, 14, 16, 25, 28–41, 46, 48–56, 58, 61–62, 82, 108, 110–12, 114, 116, 117, 119, 121, 123–24, 135, 139–40, 152, 157–58, 163, 164–66, 178, 181–82, 185, 194–97 PSD (Partido Social Democrata), 5–8, 14, 16–17, 29–30, 33–38, 40, 48–49, 51, 54, 57, 82, 108, 110–11, 114, 116, 117, 119, 121–24, 135, 139–40, 157–58, 163, 164, 166, 177–79, 181, 182, 194, 197 public deficit, 45, 49, 58, 152, 169n5, 178, 196 public opinion, 11, 151–52, 155–58, 161, 168, 173–77, 197

Single European Act, 157 socialization, 71, 75–76, 159–60, 165, 195 social modernization, 15, 70, 75–76, 81, 83 social movements, 7, 14, 46–49, 53–54, 56–58, 60–64 Sócrates, José, 29, 37, 49–50, 158 Southern Europe, 10–11, 45, 48, 59, 61–62, 76, 82, 89–90, 112, 134, 151–52, 154, 156, 173, 176, 192, 194, 196–97 Spain, 5–7, 9, 15, 46, 49, 51, 60, 62, 63n3, 88, 90–95, 97–98, 154, 193, 196 SYRIZA, 7, 46. See also Greece

Que se Lixe a Troika (QSLT), 51, 54

UGT (União Geral dos Trabalhadores), 198. See also CGTP; trade unions unemployment, 17, 45, 58, 73, 89–90, 134, 152, 169n5, 173, 175–79, 181–86, 195 United Kingdom, 17n1, 154 USA (United States of America), 69

radical left, 4, 7, 14, 17, 25, 27–30, 33– 41, 49, 73, 110–12, 114, 119, 123–24, 135, 152, 157–58, 162, 167–68, 178, 183, 185–88, 194, 196, 198 representation; bottom-up, 109, 121; confluential dynamic, 110, 117, 123; deficit of, 194; disconnecting dynamic, 110, 117, 121, 123–24; policy, 107–14, 117, 122–24; top-down, 109, 117, 121, 123 responsible party model, 109 Rodrik, Dani, 3 Salazar, António de Oliveira, 57 Seguro, António José, 55, 158 self-expression values, 75 semi-presidential system, 11

trade unions, 47, 50–54, 57, 91, 198. See also CGTP; UGT Troika, 4, 7–8, 12, 14, 29, 37, 45, 80, 111, 114, 119, 122, 158, 174, 185, 192, 194, 196–97. See also bailout; memorandum of understanding trust, 1, 3, 6, 14, 69–70, 72, 74, 77, 79, 91, 173, 186, 193–95 turnout, 1, 3, 5, 13, 70, 87, 197. See also political participation

volatility, 2, 4, 10, 112, 193 welfare state, 3, 10, 17, 28, 30, 134, 152, 173–79, 181, 183, 187, 191, 195 Western Europe, 63n3, 69, 191 women (political representation of), 129–34, 139–41, 143–44 young, 5–6, 75–76, 87–98. See also cohort; generation

About the Contributors

Marco Lisi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Studies, Nova University of Lisbon, and researcher at IPRI-Nova. His research interests focus on political parties, electoral behavior, democratic theory, and political representation. He has published several articles in national and international journals such as International Political Science Review, Comparative European Politics, and Party Politics. He has coordinated several national projects and collaborated with a variety of international projects, such as “The Choice for Europe after Maastricht” (University of Salzburg). Currently, he is the principal investigator of the project “From Representation to Legitimacy: Political Parties and Interest Groups in Southern Europe,” funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). André Freire is Full Professor in Political Science, Head of the Doctoral Program in Political Science at ISCTE-IUL (University Institute of Lisbon), and Senior Researcher at CIES-IUL. He has directed several research projects in Portugal, namely about electoral behavior (codirector of the Portuguese National Election Studies, PNES 2001–2005), and political attitudes, political reforms, and political representation (director of several MP candidate surveys since 2007). He has published (in different languages) several books, book chapters, and papers in academic journals about left-right (mass and elite) ideology, electoral behavior, political attitudes, political institutions, political elites, and political representation. Freire has also acted as external expert (for scientific and technical purposes) for FCT, A3ES, Portuguese Parliament, National Electoral Commission (CNE), Ministry of Internal Affairs (DGAI-MAI), Council of Europe, EU–COST Actions, among others.

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About the Contributors

Emmanouil Tsatsanis is a researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (CIES-IUL). He is codirector (with André Freire and Marco Lisi) of the FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia)-funded research program “Crisis, Political Representation and Democratic Renewal: The Portuguese Case in the Southern European Context.” His work has appeared in edited volumes and in journals such as West European Politics, International Political Science Review, Party Politics, Journal of Political Ideologies, South European Society and Politics, Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties. Guya Accornero is a research fellow and invited professor at the Lisbon University Institute (IUL). Her research interests include social movements, radicalization, political violence, repression, and anti-austerity protest. Her publications include several book chapters, articles, and journals such as Journal of Contemporary Religion, West European Politics, Democratization, Cultures & Conflicts, Análise Social, Storia e Problemi, the monograph The Revolution before the Revolution. Student Protest and Political Process at the End of the Portuguese Dictatorship and the edited book (with Olivier Fillieule) Social Movements Studies in Europe: The State of the Art. Ana Maria Belchior is an Associate Professor, with aggregation in political science, in the Department of Political Science and Public Policies at ISCTEIUL (University Institute of Lisbon), and Researcher at CIES-IUL. She is currently the head of the Department of Political Science and Public Policies and the coordinator of the Master in Political Science, both at ISCTE-IUL. Enrico Borghetto is FCT researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Science of the NOVA FCSH (Nova University of Lisbon). His research has focused on compliance with EU policies, the Europeanization of national legislation, legislative studies, and European decision-making. He has published in various academic journals such as Party Politics, European Union Politics, and the Journal of European Public Policy. João Cancela is a PhD candidate in political science at Nova University of Lisbon (IPRI/FCSH-UNL) and a guest lecturer at NOVA FCSH and University of Minho. He has collaborated with several research projects in the field of comparative politics and his recent publications include coauthored articles in the journals Electoral Studies, Politics, and Party Politics. Elisabetta De Giorgi is a senior researcher at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Trieste. Her main research interests are parliaments from a comparative perspective and political parties. She has

About the Contributors

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published several articles in international journals and the book L’opposizione parlamentare in Italia. Dall’antiberlusconismo all’antipolitica (2016), and coedited the volume Opposition Parties in European Legislatures. Conflict or Consensus? (2018). Francisco Graça obtained a master’s degree at ISCTE-IUL and is currently doing a PhD in the same institution. He is also advisor to the president of Cabo Verde’s National. Ana Prata is an Associate Professor in sociology at California State University Northridge, USA. She specializes in European women’s movements, political representation, gender and democratization, and issues of bodily citizenship. Augusta Correia worked as research assistant at CIES-IUL in the project “Crisis, Political Representation and Democratic Renewal: The Portuguese Case in the Southern European Context.” She holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in social psychology and she has published several articles in this field. She is also a specialist in data analysis, a field where she holds a postgraduate degree. Viriato Queiroga obtained a master’s degree at ISCTE-IUL and is currently doing a PhD in the same institution, with an FCT (National Science Foundation) grant. Vera Ramalhete worked as research assistant in the project “Crisis, Political Representation and Democratic Renewal: The Portuguese Case in the Southern European Context.” She holds a master’s degree in political science and a degree in communication sciences from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Nova University of Lisbon. Her thesis was on the field of political communication and electoral campaigning. Previously, she worked as a journalist and in the field of institutional communication. Pedro Ramos Pinto is Senior Lecturer in International Economic History at the University of Cambridge, and Director of the Inequality and History Network. His research explores the history and conflicts over social citizenship in western Europe since the 1930s. His recent works include The Impact of History? Histories at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century (coedited with Bertrand Taithe) and Lisbon Rising: Urban Social Movements in the Portuguese Revolution, 1974–75. Sofia Serra-Silva is invited teaching assistant at the Political Science and Public Policy Department of ISCTE and a PhD candidate of comparative

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About the Contributors

politics at the Institute of Social Sciences (ICS) of the University of Lisbon. Since 2016, she is also an associate researcher at the Public Policy Institute – Thomas Jefferson-Correia Serra. Her research interests include political behavior and attitudes, survey research, parliamentary politics, and the relationship between internet and politics. Vicente Valentim is a PhD researcher at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. His research interests are political behavior, political parties, and protest politics. He is particularly interested in how the perception of changes in the political environment affects individual-level political behavior. Vicente’s work is forthcoming in Social Movement Studies and Mobilization.