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Mobilization efforts by parties and candidates during election campaigns tend to reach those who are more likely to vote in the first place. This is thought to be particularly consequential for turnout among the young. Harder and less cost-effective to reach, young adults are less mobilized and vote less often, creating a vicious circle of demobilization. However, new forms of political communication—including online and text messaging—have created expectations this circle might be broken. Is this happening? We examine data from Module 4 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems surveys, looking at the prevalence of different types of party contacts in 38 countries, the profile of voters who are reached, and the effects of these efforts on turnout. New forms of party contacting do matter for turnout and partially reduce the age gap in contacting, but still fail to compensate for the much larger differentials that persist in traditional forms of contacting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A vast literature in social and organizational psychology suggests that support for authorities is driven both by the outcomes they deliver to people and by the extent to which they employ fair decision making processes. Furthermore, some of that literature describes a process‐outcome interaction, through which the effect of outcome favorability is reduced as process fairness increases. However, very few studies have been conducted to determine whether such interaction is also present in the explanation of support for political authorities. Here, we start by analyzing whether individual perceptions of the political system's procedural fairness moderate the well‐known individual‐level relationship between perceived economic performance and government approval. Then, we explore the implications of such process‐outcome interaction to the phenomenon of "economic voting," testing whether impartiality in governance moderates the effect of objective economic performance on aggregate incumbent parties' support. In both cases, we show that the interaction between processes and outcomes seems to extend beyond the organizational contexts where it has been previously observed, with important implications for the study of political support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International economic crises are critical periods for any political regime. The 2008 global financial crisis brought to the surface several weak spots in the institutional performance of various southern European democracies. Portugal was no exception. Government attempts to tackle its negative externalities through a series of austerity measures did not prove successful on various grounds. Poor scoring in the economy generated social unrest. This article tries to assess the reaction of the Portuguese citizenry to the symptoms of failure in economic governance, particularly in what concerns their attitudes vis-à-vis the political realm by using different survey data sets. The analysis reveals that the decline in economic performance and in quality of governance is clearly reflected in citizens’ rising discontent with the performance of democracy and suggests even negative spillover effects for regime support. The available data also suggest that any expectations that the economic crisis might have ignited in citizens’ engagement in political issues seem only partially fulfilled. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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-a-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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three decades after the fall of the Portuguese authoritarian regime, support for democracy has become widespread among the mass public. However, similarities between Portugal and other more established democracies should not be overestimated. In most of the latter, several studies have found increasing political and civic activism on the part of pro-democratic and politically sophisticated citizens, who are nevertheless increasingly dissatisfied with democratic performance. However, the most prevalent and consequential attitudinal-behavioural syndrome in Portugal is less one of ‘democratic dissatisfaction’ than one of ‘democratic disaffection’, entailing low levels of political engagement and participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the extent of citizens trust in political institutions. The extent of citizens trust on parliaments can be explained on cultural grounds or by reference to a government's economic performance. But the trust also has an influence on existence of electoral or decision making rules which encourage the likelihood that voters will feel that the political system serves their interests. Based on the data from European countries this article test the rules favoring making majorities accountable or more perfect representation of social and political interests.