Abstract
With millions I do inaugurations, and with inauguration I won elections. After 44 years of regional democracy in Madeira, a statement by the former regional premier for almost all of its history Alberto João Jardim is still to be the ruling party winning formula.
The Social-Democratic Party (PSD, Partido Social-Democrata) come into office on Portuguese regions—Azores and Madeira—with the first regional elections of June 1976 and remained in power in Madeira since and ruled in Azores for 20 years until the PS took over the executive in 1996 and which remained in power since them.
In the Spanish Comunidad Autonóma de Canárias, state-wide parties (PSOE, Partido Socialista Obrero Español; CDS, Centro Democratico y Social and AP/PP, Alianza Popular/Partido Popular) became dominant during the two decades of democracy (1983–1995) until the Coalición Canaria (regionalist party) come into office in 1995 (in a coalition with PP), which lasted until 2015. These cases raise the question: Why does political alternation occurs in some political systems and not in others?
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Notes
- 1.
Com milhões faço inaugurações, e com inaugurações, ganho eleições (former Madeira’ regional premier, Alberto João Jardim), Público, 27 January 2009.
- 2.
‘Region’ is a contested concept (Keating, 1998). For research purposes I follow the (minimal) definition proposed by Marks et al. which considers ‘region’ to be “a coherent territorial entity situated between the local and the national levels which has a capacity for authoritative decision-making” (2008, p. 113).
- 3.
Self-rule is operationalized through four dimensions: institutional depth; policy scope; fiscal autonomy and representation. Shared rule is operationalized by law-making; executive control; fiscal control and constitutional reform (Hooghe et al., 2010).
- 4.
The regional studies tend to focus on the ‘usual suspects’ such as Catalonia and the Basque Country in Spain and Scotland and Wales in the United Kingdom.
- 5.
The assumption that the nation-state is the obvious focus for social science analysis.
- 6.
Gaspar Frutuoso nicknamed Atlantic islands (Azores, Madeira, Canary Islands and the Cape Verde) in the XVI century as Ilhas Afortunadas (Saudades da Terra, 1873).
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Ruel, T. (2021). Setting the Scene: Introduction. In: Political Alternation in the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands. Palgrave Studies in Sub-National Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53840-8_1
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