Democratic Legitimacy and Trust in Political Institutions in Portugal Before and After the Great Recession: Transitory or Lasting Effects?

The paper explores changes in the attitudes of citizens in Portugal towards democratic institutions before and after the economic crisis that afflicted the country during the first five years of the current decade. Building upon previous work (Teixeira, Tsatsanis & Belchior 2014, 2016) the paper examines to what extend the steep decline of trust in institutions and satisfaction with democracy that was observed during the years of the crisis was a transient phenomenon or one with longer-term consequences for democratic legitimacy in Portugal. Using longitudinal data updated by a new mass-level survey (Freire, Lisi & Tsatsanis 2016), the paper has four research objectives: a) to contribute to the larger theoretical discussion concerning the impact of deep and protracted economic downturns on democratic legitimacy, b) to re-examine empirically the applicability of the distinction between diffuse and specific regime support in terms of the observed fluctuations in the attitudes of Portuguese citizens towards their political institutions, c) to examine how short-term political factors (e.g. government alternation) can affect such attitudes, and d) to examine whether the economic crisis has given rise to observable cohort effects on the ways in which the Portuguese relate to politics.