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Prior work shows that women are, on average, more risk averse than men. This evidence has been used to theorize about gender differences in elite behavior. However, whether differences in risk aversion hold among the subset of citizens willing to run for office remains an open question. We report a preregistered experiment with parliamentary candidates in Portugal and find that women candidates are less risk averse than men candidates. This effect is driven by risk preferences in public investments and is not explained by gender differences in political experience. The findings are consistent with a process of gendered (self-)selection in which women risk-takers are disproportionately attracted to enter a men-dominated career and run for office. Despite requiring future validation in different contexts, the evidence highlights the challenges of extrapolating from citizen samples to study elite behavior and suggests that risk perceptions are a relevant supply-side determinant of women representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Welfare chauvinism’ (or ‘welfare ethnocentrism,’ when directed against native-born ethnic minorities) is a declination of nativism within the social policy domain and a common element of populist radical right discourse. Previous studies have shown that this rhetoric can influence how people perceive the deservingness and entitlement of certain groups to welfare rights. In this study, we propose it has additional effects by evoking a purported lack of reciprocity in what concerns benefits from, and contributions to, the welfare system, such rhetoric can also justify and legitimize discrimination against out-groups in other domains that are unrelated to welfare. We use a pre-registered experiment embedded in a survey of a nationally representative sample of the Portuguese population to examine whether individuals who are exposed to the issue of illegitimate ‘takers’ of the welfare system become more likely to express discriminatory intentions regarding an out-group’s freedom of movement and establishment. We find that in the Portuguese context, where the populist radical right frequently portrays the Roma minority as welfare abusers, highlighting the issue of reciprocity can trigger a sizeable increase in discriminatory intentions against the Romani even in domains unrelated to welfare rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do people respond to different decision-making processes in high courts? One long-standing view suggests that citizens expect courts to be neutral arbiters of legal controversies. Although the relevance of such "myth of legality" has been challenged, we know very little about the relationship between the portrayals of the motives of courts and justices and public attitudes in civil law countries. We explore this question in a pair of experiments in Norway and Portugal where we isolate the effects of different institutional frames from outcome favorability. We find that while partisan frames are detrimental to fairness perceptions and acceptance of decisions, depictions of judicial decision-making that emphasize policy goals do not adversely affect citizens' responses in comparison with legalistic frames. The results suggest that, even in civil law systems, preserving the myth of legality may not be a necessary condition to elicit public support for judicial decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The movement of personnel between roles in regulation, politics, and regulated industries is thought to affect the risks of politicization and industry capture of independent regulatory agencies. To test whether such movements are better explained by formal rules or by sector‐specific patterns, we employ an original dataset of the 152 appointees to 11 IRAs in Portugal over the last 3 decades. We find that variations in the formal independence of agencies have been of little consequence. Instead, revolving doors abound in the financial sector, with a disproportionate share of regulators of that sector coming from, and moving back, to the industry. In turn, appointment of regulators with political links to Portuguese IRAs seems related with legacies of sectoral public control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aims of this study were (1) to evaluate the prevalence of type 2 diabetes (T2D) in a middle-aged north-eastern Portuguese population, (2) to analyze the prevalence of impaired fasting glucose (IFG), and (3) to assess the risk of T2D in this community-based sample. An exploratory, retrospective, and cross-sectional study was conducted from a total of 6570 individuals aged 18–102 years, among which 3865 were women (57.4 ± 18.1 years) and 2705 were men (60.0 ± 16.8 years). T2D diagnosis, IFG, and the diabetes risk score (low to very high risk) were assessed. The prevalence of T2D in this adult and an older north-eastern Portuguese population was 17.4%. A higher prevalence of T2D was reported in men (22.2%) than in women (14.0%); however, this was without significant differences (p = 0.086). Otherwise, the prevalence of T2D was significantly different among the age groups and increased with age (p < 0.001). Regarding IFG, a higher percentage of cases was observed in men (14.1%) than in women (8.4%) (p < 0.001). The risk of developing T2D in the next 10 years showed an association with sex and age group (p < 0.001) with a small-to-moderate effect (V = 0.1–0.3). Men and the elderly had the highest percentage of cases in the moderate-to-very high-risk bands. The current research confirmed a higher prevalence of T2D, IFG, and diabetes risk than previous Portuguese epidemiological reports. The results also suggest potential prediabetes cases, which should be carefully monitored. The current research adds evidence to the worldwide trend of the increasing prevalence of T2D and intermediate hyperglycemia (i.e., prediabetes). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Government transparency has been discussed both as a way to decrease informational asymmetries between officeholders and citizens and as part of what makes for procedurally fair governance. These two different lines of argument generate predictions about how transparency should change voters' reactions to economic and policy outcomes. First, under high transparency, voters should respond less positively to fiscal expansions. Second, they should become more sensitive to incumbents' ability to deliver outcomes that generate benefits in the long‐run than to current tangible benefits. We test these arguments using municipality level data in Portugal. Controlling for variables that previous research has shown to drive electoral support for incumbents in local elections, only in the least transparent municipalities is support positively related with increases in local current expenditures, budget deficits, and municipal wages. Instead, where transparency is higher, voters are more likely to reward improvements in the quality of education. [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 article discusses the basic patterns of voting behaviour in the most recent elections in Portugal. These elections were fought under one of the most profound economic crises in the country's four decades of democracy, after a bailout agreement with the EU and the IMF, and under an unusually high level of campaign polarization around the issues of economic austerity and liberalization. First, the article examines whether this context ended up being favourable to “performance” voting or, instead, to an enhanced importance of position issues, particularly those related to the role of the state in the economy and welfare provision. Second, it examines how the context of the Great Recession and the European sovereign debt crisis created opportunities for incumbents to use blame-shifting and blame-sharing strategies, and the extent to which voters' ambivalence about who to hold responsible for the sorry state of the economy was consequential for vote choices, either by directly affecting them or by moderating the relationship between economic perceptions and the vote. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: The World Mental Health Survey Initiative was designed to evaluate the prevalence, the correlates, the impact and the treatment patterns of mental disorders. This paper describes the rationale and the methodological details regarding the implementation of the survey in Portugal, a country that still lacks representative epidemiological data about psychiatric disorders. Methods: The World Mental Health Survey is a cross-sectional study with a representative sample of the Portuguese population, aged 18 or older, based on official census information. The WMH-Composite International Diagnostic Interview, adapted to the Portuguese language by a group of bilingual experts, was used to evaluate the mental health status, disorder severity, impairment, use of services and treatment. Interviews were administered face-to-face at respondent's dwellings, which were selected from a nationally representative multi-stage clustered area probability sample of households. The survey was administered using computer-assisted personal interview methods by trained lay interviewers. Data quality was strictly controlled in order to ensure the reliability and validity of the collected information. Results: A total of 3,849 people completed the main survey, with 2,060 completing the long interview, with a response rate of 57.3%. Data cleaning was conducted in collaboration with the WMHSI Data Analysis Coordination Centre at the Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. Collected information will provide lifetime and 12-month mental disorders diagnoses, according to the International Classification of Diseases and to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Conclusions: The findings of this study could have a major influence in mental health care policy planning efforts over the next years, specially in a country that still has a significant level of unmet needs regarding mental health services organization, delivery of care and epidemiological research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Abstract: Electoral behaviour in recently established democracies has been more frequently treated from the point of view of its unpredictability, volatility and personalistic elements than that of its “fundamentals”. In this paper, we wish to contribute to redress this imbalance by advancing a forecasting model for general elections in a young democracy, Portugal. Building on the very familiar notion that the vote for the incumbent can be predicted on the basis of “economics” and “politics”, we capture “economics” through a non-linear specification of economic growth. Furthermore, we include two structural features of Portuguese politics, which have entailed a systematic electoral punishment for the centre–left Socialist Party as the incumbent and for all incumbents involved in political conflicts with the elected president in Portugal''s semi-presidentialism. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article examines what has driven voters' choices in the 2006 presidential election in Portugal. Electing a semipresidential head of state has often been treated either as a "popularity contest" or as a full-fledged "first-order" election, depending on the particular national political system in which those elections were studied. Using data from a panel survey conducted following the 2005 legislative and 2006 presidential elections, this article suggests that, in a "premier-presidentialist" system such as Portugal - where presidents are neither the heads of the executive nor mere figureheads - voters are unlikely to be oblivious to the conventional partisan and ideological cues provided by campaigns, but also unlikely to see these elections as a mechanism with which to hold government accountable. Instead, patterns of defection from the government party seem to conform to theoretical expectations derived from the notion that presidential elections in such cases can be conceived as "less important", but where parties and voters remain aware of the connections between what is at stake in different electoral arenas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the performance of the pre-election polls in Portugal since 1991 and attempts to determine some of the common causes of poll inaccuracy in both National Assembly and European Parliament elections. The analysis of poll results in this period reveals marked improvements in poll accuracy since 1991, which have brought it to levels that, today, are comparable to those found in nations where the practice of both survey research and opinion polling is longer and more established. No evidence of a systematic bias against any of the major parties is found, and sources of error are congruent with those found elsewhere. However, large errors remain the norm in polls pertaining to European Parliament elections, suggesting a shared inability of Portuguese polling organizations in dealing appropriately with the problems caused by low turnout and 'landslide' elections. [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]

Explains the transformation of Portuguese social democratic politics in 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and its relation to European integration. Importance of European integration on Socialist Party's development; Results of the Socialist Party's pursuit of European Monetary Union and introduction of the integration agenda.

Short-term load forecasting (STLF) plays a vital role in ensuring the safe, efficient, and economical operation of power systems. Accurate load forecasting provides numerous benefits for power suppliers, such as cost reduction, increased reliability, and informed decision-making. However, STLF is a complex task due to various factors, including non-linear trends, multiple seasonality, variable variance, and significant random interruptions in electricity demand time series. To address these challenges, advanced techniques and models are required. This study focuses on the development of an efficient short-term power load forecasting model using the random forest (RF) algorithm. RF combines regression trees through bagging and random subspace techniques to improve prediction accuracy and reduce model variability. The algorithm constructs a forest of trees using bootstrap samples and selects random feature subsets at each node to enhance diversity. Hyperparameters such as the number of trees, minimum sample leaf size, and maximum features for each split are tuned to optimize forecasting results. The proposed model was tested using historical hourly load data from four transformer substations supplying different campus areas of the University of Beira Interior, Portugal. The training data were from January 2018 to December 2021, while the data from 2022 were used for testing. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the RF model in forecasting short-term hourly and one day ahead load and its potential to enhance decision-making processes in smart grid operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors explore the reliability of the Portuguese version of the Bipolar Depression Rating Scale (BDRS) that has been developed to identify typical and atypical depressive symptoms as well as depressive mixed states. They note that BDRS was translated into Portuguese by two independent translators. Its structure has been evaluated using cluster analysis which involves sorting variables according to similarity on one or more dimensions. They believe that the reliability and the two-cluster solution demonstrates the validity of the scale.

Copyright of Anduli: Revista Andaluza de Ciencias Sociales is the property of Anduli: Revista Andaluza de Ciencias Sociales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article investigates the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic fostered significant shifts in election campaigning. The argument is that COVID-19 might have had an impact on both digitalization and professionalization, which might have been regarded as necessary strategies to curb the difficulties brought about by the pandemic. We apply a most similar systems design with a threefold comparative scheme in order to capture and isolate such effects in the campaigns preceding the 2021 Portuguese presidential elections, using data from campaign spending, campaign activities, and social media activity and impact. Results show that the pandemic crisis has not, generally speaking, brought about a higher level of digitalization of electoral campaigns, in spite of online events having become more common. On the contrary, while there were signs of feebler patterns of normalization of online competition in 2021 vis-à-vis 2016, namely in terms of engagement, normalization was stronger after the lockdown than before. Lastly, relative investment in professionalization was similar in 2016 and 2021, and the difference between the budgeted and the actual investment in 2021 cannot be attributed to the worsening of the pandemic situation or to the lockdown. In sum, we depict a scenario of remarkable stability of the electoral campaigns put forward by presidential candidates in terms of digitalization and professionalization. Its possible causes and consequences are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Lua Nova is the property of CEDEC and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Corruption is often defined as a deviant conduct from established legal and formal norms and expected ways of behaving in the exercise of official duties and the discharge of official responsibilities. Readiness to tolerate corruption will hinge primarily upon the evaluator's understanding of what those ethical standards are. This means that citizens' willingness to accept corruption as something "normal" to the functioning of democracy or "beneficial" to economic development is likely to be affected by how knowledgeable they are about the ethical standards of governing public office. Such knowledge can be instilled by academic and experiential learning. So, we question to what extent citizens' knowledge of official ethical standards affect their tolerance towards corruption? Based on new individual level data collected from six focus groups conducted in Portugal, we show a possible negative association between the appropriate knowledge of official ethical standards and tolerance towards corruption. The results are exploratory, but sufficiently interesting to test our hypothesis with a larger sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 such political predispositions that cause biased perceptions of pledge fulfilment. Bias towards perceiving pledges as unfulfilled is expected to be higher for voters whose political predispositions are more unfavourable to government. The argument is supported by data on Portuguese voters and party manifestos in the 2011 election, contributing to better understanding of the mechanisms of political accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-austerity mobilisations in Southern Europe since 2010 have been widely debated in recent times. Commentators have emphasised the emergence of new political subjects such as the ‘precariat’ organised into loose, IT-connected movements. To what extent do these portrayals reflect the underlying dynamics of this protest cycle, and how do these movements interact with traditional political actors? Using Portugal as a case study, this article maps the cycle of anti-austerity contention between 2010 and 2013 to reveal a more complex picture, where traditional actors, including labour unions and left-wing political parties, emerge as key actors, facilitating and sustaining the discontinuous mobilisation of new forms of activism, while seeking to gain access to new constituencies through them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present paper intends to provide an overview and a critical assessment of the administrative simplification policies implemented in Portugal over the past 20+ years. Throughout these decades, the major instruments for administrative simplification have been: (i) Decree-Law n. 135/99, of 22 April; (ii) the Simplex programme; (iii) the 2015 new Code of Administrative Procedure and its 2021 amendment; and (iv) the COVID-19 legislation. Although Decree-Law n. 135/99 (i) was the first attempt to specifically address simplification, it was a very thin one. The Simplex programme (ii), created in 2006, was the first cross-sectoral robust policy of simplification; its motto is "the simpler the better" and it encompassed reforms in all government areas aiming at cutting red tape, promoting administrative efficiency, and making the citizens' and the corporations' lives easier when dealing with State. The new Code of Administrative Procedure (iii), approved in 2015, brought about specific normative solutions to simplify procedures, namely, prior communications, administrative assistance, procedural conferences, and the electronic one-stop shop. Finally, the COVID-19 legislation (iv) was made necessary by the COVID-19 pandemic and by the fact that public health restrictions made it impossible for citizens to establish personal contact with the administration in many cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]