The Exceptional Case of Post-Bailout Portugal

Book excerpt: This book explores the argument that Portugal has been an exception to the trend of political upheaval and electoral instability across Southern Europe following the financial crisis and the bailout period. It does so by mapping and exploring in-depth three key dimensions: the governmental arena, the party system and citizens’ political attitudes. The five chapters in this edited volume show that a number of factors combine to make Portugal not only a very stimulating case study, but also an exception within the South European panorama: the stability of its party system, and that of the mainstream parties’ electoral support in particular; the quick recovery of political attitudes after the end of the bailout period (2011-2014); the absence of competitive populist challengers until 2019, despite high levels of populist attitudes amongst the citizenry; the successful and stable union between anti-austerity parties supporting the socialist government (dubbed the ‘Contraption’) and its adoption of an ‘austerity by stealth’ model. This book shows that it is possible to combine critical junctures and political stability, responsiveness and responsibility, through the study of one of the most intriguing cases in Southern Europe in the last decades. The Exceptional Case of Post-Bailout Portugal will be of interest to students, researchers and scholars of Political Science and European Studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, South European Society and Politics.