The Europeanization question is at the heart of contemporary Portuguese politics and society. Edited by two eminent Portuguese social scientists, Nuno Severiano Teixeira and António Costa Pinto, The Europeanization of Portuguese Democracy asks how integration into the European Union has shaped political institutions, attitudes and policy formation in Portugal. This volume joins a growing body of literature examining how integration has impacted Portugal, bringing together an impressive group of scholars, and distinguishing itself in the depth and detail of each of its nine chapters.
Chapter 1, by Nuno Severiano Teixeira, offers a useful overview of developments from 1974 to 2010. Teixeira argues that although the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar and his successor, Marcelo Caetano, enjoyed a variety of relations with Europe (Portugal was a founding member of NATO and a participant in the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, the European Payments Union, and the European Free Trade Association), Europe remained a secondary concern during the life of the dictatorship. In his words, “Portugal had prioritized the Atlantic and the colonies while looking for European compensations” (p. 26). Democratization and decolonization changed everything. Teixeira notes that following the April 25, 1974 coup d’état against the Salazar/Caetano regime, “democratic consolidation and European integration were to become inseparable” (p. 8). One significant result of the transition to democracy was that national priorities changed: “Portugal’s priority is Europe and the European Union…” (p. 26). Teixeira’s fine introduction sets the table for the rest of the volume; subsequent chapters examine the Europeanization question in specific areas: Three chapters examine how integration impacted Portuguese civil society, three concentrate on institutions, and two scrutinize voting behavior and attitudes.
Chapter 2, co-authored by João Pedro Ruivo, Diogo Moreira, António Costa Pinto and Pedro Tavares de Almeida, asks whether Portuguese national elites feel that they belong to the European polity. The analysis is crisp and thorough; the authors take the reader through a wide variety of IntUne Elite survey data from 2007 and 2009, and find that although the parliamentary deputies are generally supportive of integration, deputies in other southern European states are more supportive. The authors also wonder what types of policy-making should be ceded to Europe and away from Lisbon, and find that although the deputies would welcome more EU financial support, they do not wish the Europeanization of national tax and welfare redistribution programs. They understand that the views of the deputies are fungible, noting that “the challenge now is to understand how the European attitudes of national deputies will perform under the stress of political and economic crises” (p. 59).
The next three chapters examine institutional adaptions to integration. Each one of these chapters is methodologically sound, theoretically careful, and thoughtful. Chapter 3, by Carlos Jalali is “interested in analyzing Europeanization as a process through which member-states are, due to the European-level, obliged to alter their structures, policies, formal regulations and consolidated practices” (p. 64). Jalali then scrutinizes a series of Eurobarometer and other datasets, and concludes that although there has indeed been a transfer of responsibilities from Portugal to the supra-national level, there remains a degree of autonomy of action retained by the Portuguese executive. Chapter 4, by Madalena Meyer Resende and Maria Teresa Paulo, follows Jalali’s chapter by asking another institutional question: how the role of the Portuguese parliament has changed in response to the Barroso initiative (formalized in the Treaty of Lisbon) to give national parliaments the opportunity to comment on draft European Commission proposals. They describe the subsequent development of a scrutiny system and a new system of information exchange among European national parliaments. Nuno Piçarra and Francisco Pereira Coutinho continue the institutional analysis in Chapter 5, by asking how the Portuguese court system has adapted to the Treaty of Rome (which provides for the Europeanization of national courts). They find that Portugal has been slow to adapt, noting that “more than 20 years after Portugal’s accession, EU law still does not have an impact on the Portuguese legal order comparable to the impact experienced in other member states” (p. 138).
Sebastián Royo offers a strong contribution on how integration has impacted trade unions and employers’ organizations in Chapter 6. His historical overview of the process, with special attention to the players, as well as his observations on national social bargaining, are particularly useful in understanding the Portuguese situation. He astutely diagnoses the current situation, suggesting that “the challenge for Portugal is to build new institutional mechanisms” to maintain sound fiscal policies (p. 179).
Chapters 7 and 8 will be of particular interest to political scientists: These two chapters provide exhaustive analyses of voting behavior and political attitudes, gleaned from an impressive array of data sets assembled from Eurobarometer and other surveys. In Chapter 7, André Freire compares voting behavior in the European elections with established party voting patterns in Portugal, in order to tease out lessons from the Portuguese experience that might be of some use to post-communist consolidating democracies. In Chapter 8, Pedro Magalhães presents a veritable treasure trove of original research in his detailed study of political support for European integration in Portugal. He finds that support for integration has moved over the years from “the perception of benefits” to “the acceptance of the EU as a political community” (p. 250). He is careful to add that there is nothing inevitable in his findings, and that future events could change attitudes.
Maarten Peter Vink’s concluding chapter proposes an intriguing way to understand the dual processes of Europeanization and democratization in Portugal: He asks if these two concepts should be understood as “brothers-in-arms” or “frères ennemis?” There are no firm answers to his question, but he does force us to consider whether Europeanization has strengthened (brothers-in arms) or undermined democracy (“frères ennemis”) in Portugal. This concluding chapter offers much insight, and ultimately leaves us with more questions than answers.
There are some areas where the volume could be improved. Most notably, it would benefit from a clearer thematic organization: The cluster of chapters dealing with institutions (3,4,5) and the twin chapters on voting behavior and attitudes (7,8) are sandwiched between the three chapters most dealing with how integration impacted Portuguese civil society (2,6,9). Second, more analysis is needed on the impact on traditional patterns of Portuguese life brought about by Europeanization. How has integration impacted rural Portugal? Finally, the role of former Portuguese Prime Minister, and current President of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, on how Portugal has adapted to Europeanization, could use some treatment. Has the presence of a native son in such an important role had any influence on adaption to integration? These are minor quibbles, to be sure. The Europeanization of Portuguese Democracy is a fine piece of scholarship, and I highly recommend it.
