The Eurozone sovereign debt crisis and Geringonça: how have they impacted Portuguese leftist Euroscepticism?

The literature shows that multiple crises in the EU in the last decade have increased Euroscepticism, which is also true for Southern Europe, particularly affected by the Eurozone debt crisis. Although there is a growing bulk of literature on Euroscepticism in Europe, it fails to fully explore the relation between Euroscepticism and exceptionally severe crises, namely in the Portuguese context where two leftist Eurosceptic parties co-exist - the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and Left Block (LB) - from the early days of Portugal as a Member State. This research aims at studying if and how the Eurozone debt crisis, particularly the troika intervention in the country (2011-2014), and the following 2015 parliamentary coalition with PCP and LB supporting the Socialist Party Europeanist government (the so-called Geringonça), influenced the Euroscepticism of PCP and LB. Based on an adaptation of Taggart and Szczerbiak (2001), and of Kopecky and Mudde (2002) theoretical frameworks on Euroscepticism, the paper intends to answer one chief research question: which was the impact of Eurozone crisis and of Geringonça in the leftist Euroscepticism in Portugal? For the analysis’ purpose, Euroscepticism is assumed as a dependent variable of two independent variables: (i) the troika intervention in Portugal (2011-2014), following the 2008 great recession and the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, and (ii) the Geringonça coalition legislature (2015-2019), corresponding to the 22nd Constitutional Government. The independent variables are supported in the literature that shows that (i) moments of economic crises are boosters for the ideological increment of Euroscepticism, and that (ii) party strategies for power, like coalitions, are a cause for the moderation of Eurosceptic stances. Therefore, our hypothesis is that during the troika intervention in Portugal, PCP and LB toughened their Eurosceptic positions, whereas during the Geringonça coalition they softened their Euroscepticism. To test this, the paper uses as empirical data manifestos for European elections from 1999 to 2019, a period comprising the year when Euro entered into force, coincident with the first European elections to which LB run for, and the year of the last European elections, when Portugal was experiencing economic growth and marked the end of the Geringonça legislature. Data will be subject to a content analysis methodology subject to thematic categories defined according to Euroscepticism theoretical frameworks, using the programme MaxQDA, for qualitative data systematization.