In this paper, we study how Portuguese citizens and politicians (MP’s) view and evaluate the democratic regime in Portugal in two distinct moments, in 2008 and 2012. Inspired by the original theoretical and conceptual Easton’s framework, developed and reformulated later by other authors (Norris, Kinglemann and Dalton), we explore the multidimensionality of the concept of political regime support, its levels and components. Employing a wide range of national survey indicators, we explore the question of the erosion of the support towards the democratic regime both in terms of quantity (degree of erosion) and quality (type of delegitimation). In addition, we investigate the degree of congruence between the attitudes of political elites and voters towards the system of political representation and governance, whether at an abstract or more concrete levels, national as well as supranational.
Our empirical investigation rests on two surveys of both voters (2008, N = 1350; 2012, N = 1209 – both representative samples of the adult population) and MPs (2008, N = 143, out of 230 MPs in Parliament; 2012-13, N = 57, fieldwork still going on), which were fielded right in the beginning of the 2008 economic crisis (March – July 2008) and after the effects of the crisis were deeply felt by both the voters and the MPs (October 2012 – March 2013). These surveys include several items designed specifically to tap attitudes towards specific representative and executive institutions and the political regime at large (used in the research networks to which our research project is connected: the Comparative Candidate Survey and PARENEL – Parliamentary Representation at the National and European Levels). These allow us to measure underlying value orientations at both the elite and voters level (the same questionnaires were fielded across levels and across time), and especially their change between 2008 and 2012-13.
