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Portugal

Basic facts 2007

Population 10’608’335

GDP p.c. (US$) 21’845

Human development rank 34

Age of democracy in years (Polity) 31

Type of democracy Parliamentary

Electoral system Proportional

Party system Multi-party system

Quality of democracy rank 19

The development of the quality of democracy in Portugal

The overall quality of democracy

Portugal’s quality of democracy developed very closely to the mean democratic quality of all 30 coun-

tries examined even though a negative deviation is visible between 2000 and 2003. Overall, there is not

considerable variation over time. A slow but steady increase in the first seven years under study was

followed by a period of marginal decline, interrupted at times but nevertheless continuing until 2007.

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Freedom

As the graph shows, the principle freedom remained very stable on a moderate level throughout the 18

years studied in Portugal. For this reason, while the country scored about average in the early 1990s it

was increasingly lagging behind the country sample mean in the following years.

In line with the aggregate principle, there is not much variation in its constitutive functions either. This is

especially evident with regard to the functions individual liberties and public sphere. With a more or less

constant score of 80 scale points, the former performed best compared to the other two functions. The

slight downturn in the first four years can be explained by a departure from the maximum value on the

variable measuring a country’s practice of torture. The same factor is responsible for the temporary dip

in 1995, along with a worse assessment of the protection of personal security and private property. Ac-

cordingly, incidents of torture took place frequently in that year and also in 2000, again causing a small

decrease. Most often, reports of torture are related to cases of police brutality and physical abuse of

detainees by security forces, an enduring problem in Portugal (HRR 1993, 1995). Some of these raised

much public attention, such as the 1995 incident involving Duarte Teives, a renowned Lisbon lawyer, or

the death of Alvaro Rosa Cardoso following a violent encounter with police forces in 2000 (AI 1996;

HRR 2000). Thus, in 1995, the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture even raised

concerns about this issue in their report of Portuguese prison conditions.

Public sphere, by contrast, scores very low and therefore is the reason for the rather mediocre fulfilment

of the overall principle. While this function is not very well established in most countries, Portugal actual-

ly ranked in the lowest tier in this respect during the whole period of analysis. Deficiencies prevailed in

terms of most aspects of the public sphere in Portugal. On the one hand, the organisational strength of

interest groups and associations as well as the supply of newspapers, especially without a political ori-

entation, was low. On the other hand, neither of the basic rights of free expression (freedom of assem-

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bly, association, speech and the press) was fully guaranteed without restrictions by the country’s consti-

tution.

Most variation over time can be observed with regard to the function rule of law. Initially, the function

remained stable on a relatively high level throughout the 1990s. After the turn of the century, however, a

slow downtrend brought the rule of law score down from 77 to 70 scale points in 2007. This can be at-

tributed to a decreasing impartiality of the courts, combined with sinking public confidence in the justice

system, which might be related to the large delay in the courts’ handling of pending cases (HRR 2005).

These factors are also the reason why the rule of law is not fulfilled to a higher degree in general as

well.

Control

The principle control experienced a moderate increase in Portugal over time (+8 scale points between

1990 and 2007) on an overall average level, with repeated ups and downs. As a consequence, the

country’s graph meandered around the mean of all the 30 countries.

The progress of the aggregate principle over the years is mostly owed to the functions competition and

mutual constraints, which continually improved up to 2004 from 53 to 70 and 48 to 60 scale points, re-

spectively. The development of competition is mainly due to the growing vulnerability or competitiveness

of elections – generally comparatively low at the beginning of the 1990s –, as defined by multiple indica-

tors measuring the degree to which single parties dominate, both in terms of vote and seat shares. In

essence, the Socialist Party (PS) increasingly established itself as a serious – and the only – challenger

of the previously dominating Social Democratic Party (PSD) in the 1991 and subsequent parliamentary

elections, which positively affected competition. However, while the two parties more or less measured

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up to each other in terms of vote and seat shares by 2004, the PS so clearly defeated the PSD in 2005

that competition actually decreased again to its level of 1995.

The graph of the function mutual constraints exhibits a development almost parallel to competition, alt-

hough on a slightly lower level. Hence, the variation in this function can be explained by electoral results

as well, affecting the balance between government and opposition forces in the parliament. As already

mentioned, the latter, mainly consisting of the PS, grew constantly stronger in the early 1990s, thus

reducing the weight of the governing PSD. Since 1995 no party has ever reached the absolute majority

again and after the respective elections, the two main parties more or less held each other in check and

swapped power multiple times in the decade that followed. The slight decrease in 2005, however, can

be attributed to the already discussed electoral victory of the PS at the expense of the PSD. In addition

to the balance of opposition and government, mutual constraints were also positively influenced by an

increasing degree of effective federalism over time as measured by the level of subnational expendi-

tures and revenues.

Contrary to its counterparts, the graph of the function governmental capability shows rather large fluctu-

ations but no uniform trend for the 18 years studied. The first upturn was caused by the rapidly improv-

ing quality of the bureaucracy in terms of strength, expertise and independence as well as the waning

influence of the military over government throughout the 1990s. However, the exchange of power be-

tween the PDS and the PS in 1995 can be considered a destabilisation of the executive and thus result-

ed in a dip of the function in 1995. Moreover, as of 1998, governmental stability generally worsened as

cabinets were often rebuilt and/or whole governments broke down. For instance, the early elections of

2002 took place because the Socialist Prime Minister António Guterres resigned from office after his

party lost heavily in the local elections. In addition, the perceived independence of the public service as

well as the effective implementation of government decisions decreased markedly during these years.

All of these factors temporarily turned for the better in 2003, only to fall back to the same level the year

after. The final increase in 2006 can be attributed to the fact that no major cabinet changes took place

that year.

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Equality

Similar to the control principle, equality scores about average throughout most of the period under study

and slightly increased until 2000. Between 2000 and 2003, however, equality fell visibly behind the

mean of all 30 countries in the Democracy Barometer sample.

This was most likely due to the function transparency, which generally exhibits the largest variation over

time. Starting from a level of about 54 scale points, the function sharply leaped forward in 1993, and

from then on Portugal actually always ranked among the top ten performing countries with regard to this

function. The huge progress in 1993 can be attributed to the introduction of a law granting citizens wide

access to official documents in a quite efficient way. As for the fluctuations in the following years, they

were all caused by changes in corruption and especially the assessment of the government’s willing-

ness to communicate, the latter of which varied greatly over time.

Apart from a considerable downtrend between 1997 and 2001, the function participation remained most-

ly stable though on a comparatively low level. The main reason for this is the low and highly dispropor-

tional participation in petitions and demonstrations in Portugal. The causes of the mentioned decline

were a decreasing share of registered voters compared to the voting age population and of turnout in

elections and referenda, which coincided with growing age and gender gaps among voters. However,

improvements of these latter factors – turnout and participation gaps – also explain the slight progress in

2006 of the participation function.

Representation exhibits little variation over time as well. After an upturn of almost 7 scale points in 1995,

the function scored about 60 for the remainder of the period of analysis. Most importantly, this is due to

a significantly higher share of women in the parliament and especially the government after the 1995

elections.

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The democracy profile of Portugal

Legend: (Principles and Functions) Principle: Freedom: RL (Rule of Law), IL (Individual Liberties), PS (Public Sphere). Control: GC (Governmental Capability), MC (Mutual Constraints), CO (Competition). Equality: TR (Transparency), PAR (Participation), REP (Representation).

The spider charts summarise what has already become clear in the discussion of the nine functions

over time: Portugal’s quality of democracy closely corresponds to the mean of all 30 countries. Most of

the functions scored about average in all of the three years illustrated here. The exceptions are trans-

parency and participation. While the former performed exceptionally well in comparison, serious short-

comings prevailed with regard to the latter. In that sense, Portugal has quite a standard democratic pro-

file with no distinct establishment of any of the three democratic principles. Correspondingly, as indicat-

ed in the introductory table, it occupies the 19th rank of the quality of democracy ranking in 2007.