Catherine Moury
Biographic Data
| ID | 640715 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Catherine Moury |
| GIVEN NAMES | Catherine |
| FAMILY NAME | Moury |
| SIGNATURE | MOURY C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universidade Nova de Lisboa |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5405-1493 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 548 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Damned if you, damned if you don’t: The politics of pandemic preparation as a grand challenge
In this article, we shed light on the politics of preparation for a pandemic. We show why the existing literature fails to explain the puzzling case of France, which became one the best prepared countries in the world, only to discontinue its efforts to find itself unprepared when COVID hit. To investigate what happened, we conduct a qualitative process-tracing analysis of pandemic preparation efforts for two decades. From this, we induce the cau…
Introduction.The post-Berlusconi centre right and the challenge of governing
This introduction to the ‘Politics in Italy 2024’ special issue sheds light on the main events that unfolded during the course of the last year. A central focus is on the passing of Silvio Berlusconi, discussing his legacy and the consequences of his death for the Italian party system. This introduction also discusses the extent to which Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) was able to honour its election pledges, and to act in such a way as to draw a clear l…
Sociopolitical reputation and the reform of pharmacies in Greece and Portugal
This article argues that differences in sociopolitical reputation can explain why interest groups fail or succeed in influencing policymakers and that therefore sociopolitical reputation is a useful addition to the conceptual toolbox of interest groups scholars. Focusing on pharmacies and their associations in Greece and Portugal between 2005 and 2021, this article uses the concept of sociopolitical reputation to explain why reform attempts to re…
Business as usual? How the pharmaceutical industry protected its long-term interests during and after eurozone bailouts (2011–2020)
In this article, we start from the assumption that the pharmaceutical industry accumulates material, instrumental, ideational and institutional power. Considering this, we expect that it would be very difficult for governments to reduce the rents of pharmaceutical companies in the long-term, even when the former are externally constrained to reduce their spending. We test our argument by carrying out a qualitative analysis of a paradigmatic case …
Are economic adjustment programmes implemented and are they resilient? An answer with the ‘Enap’: A data base on EcoNomic Adjustment Policies in five Eurozone countries (2007–2020)
Between 2010 and 2019, five Eurozone governments in economic difficulty received assistance from international lenders on condition that certain policies specified in the Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) were implemented. To what extent were those conditions implemented? After conditionality, to what extent have governments rolled back changes pursued under external constraint? Do we find variation across governments regarding implementation and …
Mind the (submission) gap: EPSR gender data and female authors publishing perceptions
The publication pattern of EPSR confirms the findings of established scholarship on gender and publishing; women publish less than men (roughly, 30% to 70%). This gap reflects a previous submission gap; i.e., men submit even much more than women do. EPSR editorial process does not show signs of discrimination: single or leading female authors have significantly lower desk rejection rates than their male counterparts in similar configurations. Wom…
How to Combine Public Spending with Fiscal Rigour? ‘Austerity by Stealth’ in Post-Bailout Portugal (2015-2019)
In this article, we argue that the Costa I Socialist government (2015–2019) managed to combine responsiveness to voters with responsibility towards domestic and international actors by pursuing some kind of ‘austerity by stealth’, which we define as less visible fiscal contraction that is not displayed by the government in its public discourse. The radical left parties implicitly agreed with this strategy in exchange for the adoption of a long li…
Beyond Conditionality: Policy Reversals in Southern Europe in the Aftermath of the Eurozone Crisis
This article proposes a framework to understand and explain the occurrence of policy reversals. We argue that the occurrence and absence of policy reversals is shaped by the constraints of responsiveness (to voters) and responsibility (vis-à-vis creditors, international institutions and financial markets). We review the literature on reversals and their implications for Southern Europe. We finally summarise the main findings of the contributions …
When the Lenders Leave Town: Veto Players, Electoral Calculations and Vested Interests as Determinants of Policy Reversals in Spain and Portugal
This article aims to identify the resilience of measures adopted during bailout programmes, and the conditions under which decisions-makers reverse them. Focusing on Spain and Portugal (2014–2019), we calculated that almost half (46 per cent) of the most important measures adopted during the programmes were reversed in the five years following the bailouts. We also show that left-wing parties reversed more than right wing and that the bulk of str…
Minority Governments and Pledge Fulfilment: Evidence from Portugal
In an age of rampant distrust and disaffection, pledge fulfilment is important for the quality of delegation between voters and elected officials. In this article, we make an empirical appraisal of pledge fulfilment in Portugal. Do Portuguese minority governments fulfil their pledges? How do they fulfil those pledges? What is the role of opposition parties? Using an original data set with over 3,000 electoral pledges for three Socialist governmen…
Going beyond the Troika: Power and discourse in Portuguese austerity politics
This article analyses the margin of manoeuvre of Portuguese executives after the onset of the sovereign debt crisis in 2010–2015. To obtain a full understanding of what happened behind the closed doors of international meetings, different types of data are triangulated: face‐to‐face interviews; investigations by journalists; and International Monetary Fund and European Union official documents. The findings are compared to the public discourse of…
The Fulfillment of Parties’ Election Pledges: A Comparative Study on the Impact of Power Sharing
Why are some parties more likely than others to keep the promises they made during previous election campaigns? This study provides the first large‐scale comparative analysis of pledge fulfillment with common definitions. We study the fulfillment of over 20,000 pledges made in 57 election campaigns in 12 countries, and our findings challenge the common view of parties as promise breakers. Many parties that enter government executives are highly l…
Wary Partners: Strategic Portfolio Allocation and Coalition Governance in Parliamentary Democracies
Are political parties willing to partially forgo their office and policy goals to maximize their coalition governance capacities? Multiparty governments are plagued with preference heterogeneity and uncertainty about policy outcomes. In this article, we argue that parties choose to make a strategic allocation of portfolios to curb delegation perils. They use portfolios with jurisdiction overlaps to shadow each other at the ministerial level. We d…
Conclusions: Great Recession, Great Cooperation
Contributions to this study clearly support our initial hypotheses. It is observed, as expected, that the economic crisis has considerably decreased consensual behaviour in parliament. However, the nature of parties constitutes a crucial variable in order to explain the conduct of the opposition in the legislative arena better: since the outbreak of the crisis, radical parties have turned even more adversarial than before; whereas mainstream part…
Incumbents, Opposition and International Lenders: Governing Portugal in Times of Crisis
The Portuguese case provides a unique opportunity to study the opposition's behaviour in a variety of political conditions. It offers an insight into the impact of the financial crisis on the opposition's behaviour in both majority and minority political settings. It allows the comparison of the opposition's relationship with a minority government, during which non-collaboration could have dramatic consequences, and also with a majority governmen…
Introduction: Conflict and Consensus in Parliament during the Economic Crisis
Since the onset of the economic crisis, parties in parliament (especially those in opposi-tion) have found themselves faced with a dilemma: choosing between the need to cooperatewith the government in order to overcome the crisis and the opportunity provided by aweakened government to stress their adversarial position so as to be more easily re-elected and possibly get into power. What have they decided to do? The present contri-bution introduces…
Informal Governance in the European Union: How Governments Make International Organizations Work
Is informal governance the rule or the exception in day-to-day EU politics? What can explain variation in the use of this practice? Is it a good or a bad thing? These are fascinating questions, and
Awakening the Sleeping Giant in Greece and Portugal? Elites' and Voters' Attitudes towards EU Integration in Difficult Economic Times
This article explores the extent to which the economic crisis and political responses of the European Union (EU) to austerity policies have contributed to Euroscepticism in Greece and Portugal. We analyse attitudes towards the EU at both voter and elite levels using fresh and innovative data, and by comparing them with data from surveys conducted before the crisis we show assessments of austerity and the bailouts are feeding elite and voter Euros…
Austerity Policies and Politics: The Case of Portugal
En avril 2011 un gouvernement socialiste intérimaire fit appel aux bailleurs de fonds internationaux (la soi-disant Troïka : la BCE, la Commission européenne et le FMI) pour renflouer le Portugal. À la suite d’élections législatives, une coalition de centre-droit commença à mettre en œuvre, à la demande semble-t-il de la dite troïka, une série de mesures d’austérité et de réformes sociales sévères provoquant une importante récession ainsi qu’une …
Inter-Party Conflict Management in Coalition Governments: Analyzing the Role of Coalition Agreements in Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands
In this article, we focus on manifest interparty conflict over policy issues and the role of coalition agreements in solving these conflicts. We present empirical findings on the characteristics of coalition agreements including deals over policy controversy and on inter-party conflict occurring during the lifetime of governments in Germany, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands. We analyze the ways in which parties in government were or were not co…
Shifting competences and changing preferences: The Case of Delegation to Comitology
The article examines how changes of powers in the inter-institutional balance have affected the willingness of the Commission and the Council to delegate legislative power to comitology committees. Starting from the assumption that actors seek to maximize their institutional power in order to increase their influence over policy outcomes, we argue that changes of institutional rules affect their willingness to adopt legislation through comitology…
Italian coalitions and electoral promises: Assessing the democratic performance of the Prodi I and Berlusconi II governments
Italian party coalitions (from both the centre-left and the centre-right) have enacted an average of 57% of the pledges included in their common manifestos. In relative terms, Italian political parties keep their electoral promises much less than parties governing in single-party government, but slightly outperform those that form post-electoral coalitions. Although this finding contradicts the widespread pessimism about Italy's performance, it a…
Contested Delegation: The Impact of Co-decision on Comitology
This article shows that, for the area of environmental policy, the Commission and the Council have been more willing to rely on extensive delegation after the introduction of co-decision. It also shows that the tendency of these two actors to delegate has followed the ratification of the Amsterdam Treaty – which indicates that the Council and Commission had anticipated their relative loss of power to the EP and rushed to delegate as much as possi…
Coalition agreement and party mandate: How coalition agreements constrain the ministers
In coalition government, the relationship between parties and ministers is one of double delegation: from the party to the minister and from the coalition of parties to the individual minister. On the basis of principal—agent theory, I argue that a coalition agreement is a tool used by coalition parties to reduce agency loss when delegating to ministers. In six governments in Belgium, Italy and The Netherlands, I show that: a majority of the pled…
Institutional Challenges in Post-Constitutional Europe: Governing Change
Introduction Luis de Sousa and Catherine Moury 1. Building Europe for Future Generations - Achievements and New Tasks of the European Union Pat Cox 2. How to govern the ever larger European Union? Jan Zielonka 3. The rules of change in the European Union: the lost balance between rigidity and flexibility Bruno de Witte 4. Where to look for legitimacy Miguel Maduro 5. The European Citizenship: Ideals, Reality and Problems Maurizio Cotta and Pieran…
The Fulfillment of Parties’ Election Pledges: A Comparative Study on the Impact of Power Sharing
Why are some parties more likely than others to keep the promises they made during previous election campaigns? This study provides the first large‐scale comparative analysis of pledge fulfillment with common definitions. We study the fulfillment of over 20,000 pledges made in 57 election campaigns in 12 countries, and our findings challenge the common view of parties as promise breakers. Many parties that enter government executives are highly l…
Coalition agreement and party mandate: How coalition agreements constrain the ministers
In coalition government, the relationship between parties and ministers is one of double delegation: from the party to the minister and from the coalition of parties to the individual minister. On the basis of principal—agent theory, I argue that a coalition agreement is a tool used by coalition parties to reduce agency loss when delegating to ministers. In six governments in Belgium, Italy and The Netherlands, I show that: a majority of the pled…
Going beyond the Troika: Power and discourse in Portuguese austerity politics
This article analyses the margin of manoeuvre of Portuguese executives after the onset of the sovereign debt crisis in 2010–2015. To obtain a full understanding of what happened behind the closed doors of international meetings, different types of data are triangulated: face‐to‐face interviews; investigations by journalists; and International Monetary Fund and European Union official documents. The findings are compared to the public discourse of…
Coalition Governance in Belgium and The Netherlands: Rising Government Stability Against All Electoral Odds
Explaining the European Parliament's right to appoint and invest the commission
The impressive development of the European Parliament's powers over Commission appointment and investiture may be explained by looking at interstitial institutional change and its subsequent formalisation. The Parliament, since it is less sensitive to failure and has a longer time horizon, was able to create interstitial change to its benefit by its ability to delay or block the functioning of the European Union. Interstitial institutional change…
Minority Governments and Pledge Fulfilment: Evidence from Portugal
In an age of rampant distrust and disaffection, pledge fulfilment is important for the quality of delegation between voters and elected officials. In this article, we make an empirical appraisal of pledge fulfilment in Portugal. Do Portuguese minority governments fulfil their pledges? How do they fulfil those pledges? What is the role of opposition parties? Using an original data set with over 3,000 electoral pledges for three Socialist governmen…
Introduction: Conflict and Consensus in Parliament during the Economic Crisis
Since the onset of the economic crisis, parties in parliament (especially those in opposi-tion) have found themselves faced with a dilemma: choosing between the need to cooperatewith the government in order to overcome the crisis and the opportunity provided by aweakened government to stress their adversarial position so as to be more easily re-elected and possibly get into power. What have they decided to do? The present contri-bution introduces…
Wary Partners: Strategic Portfolio Allocation and Coalition Governance in Parliamentary Democracies
Are political parties willing to partially forgo their office and policy goals to maximize their coalition governance capacities? Multiparty governments are plagued with preference heterogeneity and uncertainty about policy outcomes. In this article, we argue that parties choose to make a strategic allocation of portfolios to curb delegation perils. They use portfolios with jurisdiction overlaps to shadow each other at the ministerial level. We d…
Incumbents, Opposition and International Lenders: Governing Portugal in Times of Crisis
The Portuguese case provides a unique opportunity to study the opposition's behaviour in a variety of political conditions. It offers an insight into the impact of the financial crisis on the opposition's behaviour in both majority and minority political settings. It allows the comparison of the opposition's relationship with a minority government, during which non-collaboration could have dramatic consequences, and also with a majority governmen…
Awakening the Sleeping Giant in Greece and Portugal? Elites' and Voters' Attitudes towards EU Integration in Difficult Economic Times
This article explores the extent to which the economic crisis and political responses of the European Union (EU) to austerity policies have contributed to Euroscepticism in Greece and Portugal. We analyse attitudes towards the EU at both voter and elite levels using fresh and innovative data, and by comparing them with data from surveys conducted before the crisis we show assessments of austerity and the bailouts are feeding elite and voter Euros…
Inter-Party Conflict Management in Coalition Governments: Analyzing the Role of Coalition Agreements in Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands
In this article, we focus on manifest interparty conflict over policy issues and the role of coalition agreements in solving these conflicts. We present empirical findings on the characteristics of coalition agreements including deals over policy controversy and on inter-party conflict occurring during the lifetime of governments in Germany, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands. We analyze the ways in which parties in government were or were not co…
Beyond Conditionality: Policy Reversals in Southern Europe in the Aftermath of the Eurozone Crisis
This article proposes a framework to understand and explain the occurrence of policy reversals. We argue that the occurrence and absence of policy reversals is shaped by the constraints of responsiveness (to voters) and responsibility (vis-à-vis creditors, international institutions and financial markets). We review the literature on reversals and their implications for Southern Europe. We finally summarise the main findings of the contributions …
Contested Delegation: The Impact of Co-decision on Comitology
This article shows that, for the area of environmental policy, the Commission and the Council have been more willing to rely on extensive delegation after the introduction of co-decision. It also shows that the tendency of these two actors to delegate has followed the ratification of the Amsterdam Treaty – which indicates that the Council and Commission had anticipated their relative loss of power to the EP and rushed to delegate as much as possi…
Mind the (submission) gap: EPSR gender data and female authors publishing perceptions
The publication pattern of EPSR confirms the findings of established scholarship on gender and publishing; women publish less than men (roughly, 30% to 70%). This gap reflects a previous submission gap; i.e., men submit even much more than women do. EPSR editorial process does not show signs of discrimination: single or leading female authors have significantly lower desk rejection rates than their male counterparts in similar configurations. Wom…
When the Lenders Leave Town: Veto Players, Electoral Calculations and Vested Interests as Determinants of Policy Reversals in Spain and Portugal
This article aims to identify the resilience of measures adopted during bailout programmes, and the conditions under which decisions-makers reverse them. Focusing on Spain and Portugal (2014–2019), we calculated that almost half (46 per cent) of the most important measures adopted during the programmes were reversed in the five years following the bailouts. We also show that left-wing parties reversed more than right wing and that the bulk of str…
Conclusions: Great Recession, Great Cooperation
Contributions to this study clearly support our initial hypotheses. It is observed, as expected, that the economic crisis has considerably decreased consensual behaviour in parliament. However, the nature of parties constitutes a crucial variable in order to explain the conduct of the opposition in the legislative arena better: since the outbreak of the crisis, radical parties have turned even more adversarial than before; whereas mainstream part…
How to Combine Public Spending with Fiscal Rigour? ‘Austerity by Stealth’ in Post-Bailout Portugal (2015-2019)
In this article, we argue that the Costa I Socialist government (2015–2019) managed to combine responsiveness to voters with responsibility towards domestic and international actors by pursuing some kind of ‘austerity by stealth’, which we define as less visible fiscal contraction that is not displayed by the government in its public discourse. The radical left parties implicitly agreed with this strategy in exchange for the adoption of a long li…
Shifting competences and changing preferences: The Case of Delegation to Comitology
The article examines how changes of powers in the inter-institutional balance have affected the willingness of the Commission and the Council to delegate legislative power to comitology committees. Starting from the assumption that actors seek to maximize their institutional power in order to increase their influence over policy outcomes, we argue that changes of institutional rules affect their willingness to adopt legislation through comitology…
Les ensembles flous pour y voir plus clair: Décoder les caractéristiques des accords de coalition en europe occidentale
Cette contribution vise à comprendre pourquoi le caractère complet et / ou précis de l’accord de coalition varie dans quatre pays européens (Belgique, Pays-Bas, Italie et France). La méthode des Ensembles flous (Fuzzy sets) est appropriée pour ce faire, vu le caractère exploratoire de la recherche, car elle permet le nécessaire dialogue entre idées et preuves. Les résultats suggèrent qu’il convient de considérer la rédaction de l’accord comme un …
Business as usual? How the pharmaceutical industry protected its long-term interests during and after eurozone bailouts (2011–2020)
In this article, we start from the assumption that the pharmaceutical industry accumulates material, instrumental, ideational and institutional power. Considering this, we expect that it would be very difficult for governments to reduce the rents of pharmaceutical companies in the long-term, even when the former are externally constrained to reduce their spending. We test our argument by carrying out a qualitative analysis of a paradigmatic case …
Introduction.The post-Berlusconi centre right and the challenge of governing
This introduction to the ‘Politics in Italy 2024’ special issue sheds light on the main events that unfolded during the course of the last year. A central focus is on the passing of Silvio Berlusconi, discussing his legacy and the consequences of his death for the Italian party system. This introduction also discusses the extent to which Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) was able to honour its election pledges, and to act in such a way as to draw a clear l…
Informal Governance in the European Union: How Governments Make International Organizations Work
Is informal governance the rule or the exception in day-to-day EU politics? What can explain variation in the use of this practice? Is it a good or a bad thing? These are fascinating questions, and
Une Europe de la défense: Politique, marche, régulation et relations transatlantiques
Comment construire une Europe de la défense ? L’édification d’une forteresse Europe face à la forteresse américaine est-elle le seul modèle possible ? L’article montre que, pour tenir compte du cadre transatlantique qui constitue une contrainte politique et économique incontournable, d’autres modèles sont envisageables. Ces modèles reposent sur l’interaction dynamique entre trois paramètres : la structuration de la demande (déterminée par les obj…
Les ensembles flous pour y voir plus clair: Décoder les caractéristiques des accords de coalition en europe occidentale
Cette contribution vise à comprendre pourquoi le caractère complet et / ou précis de l’accord de coalition varie dans quatre pays européens (Belgique, Pays-Bas, Italie et France). La méthode des Ensembles flous (Fuzzy sets) est appropriée pour ce faire, vu le caractère exploratoire de la recherche, car elle permet le nécessaire dialogue entre idées et preuves. Les résultats suggèrent qu’il convient de considérer la rédaction de l’accord comme un …
Coalition Governance in Belgium and The Netherlands: Rising Government Stability Against All Electoral Odds
Explaining the European Parliament's right to appoint and invest the commission
The impressive development of the European Parliament's powers over Commission appointment and investiture may be explained by looking at interstitial institutional change and its subsequent formalisation. The Parliament, since it is less sensitive to failure and has a longer time horizon, was able to create interstitial change to its benefit by its ability to delay or block the functioning of the European Union. Interstitial institutional change…
Institutional Challenges in Post-Constitutional Europe: Governing Change
Introduction Luis de Sousa and Catherine Moury 1. Building Europe for Future Generations - Achievements and New Tasks of the European Union Pat Cox 2. How to govern the ever larger European Union? Jan Zielonka 3. The rules of change in the European Union: the lost balance between rigidity and flexibility Bruno de Witte 4. Where to look for legitimacy Miguel Maduro 5. The European Citizenship: Ideals, Reality and Problems Maurizio Cotta and Pieran…
Italian coalitions and electoral promises: Assessing the democratic performance of the Prodi I and Berlusconi II governments
Italian party coalitions (from both the centre-left and the centre-right) have enacted an average of 57% of the pledges included in their common manifestos. In relative terms, Italian political parties keep their electoral promises much less than parties governing in single-party government, but slightly outperform those that form post-electoral coalitions. Although this finding contradicts the widespread pessimism about Italy's performance, it a…
Contested Delegation: The Impact of Co-decision on Comitology
This article shows that, for the area of environmental policy, the Commission and the Council have been more willing to rely on extensive delegation after the introduction of co-decision. It also shows that the tendency of these two actors to delegate has followed the ratification of the Amsterdam Treaty – which indicates that the Council and Commission had anticipated their relative loss of power to the EP and rushed to delegate as much as possi…
Coalition agreement and party mandate: How coalition agreements constrain the ministers
In coalition government, the relationship between parties and ministers is one of double delegation: from the party to the minister and from the coalition of parties to the individual minister. On the basis of principal—agent theory, I argue that a coalition agreement is a tool used by coalition parties to reduce agency loss when delegating to ministers. In six governments in Belgium, Italy and The Netherlands, I show that: a majority of the pled…
Shifting competences and changing preferences: The Case of Delegation to Comitology
The article examines how changes of powers in the inter-institutional balance have affected the willingness of the Commission and the Council to delegate legislative power to comitology committees. Starting from the assumption that actors seek to maximize their institutional power in order to increase their influence over policy outcomes, we argue that changes of institutional rules affect their willingness to adopt legislation through comitology…
Austerity Policies and Politics: The Case of Portugal
En avril 2011 un gouvernement socialiste intérimaire fit appel aux bailleurs de fonds internationaux (la soi-disant Troïka : la BCE, la Commission européenne et le FMI) pour renflouer le Portugal. À la suite d’élections législatives, une coalition de centre-droit commença à mettre en œuvre, à la demande semble-t-il de la dite troïka, une série de mesures d’austérité et de réformes sociales sévères provoquant une importante récession ainsi qu’une …
Inter-Party Conflict Management in Coalition Governments: Analyzing the Role of Coalition Agreements in Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands
In this article, we focus on manifest interparty conflict over policy issues and the role of coalition agreements in solving these conflicts. We present empirical findings on the characteristics of coalition agreements including deals over policy controversy and on inter-party conflict occurring during the lifetime of governments in Germany, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands. We analyze the ways in which parties in government were or were not co…
Informal Governance in the European Union: How Governments Make International Organizations Work
Is informal governance the rule or the exception in day-to-day EU politics? What can explain variation in the use of this practice? Is it a good or a bad thing? These are fascinating questions, and
Awakening the Sleeping Giant in Greece and Portugal? Elites' and Voters' Attitudes towards EU Integration in Difficult Economic Times
This article explores the extent to which the economic crisis and political responses of the European Union (EU) to austerity policies have contributed to Euroscepticism in Greece and Portugal. We analyse attitudes towards the EU at both voter and elite levels using fresh and innovative data, and by comparing them with data from surveys conducted before the crisis we show assessments of austerity and the bailouts are feeding elite and voter Euros…
Conclusions: Great Recession, Great Cooperation
Contributions to this study clearly support our initial hypotheses. It is observed, as expected, that the economic crisis has considerably decreased consensual behaviour in parliament. However, the nature of parties constitutes a crucial variable in order to explain the conduct of the opposition in the legislative arena better: since the outbreak of the crisis, radical parties have turned even more adversarial than before; whereas mainstream part…
Incumbents, Opposition and International Lenders: Governing Portugal in Times of Crisis
The Portuguese case provides a unique opportunity to study the opposition's behaviour in a variety of political conditions. It offers an insight into the impact of the financial crisis on the opposition's behaviour in both majority and minority political settings. It allows the comparison of the opposition's relationship with a minority government, during which non-collaboration could have dramatic consequences, and also with a majority governmen…
Introduction: Conflict and Consensus in Parliament during the Economic Crisis
Since the onset of the economic crisis, parties in parliament (especially those in opposi-tion) have found themselves faced with a dilemma: choosing between the need to cooperatewith the government in order to overcome the crisis and the opportunity provided by aweakened government to stress their adversarial position so as to be more easily re-elected and possibly get into power. What have they decided to do? The present contri-bution introduces…
Wary Partners: Strategic Portfolio Allocation and Coalition Governance in Parliamentary Democracies
Are political parties willing to partially forgo their office and policy goals to maximize their coalition governance capacities? Multiparty governments are plagued with preference heterogeneity and uncertainty about policy outcomes. In this article, we argue that parties choose to make a strategic allocation of portfolios to curb delegation perils. They use portfolios with jurisdiction overlaps to shadow each other at the ministerial level. We d…
Going beyond the Troika: Power and discourse in Portuguese austerity politics
This article analyses the margin of manoeuvre of Portuguese executives after the onset of the sovereign debt crisis in 2010–2015. To obtain a full understanding of what happened behind the closed doors of international meetings, different types of data are triangulated: face‐to‐face interviews; investigations by journalists; and International Monetary Fund and European Union official documents. The findings are compared to the public discourse of…
The Fulfillment of Parties’ Election Pledges: A Comparative Study on the Impact of Power Sharing
Why are some parties more likely than others to keep the promises they made during previous election campaigns? This study provides the first large‐scale comparative analysis of pledge fulfillment with common definitions. We study the fulfillment of over 20,000 pledges made in 57 election campaigns in 12 countries, and our findings challenge the common view of parties as promise breakers. Many parties that enter government executives are highly l…
Minority Governments and Pledge Fulfilment: Evidence from Portugal
In an age of rampant distrust and disaffection, pledge fulfilment is important for the quality of delegation between voters and elected officials. In this article, we make an empirical appraisal of pledge fulfilment in Portugal. Do Portuguese minority governments fulfil their pledges? How do they fulfil those pledges? What is the role of opposition parties? Using an original data set with over 3,000 electoral pledges for three Socialist governmen…
Beyond Conditionality: Policy Reversals in Southern Europe in the Aftermath of the Eurozone Crisis
This article proposes a framework to understand and explain the occurrence of policy reversals. We argue that the occurrence and absence of policy reversals is shaped by the constraints of responsiveness (to voters) and responsibility (vis-à-vis creditors, international institutions and financial markets). We review the literature on reversals and their implications for Southern Europe. We finally summarise the main findings of the contributions …
When the Lenders Leave Town: Veto Players, Electoral Calculations and Vested Interests as Determinants of Policy Reversals in Spain and Portugal
This article aims to identify the resilience of measures adopted during bailout programmes, and the conditions under which decisions-makers reverse them. Focusing on Spain and Portugal (2014–2019), we calculated that almost half (46 per cent) of the most important measures adopted during the programmes were reversed in the five years following the bailouts. We also show that left-wing parties reversed more than right wing and that the bulk of str…
Mind the (submission) gap: EPSR gender data and female authors publishing perceptions
The publication pattern of EPSR confirms the findings of established scholarship on gender and publishing; women publish less than men (roughly, 30% to 70%). This gap reflects a previous submission gap; i.e., men submit even much more than women do. EPSR editorial process does not show signs of discrimination: single or leading female authors have significantly lower desk rejection rates than their male counterparts in similar configurations. Wom…
How to Combine Public Spending with Fiscal Rigour? ‘Austerity by Stealth’ in Post-Bailout Portugal (2015-2019)
In this article, we argue that the Costa I Socialist government (2015–2019) managed to combine responsiveness to voters with responsibility towards domestic and international actors by pursuing some kind of ‘austerity by stealth’, which we define as less visible fiscal contraction that is not displayed by the government in its public discourse. The radical left parties implicitly agreed with this strategy in exchange for the adoption of a long li…
Business as usual? How the pharmaceutical industry protected its long-term interests during and after eurozone bailouts (2011–2020)
In this article, we start from the assumption that the pharmaceutical industry accumulates material, instrumental, ideational and institutional power. Considering this, we expect that it would be very difficult for governments to reduce the rents of pharmaceutical companies in the long-term, even when the former are externally constrained to reduce their spending. We test our argument by carrying out a qualitative analysis of a paradigmatic case …
Political science (29 works) · Law (23 works) · Politics (22 works) · Law (21 works) · Economics (20 works) · Political economy (14 works) · European Union Policy and Governance (13 works) · Public Administration (12 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (12 works) · Public Administration (11 works)