The Biggest Loser? Local Public Services Under Austerity Measures in Portugal

Abstract

The problems of national debt and the restrictive adjustment programmes severely undermined Portuguese local governments’ achievements of previous decades. Even though Portuguese public debt problems were not primarily driven by subnational authorities’ indebtedness, political discourse often stressed that municipalities’ debt was unmanageable, as a strategy to enhance public and political acceptance of severe measures. This chapter seeks to identify and analyse the implementation of specific measures and to test the impact of austerity on local public services. It is argued that three main threads of reform transformed Portuguese local government into the biggest loser of the austerity narrative: the financial retrenchment, the organization of the territory and the reduction of local government enterprises. While these reforms affected the provision of local public services, the tight schedule for the implementation of reforms reduced the possibility of engaging with citizens and local representatives, reducing an important source of legitimacy of local government.