ABSTRACT
Portuguese scholarship on populism especially in the Portuguese language about Portuguese case studies is still incipient and needs further, systematic research. Protest movements outside of traditional institutions and political parties have been on the rise, particularly after the financial and economic crisis, and the passing of austerity measures by the centre-right PSD/CDS-PP coalition government. Several social movements such as the 12 March Movement, or Screw the Troika have emerged from what has come to be known as the Struggling Generation. Several dimensions of populism characterize these movements of social contestation: appeals to the people, polarizing rhetoric, anti-system rhetoric and dismissal of the traditional political elite, aversion to representative politics, and demands for an unmediated and real democracy that reasserts popular sovereignty at its essence. The inclusion of the Portuguese case study in cross-national comparative research would for its part develop integrated knowledge on the similarities and differences of various political processes and approaches to populist political communication.
