Search

We explore variation in risk aversion among elected officials. Previous studies suggest that systematic gender differences in risk-taking attitudes may explain why female legislators are less likely to engage in corruption. However, empirical evidence for this argument comes exclusively from non-elite samples. We test this argument in a survey experiment with Portuguese MPs. Additionally, the study explores whether risk preferences vary when elected officials make personal or public financial decisions.

We test whether women politicians are more risk averse than their male counterparts.

Testing the impact on public attitudes of different ways of framing the performance of the judicial system in dealing with alleged corruption cases. We examine whether the emphasis on different potentially relevant considerations leads to different attitudes about the political and judicial systems.

Cross-national survey experiment on support for majoritarianism vs consensualism, as the outcome of vignette treatments, respondent traits, and country

Ineffective governance is known to weaken support for governments and leaders. However, it is less clear whether these effects spill over to the regime and erode support for the democratic system. This article returns to this classic question, now using time-series, cross-sectional data to test whether the effectiveness of governments in sustaining economic growth, providing quality healthcare, and tackling violent crime affects popular attitudes to democracy. We find that satisfaction with democracy is driven by fluctuations in economic performance and violent crime (but not healthcare quality). Diffuse support for democracy, in contrast, remains relatively impervious to changes in government effectiveness. Violent crime is the only indicator of effectiveness which has an impact on democratic support, and does so indirectly, via its influence on democratic satisfaction. These findings confirm that democratic support—which, unlike democratic satisfaction, is thought to help sustain democracy—is mostly immune to crises of performance.

In this study, we investigate how socioeconomic status is related to people's commitment to liberal democracy. Based on sociological and psychological theories of social conflict and dominance, we argue that those who enjoy a more privileged position in the social hierarchy tend to develop stronger preferences for the existing social and political order. Conversely, people in underprivileged positions tend to be less supportive of that order. Hence, we expect the relationship between socioeconomic status and commitment to liberal democracy to be context-specific: positive in liberal democracies but negative in autocracies. Furthermore, we argue that income inequality amplifies these dynamics, widening the gap between low and high status individuals. We test our hypotheses using the fifth wave of the World Value Surveys.

Two findings stand out in the literature on public attitudes vis- a-vis courts. The first is that judicial independence increases public trust. The second is that ‘to know courts is to love them’. In this study, these stylised facts are used as a starting point to ask three questions. First, is there also a role for judicial accountability in fostering public trust, above and beyond that played by independence? Second, could it be that only the most aware citizens are sensitive to such properties of the judicial system? Third, is the notion that ‘to know courts is to love them’ limited to systems with high levels of judicial independence and accountability? Using recently available macro-level indicators of judicial independence and accountability and the high-quality survey data collected by the European Social Survey in 32 countries throughout more than a decade, this study provides evidence that the answers to these questions are positive.

In 2015, for the first time in the history of Portuguese democracy, radical left parties relinquished their status as outsiders and lent their support to a Socialist Party cabinet. Defying the expectations of many, this government survived its first years. In fact, it did more than survive: while largely fulfilling the interparty agreements that originated it, the government has presided over positive economic developments and even managed to abide by EU budgetary rules. How was this possible? We show that the political solution found, as well as the policies and practices that sustain it, involve a form of a ‘contract parliamentarism’. This solution has allowed the parties to the left of the Socialists to obtain policy benefits without compromising their core identity or significantly hindering the support of their constituents.

In this article we analyze the evolution of the attitudes towards Europe of Portuguese parliamentary elites in the context of the sovereign debt crisis. Our analysis relies on interviews to a total of 227 MPs in the context of the ENEC project in 2014 and of the Intune Project in 2009 and 2007. Our principal finding is that an important gap has risen between the attitudes of the MPs and of the masses. Indeed, while the Portuguese are becoming increasingly less pro-European, this is not the case of their deputies. We show that, in 2014, the percentage of deputies that believed that EU membership benefited the country has decreased a little, but it stays as high as 89%. Our data, however, show that MPs now exhibit lower levels of trust towards the European institutions. Interestingly, the drop in the levels of trust towards EU institutions does not affect all institutions equally: trust towards the European Parliament remains constant regarding 2007, whereas the levels of trust in the remaining two institutions decrease. Finally, we show that it is in the Socialist Party (PS) that there is the steepest decline in the level of overall trust, which is rooted in declining levels of confidence in the European Commission. Given that PS has traditionally portrayed itself as the most pro-Europe of the Portuguese parties, this is solid evidence of a growing discontent with the European Commission.