Abstract
This is the chapter where I introduce the Portuguese case. Here, I offer a broader characterisation of the country’s political system, mainly focusing on organisational aspects of the relationship between parliament and government, as this is relevant to the testing of my formal model. Not only does this chapter set the tone for the database construction and respective empirics, but it also addresses other points like the constitutional evolution of the country, its parliamentary or semi-presidential system setting, and the main political actors’ legislative powers. All these elements are relevant for the strategic considerations raised in this book.
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Notes
- 1.
The Council of Revolution was a military body installed shortly after the Carnation Revolution and it had powers that constrained other political institutions also being incorporated in the Constitution of 1976. It is because of these strong institutional differences between 1976 and 1982 that my dataset and respective empirical analysis starts when the first reform is over and the Council of Revolution is officially extinguished.
- 2.
For more complete information about the political systems of Azores and Madeira see Ruel [249].
- 3.
For more information about the Constitutional Reforms see the website of the Portuguese parliament http://www.parlamento.pt/RevisoesConstitucionais/Paginas/default.aspx and Miranda [196, 181 and ff.].
- 4.
They have to be approved by final global voting of an absolute majority of MPs; if vetoed, they can be overcome and the legislation approved by a majority of two-thirds of MPs. There are also other types of legislation that are not central for the reasoning of this book but are addressed in the section about the data.
- 5.
The literature that conceptualises the term government is vast and diverse, and some of these writings have previously been referred to in this book. However, government in Portugal is defined as a collective organ that executes political power within the state as a sovereign institution, according to the Constitution. According to Articles 110 and 182 of the CPR [62], the government is the institution responsible for the general running of the state and the principal agent of its public administration. To access more detailed information about the Portuguese government’s competencies, powers and obligations, see Calca [38].
- 6.
For more details about the constitutional attributes of the government see Calca [38].
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
On the political system and respective revision see Freire et al. [100].
- 11.
For more on the phases and the administrative procedure of the parliament see an in-depth analysis in Miranda [196, 262 and ff.].
- 12.
For more in-depth information about the competencies of the Portuguese parliament see Freire et al. [98] and Leston-Bandeira (2004).
- 13.
- 14.
These characteristics are basic features of presidential and semi-presidential systems, for instance as seen in Duverger [78], Elgie [81], Lijphart [161], Sartori [252]. Nevertheless, because in Portugal the president co-exists with the prime minister and she is accountable to parliament, especially regarding legislative procedures, we should classify the system as parliamentary. The effective power of the president is not unanimously interpreted by academics as there is some discretion in the way the president may use her formal powers, more specifically her power to dissolve the parliament, and consequently to dismiss the prime minister. Nevertheless this cannot be a warning that can always be in use as this would empty her claims and work as a hollow threat. Thus, for a vast majority of legislative proposals, given the very low numbers of political vetoes from the president, the main actors involved are the government and the parliament. Given that the prime minister is accountable to the parliament and the president, it is the parliament that unequivocally has major power over the future of the government.
- 15.
The veto power that the Portuguese president has is different to the power of sanctioning. It reflects the ability to prevent a given legislative initiative coming into force, in a Montesquieu manner, and not a power to decide. The president cannot contribute to the content of an initiative, or decide on its making. Her veto is a refusal, an obstacle to the legislation, and supervision regarding the actions of another institutional body, the government or the parliament. For more details about possible veto configurations see Miranda [196, 303 and ff.].
- 16.
While describing semi-presidential systems, Duverger underlines three necessary conditions in order to classify a given country: (a) the president must be elected by universal suffrage; (b) the president must have relevant political powers; and (c) the president must co-exist with the prime minister and, in general, with the cabinet that has the executive power, being accountable to parliament [78, 42].
- 17.
For a deeper look at the historical reasons for the choice of this system see Freire and Costa Pinto [99, 47 and ff.].
- 18.
About the party-system in Portugal see more detailed information in Jalali [132].
- 19.
For a more in-depth discussion about the definition of a law, conceptualisation, history and philosophical perspectives see Miranda [196, 132 and ff.].
- 20.
In fact, there are three possibilities concerning the body where a particular legislative initiative may be initiated, but in this book I do not address the autonomous regions’ legislative capacity because it does not incorporate governmental (as national government) initiatives, but, as I have already stated, these regions also have legislative power.
- 21.
There is a vast body of literature on coalitions that may be of interest when looking at some micro-foundations of governmental decision-making. Very recently an important contribution systematising coalition government in Western Europe may be found in Bergman et al. [25] based on a previous book of Mülller and Strøm [208].
- 22.
The data analysis conducted in this book is counted from 1982 until 2009, when the financial crisis hit the country and new dynamics were established for a while. The decision about the temporal interval was made because for relevant institutional coherence and comparability of actors’ actions given a specific set of powers.
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Calca, P. (2022). Characterisation of the Portuguese Case. In: Executive-Legislative Relations in Parliamentary Systems. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92343-3_4
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