Political Representation Studies in Portugal, Before and After the ‘Great Recession’? The Legitimation and Ideological Linkages between Voters and their Representatives

Although there are some previous studies on the Portuguese Parliament and MPs, namely based on MPs’ biographical files, there is a more recent branch of research on political representation studies since 2008 that is based on candidates to the national parliament (elected and non-elected) or on MPs surveys, and correspondent mass surveys with similar items, that is connected with several international research networks. The purpose of this paper is then threefold. First, the paper will survey this more recent research in terms of the data produced, the methodologies and the major findings. However, due to space limitations, we will focus only upon two major substantive themes, the relations between voters and their representatives in terms of mutual perceptions, political trust, political legitimacy, etc., and the voters-MPs’ congruence along the major ideological (left-right) and issue dimensions (socioeconomic and authoritarian-libertarian issues, attitudes towards the EU), and will try to pinpoint if there are any significant changes after the Great Recession in the legitimation (second objective) and ideological (third objective) linkage functions between voters and their representatives.