The Exceptional Case of Post-Bailout Portugal: A Comparative Outlook

Abstract

The analysis explores government, party system and political attitudes as dimensions revealing Portugal’s exceptionalism during its post-bailout period (2015–19) vis-á-vis three other South European countries, Greece, Italy and Spain. It shows that government stability was greater in Portugal, no party system revolution took place and political trust recovered more quickly than in the other countries. In contrast, Portugal is not dissimilar from the other cases regarding the prevalence of populist attitudes, even though populist actors did not achieve electoral success before 2019. The article includes an update on political attitudes and government-opposition relations during the covid-19 pandemic and introduces the other articles in this collection.