Ana Maria Belchior
Biographic Data
| ID | 242441 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ana Maria Belchior |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ana Maria |
| FAMILY NAME | Belchior |
| SIGNATURE | BELCHIOR A M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Iscte – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3387-2529 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 281 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Euroscepticism in party discourse during the Covid-19 pandemic: Evidence from Portugal and Spain
The COVID-19 pandemic confronted the European Union (EU) with a sanitary and an economic crisis. This study examines how the crisis affected party-level Euroscepticism in Portugal and Spain through an analysis of parliamentary speeches. We propose two competing hypotheses: the pandemic may have fostered unity, tempering Euroscepticism, or alternatively, amplified criticism in response to perceived shortcomings in the EU's crisis management. We ar…
Who Is Responsible for the State of the Economy? Media Narratives on Responsibility Attribution During the Eurozone Crisis in Ireland, Portugal and Spain
This study examines who the media holds responsible for economic issues in a multi‐level setting, particularly during the 2009 economic crisis. Despite the burgeoning research on responsibility attribution and the likely effect of the media in giving credit and blame, little attention has been paid to this role of the media. To address this gap, our objectives are to assess (1) the extent to which the media attributes responsibility to national g…
How does education affect political culture? Evidence across different educational, socioeconomic, and institutional settings
Accountability under the media spotlight: The role of economic salience in assigning credit and blame to the incumbent in Portugal
Does Party Colour Matter? The Effect of Government Partisanship on Pledges’ Left–Right Location
Despite extensive research on the ‘politics matter’ hypothesis, the findings achieved so far remain ambiguous. Inspired by that hypothesis, this research focuses on electoral promises, a chief but as yet untested indicator. It examines whether government party colour explains the adoption of an ideologically committed policy agenda in electoral manifestos. To answer this goal the research looks at the left–right placement of manifesto pledges of …
Party policy responsiveness at the agenda-setting and decision-making stages: The mediating effect of the types of government and promise
To what extent are political parties responsive to voters before and after elections (that is, during the campaign and in office)? And what explains responsiveness at both of these stages: agenda-setting and decision-making? We argue that parties are more responsive at the agenda-setting stage than at the decision-making stage, and that responsiveness tends to be mediated by the type of promise (change versus status quo, and issue salience), and …
Widening the gap of political inequality? The effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on political engagement
There is extensive evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has mostly affected the less well-off in society, boosting economic inequality. In contrast, little is known about how much such rising economic disparities affected the involvement of individuals in politics, thereby enhancing political inequality. Extending the research on political inequality to a key and somewhat neglected dimension of citizens’ involvement with politics - political engag…
Breaking with mainstream politics while engaging with polarized: Determinants of young Europeans’ support for democracy
It is quite consensual that the younger citizens exhibit higher – although objectively modest – scepticism about democracy and openness to undemocratic forms of government. Despite the ongoing debate about whether a process of deconsolidation is underway in liberal democracies, as well as about the role of young citizens in it, research has so far given little attention to finding out why younger people are more likely to turn away from democracy…
Determinants of Political Trust during the Early Months of the Covid-19 Pandemic: Putting Policy Performance into Evidence
Basing on the previous and early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, this article analysis the main determinants of citizens’ trust in the prime minister over that period. Prior research on the political effects of the pandemic has mostly focused on identifying a rally around the flag effect, and little is known about other reasons behind the increase in trust after the outbreak of the pandemic. Based on survey data from February to July 2020 for Sp…
The Effect of Ministerial Instability on Government's Mandate Fulfilment: Evidence from the Portuguese Case
Research on the fulfilment of electoral promises has been particularly fruitful over the past decades. Most of it focused on examining pledge fulfilment at the cabinet level, and little emphasis was placed on the reasons underlying the level of compliance. As a consequence, core factors in explaining pledge fulfilment have not yet been explored. One such factor might be instability in a government's internal functioning. We argue that ministerial…
Ιs ‘Old Southern Europe’ Still Eurosceptic? Determinants of Mass Attitudes before, during and after the Eurozone Crisis
One of the consequences of the eurozone crisis in the countries of ‘Old Southern Europe’ is the shift from pro-European to eurosceptic attitudes. Our overarching goal is to assess whether these critical stances towards the EU are more conjunctural or long-lasting. We further aim to analyse the determinants of euroscepticism at the micro-level before, during and after the emergence of the eurozone crisis. Our analysis reveals that euroscepticism i…
Party Manifestos, Opposition and Media as Determinants of the Cabinet Agenda
Cabinets are the engine of policy change in parliamentary systems. Yet, we still know little about how cabinets micro-manage the content of their multifaceted agenda during their term in office. Drawing on the party and agenda-setting literature, this article addresses this gap by focusing on three main determinants of cabinet priorities: issue priorities in the electoral platforms of majority and opposition parties, and new and unforeseen proble…
Media, public opinion and parliamentary agendas’ effect in political parties’ agenda-setting
Why do parties pay more attention to some policy issues than to others? To what extent does policy attention conveyed by the media, public opinion, and parliament explain party agenda-setting? And, more specifically, to what extent does the media agenda influence other agenda effects? This paper addresses these questions in an original manner by analyzing the influence of these three agendas – media, public opinion, and parliament – in party mani…
Generalization of Classic Question Order Effects Across Cultures
Questionnaire design is routinely guided by classic experiments on question form, wording, and context conducted decades ago. This article explores whether two question order effects (one due to the norm of evenhandedness and the other due to subtraction or perceptual contrast) appear in surveys of probability samples in the United States and 11 other countries (Canada, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, …
Political parties in troubled times: Economic crisis and voter’s perceptual bias of parties’ ideology in Europe
The effects of party identification on perceptions of pledge fulfilment: Evidence from Portugal
Empirical research has found that, despite citizens’ perceptions to the contrary, political parties tend to deliver on their campaign promises. What are the reasons for this mismatch between perceptions and performance? Research to date has paid insufficient attention to the reasons for such a mismatch, neglecting the effects of political predispositions such as party identification and sympathy for the government. This article argues that it is …
O sentido de voto dos eleitores residentes no estrangeiro, 1976-2011
Este artigo tem como objetivo principal analisar o sentido de voto dos portugueses residentes no estrangeiro durante o período democrático (1976-2011), em eleições legislativas, europeias e presidenciais, assim como o papel do sistema de partidos no estrangeiro na mobilização eleitoral e na explicação do sentido de voto. As duas tendências mais importantes que emergem dizem respeito: em primeiro lugar, ao acentuado decréscimo da participação elei…
Understanding the pledge fulfilment of opposition parties using evidence from Portugal
Under what conditions are opposition parties better at delivering on their electoral promises? Existing approaches to party mandates typically focus on governmental mandates and have disregarded the roles of other parties in parliament. However, such approaches encompass an imbalance regarding the comparison of pledge fulfilment between governing and opposition parties, and specially neglect the differences between permanent and alternating oppos…
Policy Congruence in a Competitive Authoritarian Regime: Learning from the Angolan Case
Building on the theoretical proposition that congruence is as much a property to be measured in authoritarian regimes as it is in democratic regimes, the aim of this article is to understand the phenomenon of ideological and political congruence in Angola. To carry out this analysis, we rely on two original surveys, conducted in 2012 with members of parliament (MPs) and college students (voters), covering equivalent policy issues. The results, to…
Contextual reasons for emigrants’ electoral participation in home country elections: The Portuguese case
Although emigrants represent an increasing share of the electoral population in many democracies, not much is known about their participation in home country elections. With the purpose of contributing to fill such gap, this article develops a longitudinal and exploratory analysis of the contextual factors of emigrants’ participation in national elections in the case of Portugal (1976–2015), a country with one of the highest emigration rates of t…
A ‘necessary evil’ even during hard times? Public support for political parties in Portugal before and after the bailout (2008 and 2012)
Notwithstanding the prolific research on the crisis of democracy since the 1980s, the attention that has been given to political parties has not been enough to fully understand the (increasing lack of) citizen support for them. Additionally, there is too little research on how the economic context can contribute to changes in support for political parties. Focusing on the Portuguese case, this article has three main goals: to assess citizen suppo…
Representation in times of crisis: Deputy–voter congruence on views of representation in Portugal
This article compares how Portuguese voters and deputies evaluated the role of legislators and the representation process before and after the economic crisis (2008 and 2012, respectively). It makes use of a set of six issues characterising two views of representation: one institutional–independent and another participatory–mandatory. It also includes an analysis of two core policy issues. The research draws upon surveys of Portuguese voters and …
Out of Sight, Out of Mind? External Voting and the Political Representation of Portuguese Emigrants
Over recent decades, emigrants have gained expanded voting rights on a global scale. Despite the normative debates about this issue, there are few empirical studies on why states decide to implement external voting and how electoral systems perform. This article seeks to fill this gap by looking at the Portuguese case. Our study suggests that a combination of political and socio-economic factors explains the implementation of external voting. On …
Support for Democracy in Times of Crisis: Diffuse and Specific Regime Support in Portugal and Greece
In the context of a cross-national economic crisis, questions about democratic legitimacy are again topical. We explore the question of democratic legitimacy in Portugal and Greece by employing the conceptual differentiation between diffuse and specific regime support. Our findings indicate that while specific support has fallen in both countries, only Greece has experienced a precipitous fall in diffuse support, suggesting a link between regime …
Explaining MPs’ perceptions of voters’ positions in a party-mediated representation system: Evidence from the Portuguese case
The article addresses the crucial but still relatively understudied issue of political perceptions, specifically the perceptions of members of parliament (MPs) regarding the positioning of voters on the left–right spectrum, and the accuracy thereof. It focuses on the Portuguese case, which differs from others studied to date in terms of the links between MPs and voters (in contrast to prior research, Portuguese voters do not vote for an MP candid…
Explaining Left–Right Party Congruence Across European Party Systems: A Test of Micro-, Meso-, and Macro-Level Models
Empirical studies on representation have been based mainly on the descriptive analysis of levels of political or ideological congruence between MPs and voters. Very few studies focus on explaining congruence, and those that have done so do not explore all the explanatory dimensions. This article contributes to filling this gap by testing whether three theoretical models can explain left–right congruence among European parties. These models explor…
Explaining MPs’ perceptions of voters’ positions in a party-mediated representation system: Evidence from the Portuguese case
The article addresses the crucial but still relatively understudied issue of political perceptions, specifically the perceptions of members of parliament (MPs) regarding the positioning of voters on the left–right spectrum, and the accuracy thereof. It focuses on the Portuguese case, which differs from others studied to date in terms of the links between MPs and voters (in contrast to prior research, Portuguese voters do not vote for an MP candid…
Support for Democracy in Times of Crisis: Diffuse and Specific Regime Support in Portugal and Greece
In the context of a cross-national economic crisis, questions about democratic legitimacy are again topical. We explore the question of democratic legitimacy in Portugal and Greece by employing the conceptual differentiation between diffuse and specific regime support. Our findings indicate that while specific support has fallen in both countries, only Greece has experienced a precipitous fall in diffuse support, suggesting a link between regime …
Ideological Representation in Portugal: MPs'–Electors' Linkages in Terms of Left–Right Placement and Substantive Meaning
In the literature elite–mass congruence is usually measured in terms of either issue preferences or left–right self-placement. The two forms of congruence are only occasionally used together and are seldom used with the purpose of seeing if levels of congruence were similar. With this intention Portugal is used as an extreme case (due to its low level of clarity regarding party policy alternatives, and its relatively low levels of education, medi…
Ideological Congruence among European Political Parties
Do European political parties represent the ideology of their voters well? This research aims to provide an empirical appreciation of the levels to which Members of Parliament (MPs) ideologically represent their electorate within political parties in 12 European countries. The variable used is left–right self-placement and representation is measured through congruence. Three main hypotheses are tested. First, MPs express greater ideological extre…
Is party type relevant to an explanation of policy congruence? Catchall versus ideological parties in the Portuguese case
Most research on policy congruence has failed to provide an explanation for it. Party characteristics are acknowledged to be relevant, but the literature has not achieved a consensus as to their effective importance. Nor has there thus far been an analysis of the implications for results of using different methods to assess congruence. The present article seeks to test the importance of party type (catchall versus ideological) for an explanation …
The effects of party identification on perceptions of pledge fulfilment: Evidence from Portugal
Empirical research has found that, despite citizens’ perceptions to the contrary, political parties tend to deliver on their campaign promises. What are the reasons for this mismatch between perceptions and performance? Research to date has paid insufficient attention to the reasons for such a mismatch, neglecting the effects of political predispositions such as party identification and sympathy for the government. This article argues that it is …
Determinants of Political Trust during the Early Months of the Covid-19 Pandemic: Putting Policy Performance into Evidence
Basing on the previous and early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, this article analysis the main determinants of citizens’ trust in the prime minister over that period. Prior research on the political effects of the pandemic has mostly focused on identifying a rally around the flag effect, and little is known about other reasons behind the increase in trust after the outbreak of the pandemic. Based on survey data from February to July 2020 for Sp…
Out of Sight, Out of Mind? External Voting and the Political Representation of Portuguese Emigrants
Over recent decades, emigrants have gained expanded voting rights on a global scale. Despite the normative debates about this issue, there are few empirical studies on why states decide to implement external voting and how electoral systems perform. This article seeks to fill this gap by looking at the Portuguese case. Our study suggests that a combination of political and socio-economic factors explains the implementation of external voting. On …
Party Manifestos, Opposition and Media as Determinants of the Cabinet Agenda
Cabinets are the engine of policy change in parliamentary systems. Yet, we still know little about how cabinets micro-manage the content of their multifaceted agenda during their term in office. Drawing on the party and agenda-setting literature, this article addresses this gap by focusing on three main determinants of cabinet priorities: issue priorities in the electoral platforms of majority and opposition parties, and new and unforeseen proble…
What left and right means to Portuguese citizens
Party Political Representation in Portugal
This study analyses the degree to which Portuguese parties represent their electorates. In this instance, representation is measured by the degree of congruence between those who vote and those who are elected. The analysis has two dimensions: ideological positioning and attitudes towards democracy. On the first dimension, it appears that, compared to the voters, the parliamentary elite is ideologically more extreme. On the second dimension, one …
Ιs ‘Old Southern Europe’ Still Eurosceptic? Determinants of Mass Attitudes before, during and after the Eurozone Crisis
One of the consequences of the eurozone crisis in the countries of ‘Old Southern Europe’ is the shift from pro-European to eurosceptic attitudes. Our overarching goal is to assess whether these critical stances towards the EU are more conjunctural or long-lasting. We further aim to analyse the determinants of euroscepticism at the micro-level before, during and after the emergence of the eurozone crisis. Our analysis reveals that euroscepticism i…
Contextual reasons for emigrants’ electoral participation in home country elections: The Portuguese case
Although emigrants represent an increasing share of the electoral population in many democracies, not much is known about their participation in home country elections. With the purpose of contributing to fill such gap, this article develops a longitudinal and exploratory analysis of the contextual factors of emigrants’ participation in national elections in the case of Portugal (1976–2015), a country with one of the highest emigration rates of t…
Representation in times of crisis: Deputy–voter congruence on views of representation in Portugal
This article compares how Portuguese voters and deputies evaluated the role of legislators and the representation process before and after the economic crisis (2008 and 2012, respectively). It makes use of a set of six issues characterising two views of representation: one institutional–independent and another participatory–mandatory. It also includes an analysis of two core policy issues. The research draws upon surveys of Portuguese voters and …
A ‘necessary evil’ even during hard times? Public support for political parties in Portugal before and after the bailout (2008 and 2012)
Notwithstanding the prolific research on the crisis of democracy since the 1980s, the attention that has been given to political parties has not been enough to fully understand the (increasing lack of) citizen support for them. Additionally, there is too little research on how the economic context can contribute to changes in support for political parties. Focusing on the Portuguese case, this article has three main goals: to assess citizen suppo…
Party policy responsiveness at the agenda-setting and decision-making stages: The mediating effect of the types of government and promise
To what extent are political parties responsive to voters before and after elections (that is, during the campaign and in office)? And what explains responsiveness at both of these stages: agenda-setting and decision-making? We argue that parties are more responsive at the agenda-setting stage than at the decision-making stage, and that responsiveness tends to be mediated by the type of promise (change versus status quo, and issue salience), and …
Widening the gap of political inequality? The effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on political engagement
There is extensive evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has mostly affected the less well-off in society, boosting economic inequality. In contrast, little is known about how much such rising economic disparities affected the involvement of individuals in politics, thereby enhancing political inequality. Extending the research on political inequality to a key and somewhat neglected dimension of citizens’ involvement with politics - political engag…
Breaking with mainstream politics while engaging with polarized: Determinants of young Europeans’ support for democracy
It is quite consensual that the younger citizens exhibit higher – although objectively modest – scepticism about democracy and openness to undemocratic forms of government. Despite the ongoing debate about whether a process of deconsolidation is underway in liberal democracies, as well as about the role of young citizens in it, research has so far given little attention to finding out why younger people are more likely to turn away from democracy…
Media, public opinion and parliamentary agendas’ effect in political parties’ agenda-setting
Why do parties pay more attention to some policy issues than to others? To what extent does policy attention conveyed by the media, public opinion, and parliament explain party agenda-setting? And, more specifically, to what extent does the media agenda influence other agenda effects? This paper addresses these questions in an original manner by analyzing the influence of these three agendas – media, public opinion, and parliament – in party mani…
Understanding the pledge fulfilment of opposition parties using evidence from Portugal
Under what conditions are opposition parties better at delivering on their electoral promises? Existing approaches to party mandates typically focus on governmental mandates and have disregarded the roles of other parties in parliament. However, such approaches encompass an imbalance regarding the comparison of pledge fulfilment between governing and opposition parties, and specially neglect the differences between permanent and alternating oppos…
Does Party Colour Matter? The Effect of Government Partisanship on Pledges’ Left–Right Location
Despite extensive research on the ‘politics matter’ hypothesis, the findings achieved so far remain ambiguous. Inspired by that hypothesis, this research focuses on electoral promises, a chief but as yet untested indicator. It examines whether government party colour explains the adoption of an ideologically committed policy agenda in electoral manifestos. To answer this goal the research looks at the left–right placement of manifesto pledges of …
The Effect of Ministerial Instability on Government's Mandate Fulfilment: Evidence from the Portuguese Case
Research on the fulfilment of electoral promises has been particularly fruitful over the past decades. Most of it focused on examining pledge fulfilment at the cabinet level, and little emphasis was placed on the reasons underlying the level of compliance. As a consequence, core factors in explaining pledge fulfilment have not yet been explored. One such factor might be instability in a government's internal functioning. We argue that ministerial…
Generalization of Classic Question Order Effects Across Cultures
Questionnaire design is routinely guided by classic experiments on question form, wording, and context conducted decades ago. This article explores whether two question order effects (one due to the norm of evenhandedness and the other due to subtraction or perceptual contrast) appear in surveys of probability samples in the United States and 11 other countries (Canada, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, …
O sentido de voto dos eleitores residentes no estrangeiro, 1976-2011
Este artigo tem como objetivo principal analisar o sentido de voto dos portugueses residentes no estrangeiro durante o período democrático (1976-2011), em eleições legislativas, europeias e presidenciais, assim como o papel do sistema de partidos no estrangeiro na mobilização eleitoral e na explicação do sentido de voto. As duas tendências mais importantes que emergem dizem respeito: em primeiro lugar, ao acentuado decréscimo da participação elei…
Party Political Representation in Portugal
This study analyses the degree to which Portuguese parties represent their electorates. In this instance, representation is measured by the degree of congruence between those who vote and those who are elected. The analysis has two dimensions: ideological positioning and attitudes towards democracy. On the first dimension, it appears that, compared to the voters, the parliamentary elite is ideologically more extreme. On the second dimension, one …
Are Green Political Parties More Post-Materialist Than Other Parties
Among other social and political changes, post-materialist theory anticipated the need to strengthen democracy in political institutions in post-industrial societies. This change in political values would mean that in addition to growth in post-materialist values, parties would be pushed to take an alternative view of politics that would entail greater assimilation of democratic procedures. This paper partially and empirically tests the validity …
Ideological Congruence among European Political Parties
Do European political parties represent the ideology of their voters well? This research aims to provide an empirical appreciation of the levels to which Members of Parliament (MPs) ideologically represent their electorate within political parties in 12 European countries. The variable used is left–right self-placement and representation is measured through congruence. Three main hypotheses are tested. First, MPs express greater ideological extre…
What left and right means to Portuguese citizens
Explaining Left–Right Party Congruence Across European Party Systems: A Test of Micro-, Meso-, and Macro-Level Models
Empirical studies on representation have been based mainly on the descriptive analysis of levels of political or ideological congruence between MPs and voters. Very few studies focus on explaining congruence, and those that have done so do not explore all the explanatory dimensions. This article contributes to filling this gap by testing whether three theoretical models can explain left–right congruence among European parties. These models explor…
Is party type relevant to an explanation of policy congruence? Catchall versus ideological parties in the Portuguese case
Most research on policy congruence has failed to provide an explanation for it. Party characteristics are acknowledged to be relevant, but the literature has not achieved a consensus as to their effective importance. Nor has there thus far been an analysis of the implications for results of using different methods to assess congruence. The present article seeks to test the importance of party type (catchall versus ideological) for an explanation …
Ideological Representation in Portugal: MPs'–Electors' Linkages in Terms of Left–Right Placement and Substantive Meaning
In the literature elite–mass congruence is usually measured in terms of either issue preferences or left–right self-placement. The two forms of congruence are only occasionally used together and are seldom used with the purpose of seeing if levels of congruence were similar. With this intention Portugal is used as an extreme case (due to its low level of clarity regarding party policy alternatives, and its relatively low levels of education, medi…
Support for Democracy in Times of Crisis: Diffuse and Specific Regime Support in Portugal and Greece
In the context of a cross-national economic crisis, questions about democratic legitimacy are again topical. We explore the question of democratic legitimacy in Portugal and Greece by employing the conceptual differentiation between diffuse and specific regime support. Our findings indicate that while specific support has fallen in both countries, only Greece has experienced a precipitous fall in diffuse support, suggesting a link between regime …
Explaining MPs’ perceptions of voters’ positions in a party-mediated representation system: Evidence from the Portuguese case
The article addresses the crucial but still relatively understudied issue of political perceptions, specifically the perceptions of members of parliament (MPs) regarding the positioning of voters on the left–right spectrum, and the accuracy thereof. It focuses on the Portuguese case, which differs from others studied to date in terms of the links between MPs and voters (in contrast to prior research, Portuguese voters do not vote for an MP candid…
Out of Sight, Out of Mind? External Voting and the Political Representation of Portuguese Emigrants
Over recent decades, emigrants have gained expanded voting rights on a global scale. Despite the normative debates about this issue, there are few empirical studies on why states decide to implement external voting and how electoral systems perform. This article seeks to fill this gap by looking at the Portuguese case. Our study suggests that a combination of political and socio-economic factors explains the implementation of external voting. On …
A ‘necessary evil’ even during hard times? Public support for political parties in Portugal before and after the bailout (2008 and 2012)
Notwithstanding the prolific research on the crisis of democracy since the 1980s, the attention that has been given to political parties has not been enough to fully understand the (increasing lack of) citizen support for them. Additionally, there is too little research on how the economic context can contribute to changes in support for political parties. Focusing on the Portuguese case, this article has three main goals: to assess citizen suppo…
Representation in times of crisis: Deputy–voter congruence on views of representation in Portugal
This article compares how Portuguese voters and deputies evaluated the role of legislators and the representation process before and after the economic crisis (2008 and 2012, respectively). It makes use of a set of six issues characterising two views of representation: one institutional–independent and another participatory–mandatory. It also includes an analysis of two core policy issues. The research draws upon surveys of Portuguese voters and …
Contextual reasons for emigrants’ electoral participation in home country elections: The Portuguese case
Although emigrants represent an increasing share of the electoral population in many democracies, not much is known about their participation in home country elections. With the purpose of contributing to fill such gap, this article develops a longitudinal and exploratory analysis of the contextual factors of emigrants’ participation in national elections in the case of Portugal (1976–2015), a country with one of the highest emigration rates of t…
Policy Congruence in a Competitive Authoritarian Regime: Learning from the Angolan Case
Building on the theoretical proposition that congruence is as much a property to be measured in authoritarian regimes as it is in democratic regimes, the aim of this article is to understand the phenomenon of ideological and political congruence in Angola. To carry out this analysis, we rely on two original surveys, conducted in 2012 with members of parliament (MPs) and college students (voters), covering equivalent policy issues. The results, to…
Political parties in troubled times: Economic crisis and voter’s perceptual bias of parties’ ideology in Europe
The effects of party identification on perceptions of pledge fulfilment: Evidence from Portugal
Empirical research has found that, despite citizens’ perceptions to the contrary, political parties tend to deliver on their campaign promises. What are the reasons for this mismatch between perceptions and performance? Research to date has paid insufficient attention to the reasons for such a mismatch, neglecting the effects of political predispositions such as party identification and sympathy for the government. This article argues that it is …
O sentido de voto dos eleitores residentes no estrangeiro, 1976-2011
Este artigo tem como objetivo principal analisar o sentido de voto dos portugueses residentes no estrangeiro durante o período democrático (1976-2011), em eleições legislativas, europeias e presidenciais, assim como o papel do sistema de partidos no estrangeiro na mobilização eleitoral e na explicação do sentido de voto. As duas tendências mais importantes que emergem dizem respeito: em primeiro lugar, ao acentuado decréscimo da participação elei…
Understanding the pledge fulfilment of opposition parties using evidence from Portugal
Under what conditions are opposition parties better at delivering on their electoral promises? Existing approaches to party mandates typically focus on governmental mandates and have disregarded the roles of other parties in parliament. However, such approaches encompass an imbalance regarding the comparison of pledge fulfilment between governing and opposition parties, and specially neglect the differences between permanent and alternating oppos…
Ιs ‘Old Southern Europe’ Still Eurosceptic? Determinants of Mass Attitudes before, during and after the Eurozone Crisis
One of the consequences of the eurozone crisis in the countries of ‘Old Southern Europe’ is the shift from pro-European to eurosceptic attitudes. Our overarching goal is to assess whether these critical stances towards the EU are more conjunctural or long-lasting. We further aim to analyse the determinants of euroscepticism at the micro-level before, during and after the emergence of the eurozone crisis. Our analysis reveals that euroscepticism i…
Party Manifestos, Opposition and Media as Determinants of the Cabinet Agenda
Cabinets are the engine of policy change in parliamentary systems. Yet, we still know little about how cabinets micro-manage the content of their multifaceted agenda during their term in office. Drawing on the party and agenda-setting literature, this article addresses this gap by focusing on three main determinants of cabinet priorities: issue priorities in the electoral platforms of majority and opposition parties, and new and unforeseen proble…
Media, public opinion and parliamentary agendas’ effect in political parties’ agenda-setting
Why do parties pay more attention to some policy issues than to others? To what extent does policy attention conveyed by the media, public opinion, and parliament explain party agenda-setting? And, more specifically, to what extent does the media agenda influence other agenda effects? This paper addresses these questions in an original manner by analyzing the influence of these three agendas – media, public opinion, and parliament – in party mani…
Generalization of Classic Question Order Effects Across Cultures
Questionnaire design is routinely guided by classic experiments on question form, wording, and context conducted decades ago. This article explores whether two question order effects (one due to the norm of evenhandedness and the other due to subtraction or perceptual contrast) appear in surveys of probability samples in the United States and 11 other countries (Canada, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, …
Breaking with mainstream politics while engaging with polarized: Determinants of young Europeans’ support for democracy
It is quite consensual that the younger citizens exhibit higher – although objectively modest – scepticism about democracy and openness to undemocratic forms of government. Despite the ongoing debate about whether a process of deconsolidation is underway in liberal democracies, as well as about the role of young citizens in it, research has so far given little attention to finding out why younger people are more likely to turn away from democracy…
Determinants of Political Trust during the Early Months of the Covid-19 Pandemic: Putting Policy Performance into Evidence
Basing on the previous and early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, this article analysis the main determinants of citizens’ trust in the prime minister over that period. Prior research on the political effects of the pandemic has mostly focused on identifying a rally around the flag effect, and little is known about other reasons behind the increase in trust after the outbreak of the pandemic. Based on survey data from February to July 2020 for Sp…
The Effect of Ministerial Instability on Government's Mandate Fulfilment: Evidence from the Portuguese Case
Research on the fulfilment of electoral promises has been particularly fruitful over the past decades. Most of it focused on examining pledge fulfilment at the cabinet level, and little emphasis was placed on the reasons underlying the level of compliance. As a consequence, core factors in explaining pledge fulfilment have not yet been explored. One such factor might be instability in a government's internal functioning. We argue that ministerial…
Political science (31 works) · Law (28 works) · Law (27 works) · Politics (26 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (23 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Economics (21 works) · Political economy (21 works) · Psychology (18 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (18 works)