Publications

Right-of-center candidates won close to two-thirds of the first-round vote in Portugal's 2026 presidential election, yet none reached the presidency. Right-wing fragmentation was a coordination failure that sent André Ventura (Chega; Enough) to the run-off, where António José Seguro (Socialist Party) beat him two to one. Right-wing voters coalesced against Ventura without party cues. For 28.5 per cent of Seguro's voters this was negative voting: a ballot cast against Ventura, not for him. Among right-wing voters, attitudes and ideology distinguished those who crossed the left-right divide to vote for Seguro from those who chose Ventura, while partisanship did not. They drew a line their parties would not, because it rested on what they believed rather than on whom they followed.

Over the past two decades, political parties have undertaken a series of intra‐party reforms aimed at reinforcing ethical standards and restoring public confidence. These regulatory developments have been insufficiently studied and remain a blind spot in the literature. The purpose of this article is to explain, drawing on existing theories of regulation, not only why political parties engage in ethics self‐regulation, but also why the robustness of party ethics self‐regulation (PESR) varies across 241 parliamentary parties in 34 countries. For that, we will make use of an updated version of a recently developed dataset which congregates public information on self‐regulatory efforts developed by political parties to address ethical issues within their organizations. Our results suggest that intra‐party ethics reforms are primarily driven by legal tradition, strategic incentives, and risk exposure.

Populist radical right (PRR) parties are expanding their grassroots despite widespread membership decline elsewhere. Yet little is known about who joins them and the implications of recruitment from other parties. This article compares former members of other parties (‘switchers’) with first-time members in Portugal’s Chega, drawing on an original survey of thousands of members. The findings reveal a broadly homogeneous grassroots united around ideology and core PRR values. Differences between switchers and first-time members stem from the predominance of former right-wing partisans among switchers rather than from switching itself. Nonetheless, legacy effects persist in out-group affect: former right-wing members rate right-wing parties more positively and left-wing parties more negatively than former left-wing members, who display the opposite pattern. Overall, the results suggest that many switchers may have been ideologically predisposed toward the PRR and were activated by the emergence of a viable organizational supply. They also have important implications for understanding how PRR grassroots perceive party competition and coalition strategies in multiparty systems.

• Público
• European Center for Populism Studies (interview)

The ideological fit between party grassroots and leaderships has long been a concern for political science, with members in general, and young members in particular, thought to be more radical. However, we do not know, first, whether this is still the case and, if it is, what drives members in different ideological directions. To investigate, we propose a new typology of members as radicals, moderates and aligned, and develop a theoretical framework that accounts for how political socialization and party contexts drive congruence and incongruence. We test this using YOUMEM survey data from over 4,000 members of 12 youth wings in six countries. Our results show that while radicals are the largest group in most youth wings, they are more common on the centre-left than the centre-right. They tend to have been in the youth wing for longer than aligned members, but are under-represented among politically ambitious members. Our findings thus shed light on opinion structures within political parties and provide a typology for future research on intra-party cohesion.

• The Australian

The 2024 general elections triggered an unprecedented shift in the Portuguese party system. The radical right skyrocketed from 12 to 50 MPs precisely as the country celebrated 50 years since the overthrow of a right-wing dictatorship. Corruption scandals prompted snap elections, but the main parties experienced some of their worst results in history. The centre-right witnessed a bittersweet and narrow victory, and in the resounding defeat of the centre-left, there is more than meets the eye. The closely contested election was marked by the radical right’s breakthrough and the breakdown of the de facto two-party system. The driving force behind this party system change seems to be the supply side of party competition. Despite government formation remaining within the realm of conventional formulas, it is unclear whether the cordon sanitaire between mainstream and radical right will falter or damage the chances of executive survival.

• Who Governs Europe (blog post)
• Institute for Alternative Policies (interview)

This article investigates whether and why party members sometimes vote for other parties. Although often taken as parties’ most loyal voters, recent evidence suggests that members’ vote is not unconditional. Using novel survey data from Portugal, we examine rates of defection by members, test the validity of existing explanations and assess the extent to which traditional theories of party membership can account for such behavior. We argue that ideological incongruence, satisfaction with intra-party functioning, incentive structure and party activism play a key role in explaining why a member casts a vote for another party while maintaining a formal connection with their own party. Findings support the impact of internal discontentment and engagement in party activities, as well as instrumental motivations for members of smaller parties. We also explore how motivations relate to strategic considerations in driving defection. Results differ across parties, suggesting the importance of of party models and legacy. They have important implications for party membership and mobilization, as well as for future research on membership decline and the consequences of party cohesion and factionalism.

To what extent are political parties responsive to voters before and after elections (that is, during the campaign and in office)? And what explains responsiveness at both of these stages: agenda-setting and decision-making? We argue that parties are more responsive at the agenda-setting stage than at the decision-making stage, and that responsiveness tends to be mediated by the type of promise (change versus status quo, and issue salience), and type of government (majority versus minority, and left- versus right-wing). This research focuses on the Portuguese case using data from party manifestos between 1995 and 2015, as well as surveys of Portuguese citizens. Findings generally support our expectations, although with some differences between parties as a whole and governments. Our results have important implications for understanding opinion–policy linkages and mandate-responsiveness, as well as more broadly for party competition.

The Portuguese elections of early 2022 took place during the most severe wave of COVID-19 infections in Portugal. Nevertheless, the pandemic was not the most important issue in the campaign. Although opinion polls forecast a narrow election, the Socialists gained their second absolute majority in history. The electoral results marked a breakthrough for the radical right and Liberals. Every other traditional party had its worst electoral night in democratic history. The Christian Democrats and the Greens ended up exiting the parliament. The 2022 general elections saw the Socialists rise to dominance and the end of the Portuguese exceptionalism in keeping the radical right at arm’s length.

This article investigates the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic fostered significant shifts in election campaigning. The argument is that COVID-19 might have had an impact on both digitalization and professionalization, which might have been regarded as necessary strategies to curb the difficulties brought about by the pandemic. We apply a most similar systems design with a threefold comparative scheme in order to capture and isolate such effects in the campaigns preceding the 2021 Portuguese presidential elections, using data from campaign spending, campaign activities, and social media activity and impact. Results show that the pandemic crisis has not, generally speaking, brought about a higher level of digitalization of electoral campaigns, in spite of online events having become more common. On the contrary, while there were signs of feebler patterns of normalization of online competition in 2021 vis-à-vis 2016, namely in terms of engagement, normalization was stronger after the lockdown than before. Lastly, relative investment in professionalization was similar in 2016 and 2021, and the difference between the budgeted and the actual investment in 2021 cannot be attributed to the worsening of the pandemic situation or to the lockdown. In sum, we depict a scenario of remarkable stability of the electoral campaigns put forward by presidential candidates in terms of digitalization and professionalization. Its possible causes and consequences are discussed.

In the Covid-19 pandemic era researchers and academics worldwide have experienced an unprecedented phenomenon. In this context of uncertainty and instability, academia was not spared the consequences of the new Coronavirus that locked everybody out of university. However, research and academic productivity during these unprecedented times may not have adversely affected projects, students, and their supervisors. Building on the authors’ personal experience this paper highlights some positive impacts of pursuing a PhD during a pandemic, focusing the reflection along two lines: 1) that work during social isolation may be better than ever; and 2) how open science has been crucial in this coronavirus era.

Using data from the European Election Study 2014, this article focuses on workers’ EU political alignments during the Great Recession. It deals with two research questions. First, how does the attitude of (manual) workers towards the EU compare to that of the middle and upper classes in the aftermath of the Great Recession? Second, when it comes to workers’ support for the EU, are there systematic differences between countries affected by the crisis? The article finds that, on the one hand, in terms of patterns of workers’ EU political alignments, there are no systematic differences between countries affected to varying degrees by the Great Recession. On the other hand, workers still feel fundamentally detached from the EU, especially when it comes to the manual workers. However, high levels of generalised detachment from the EU are not clearly translated into preferences for Eurosceptic parties, since there are high levels of vote fragmentation.

• Jornal de Notícias
• Penacova Actual
• Novum Canal
• A Nação – SAPO
• Mais Educativa
• Public presentation (video, ANAM)

• Observador

This chapter explores youth political representation in Portugal, focusing on how the election of young adults has evolved across different institutions and government levels. It argues that national and executive positions present greater barriers to youth representation compared to local and legislative roles. Using three data sources, the study reveals a decline in youth representation over time. Young adults are more represented in legislative bodies, especially at the subnational level, but remain underrepresented in higher offices. The study also shows that patterns of youth representation vary across parties and regions. Radical left parties challenge the idea that lower-level offices are steppingstones for young politicians. Youth representation is more common in less populated interior regions than in urban coastal areas. These findings suggest that factors like incumbency advantage, electoral rules, political competition, and intra-party dynamics shape access to office and influence candidate recruitment. The chapter contributes to broader debates on whether decentralization fosters descriptive representation.

This chapter puts the European and Euro-Atlantic integration of the Balkans into the spotlight and further analyzes the reactions from Russia. This integrative process is a relevant intention, especially after the revolutionary changes of the 1990s and the collapse of the communist bloc. Literature is scarce, lacks an integrated approach, and barely addresses the topic from a comparative perspective. This research seeks to fill this gap through an empirical, systematic, and comparative analysis of the integration and disintegration processes across the region. The argument is that the integration is asymmetric, both between the two international organizations and between the two sub-regions, and that Russian investment decreases as integration goes forward. Findings highlight the complex interactions and interdependencies of the three mutually exclusive processes: the integration into the EU and NATO, the internal fragmentation of the region, and a transformation in the relationship with Russia when chasing the enlargement into these structures.

• Público
• Rádio Renascença
• IPAM
• Ecclesia

Party members hold a monopoly over leadership selection in most democracies, yet little is known about how they make these choices. Given that members—particularly those in youth wings—are often portrayed as more ideologically extreme than party elites, democratizing leadership selection may push parties away from the median voter. I field a conjoint survey experiment with more than 5,400 party and youth wing members in Portugal to investigate the extent to which members are willing to trade policy proximity for electoral viability when selecting party leaders. Results show that members anchor their preferences in policy proximity, even at potential electoral costs. However, they tolerate moderate policy divergence when candidates offer clear electoral advantages. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, youth wing members behave much like their senior counterparts, challenging theories that youth wings act as radicalizing forces within parties. Moreover, ideological extremism only modestly strengthen the weight of policy congruence, while issue salience and motivations for joining the party do not condition their choices. These findings illuminate the micro-foundations of intra-party democracy, showing that grassroots preferences strike a balance between principle and pragmatism. They nuance expectations about the radicalizing effects of democratizing leadership selection and carry broader implications for theories of party competition, intra-party democracy, and youth wings.