Room for Manoeuvre

Euroscepticism in the Portuguese Parties and Electorate 1976–2005

Bibliographic Data

ID8020749
AuthorsMarina Costa Lobo (0000-0002-7329-0972), Pedro C Magalhães (0000-0001-8934-4552)
Year2009
Volume16
Issue1
Pages81-104
Publication date2009-12-24
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSouth European Society & Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1360-8746 • E-ISSN: 1743-9612
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13608740903432375
OpenAlexW1978019119
LanguageEN
Citations received17
References cited32

This paper approaches euroscepticism from the perspective of party positions and mass-level attitudes. It documents the nature and evolution of party euroscepticism from 1976 to 2005. Although the poles of party-based euroscepticism can be found, predictably, at the extremes of the party system, there is also a dynamic and contingent element to party positions that can only be accounted for on the basis of a strategic explanation. It also shows that, whenever parties attempted to mobilise voters on the basis of a eurosceptic discourse, voters responded to such attempts. Under those conditions, citizens' attitudes vis-à-vis the EC/EU, in terms of both the economic and the political consequences of integration, emerged as a relevant electoral cleavage in Portuguese politics. Keywords: European IntegrationPolitical PartiesParty EuroscepticismPublic OpinionMass Attitudes Notes [1] The PRD (Partido Renovador Democrático), a centre-left party which was created in 1985 and obtained 19 per cent of the national vote in elections that year, is excluded because it was an epiphenomenon, having failed to elect MPs in 1991 and ever since. For the same reasons, we exclude micro-parties which have not polled above three per cent of the national vote from our analysis. [2] Between 2002 and 2004 the CDS-PP participated in a coalition government with the PSD. [3] The Manifesto Research Group has to date published two volumes as cited here. The first volume includes manifesto data from 1945 to 1998 and the second includes data up to 2005. Thus, it was possible to position Portuguese parties since democratisation until the 2005 legislative elections, using both volumes. [4] An exception to this 'stability trend' occurs in 1987 when around one-quarter of the CDS manifesto consisted of supportive statements on Europe. That legislative election coincided with the first direct elections to the European Parliament in Portugal. At the time, the centre-right PSD seemed poised to win, and did so with an absolute majority. The CDS may have wanted to emphasise its support for the EC for fear of adding a failure to elect one deputy to the European Parliament to an almost certain poor result in the legislative election. Although this shows how this particular party was willing to use Europe for strategic purposes, it is clearly an outlier position for this party, when evaluating the whole period 1976–91. Thus, it was deemed preferable to exclude that data-point from Figure 1, as well as the rest of the analysis in this paper. [5] In the preceding year, the Communists and the CDS-PP together scored 24 per cent of the vote in the European Parliament elections. This was the peak of votes for the eurosceptic pole in European Parliament elections. [6] Data retrieved from 'The Conference Board and Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Total Economy Database, May 2006'. Available online at: http://www.ggdc.net. Series up to 1990 are mostly derived from Maddison (2003 Maddison, A. 2003. "The world economy: historical statistics". Paris: OECD Development Centre. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). From 1990 onwards, series for OECD countries are mostly derived from the most recent editions of OECD National Accounts. [7] Recoded as membership 'good thing': 1; 'bad thing': 3; and 'neither good nor bad' and DK/NA: 2. In this and other variables, we recoded DK/NA as the middle category, following Rohrschneider (2002 Rohrscheider, R. 2002. The democratic deficit and mass support for an EU-wide government. American Journal of Political Science, 46(2): 463–475. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). [8] Recoded as 'benefited': 1; DK/NA:2; 'did not benefit': 3. [9] Recoded as 'jointly within Europe': 1; DK/NA: 2; 'national government': 3. [10] We conducted a factor analysis (principal axis factoring, Varimax rotation) of all items used to measure instrumental and political euroscepticism in the Eurobarometer Trend File, and the results confirmed the existence of two different dimensions, with 'membership' and 'benefit' forming one dimension and questions about joint decision-making in the EU forming another. For the items measuring instrumental euroscepticism ('benefit' and 'membership'), Cronbach's alpha reaches 0.71, and 0.84 for the items used to build the political euroscepticism scale. [11] Voting intentions for other parties, blank and null votes and non-voters are excluded from the analysis. [12] In EB 36 and 51.0, income terciles were used. In EB 43.1, since no data on respondent's income were collected, we added education to the model, measured as age at which respondent finished education (or current age if still studying). [13] 'Very satisfied': 1; 'Fairly satisfied': 2; DK/NA: 3; 'Not very satisfied': 4; 'Not at all satisfied': 5. [14] Calculated with X-Post: Post-Estimation Interpretation Using Excel, by Simon Cheng and Scott Long, downloadable at http://www.indiana.edu/ ∼ jslsoc/xpost.htm

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