ABSTRACT

Introduction With the ‘Carnation Revolution’ of 25 April 1974, Portugal initiated the socalled ‘third wave’ of worldwide democratisation. A stable party system quickly emerged, and by 1976 four parties represented almost 90 per cent of the electorate. Apart from a brief period during the mid-1980s when the centre-left Party of Democratic Renewal (PRD) emerged and disappeared, the party system has remained relatively stable. The general tendency (1987-2005) was for the vote to concentrate on the two centrist ‘catch-all’ parties: the centre-left Socialist Party (PS, Partido Socialista), and the centre-right Social Democratic Party (PSD, Partido Social Democrata).1 Alongside the PS and the PSD, the Communist Party (PCP, Partido Comunista Português) and the conservative (although with significant Christian Democratic influences) Democratic Social Centre (CDS, Centro Democrático e Social) have become the system’s main parties.2 Some smaller parties have also obtained seats in parliament during the democratic period, especially the Left Bloc (BE, Bloco de Esquerda).3 With the exception of the non-party cabinets appointed by president Ramalho Eanes during the late 1970s, the PS and PSD have always controlled the government alone or in coalition with the CDS-PP (Freire 2005; Jalali 2007). Since the 1987 ‘realignment elections’ there has been an increasing concentration of the vote in two major parties. The change from ‘consensual’ to ‘majoritarian’ democracy has several features: movement from a fragmented to a kind of bipartisan party system; from coalition (or minority) and unstable governments to single party majorities (most of the time) and rather stable governments; and from a strong parliament (and president) to a strong government (and prime minister) (Freire 2005; Bruneau et al. 2001). The economic and financial crisis that has hit Portugal since 2008 put an end to government stability and single-party majority governments. The socialist government elected in 2009 proved to be quite short (September 2009-June 2011), given the worsening economic conditions and the difficulty in negotiating austerity packages with the main opposition party. This situation led Prime Minister Sócrates to resign in March 2011. The 2011 early elections gave a clear victory to the PSD which formed a coalition with the CDS-PP.