Filipa Raimundo

An Ever-Shadowed Past? Citizens’ Attitudes towards the Dictatorship in Twenty-First Century Portugal

Abstract Several years after the transition to democracy, positive attitudes towards the authoritarian past are still observable in Portugal: the belief that the previous regime had more good things than bad things is expressed by about one-fifth of the Portuguese. What explains this nostalgic sentiment? Are factors such as socialisation under the regime, party identification or religiosity more important than satisfaction with democracy and the state of the economy? The empirical analysis suggests that the relevance of these factors varies considerably, but socialisation phases lead to different stances on the past both in routine times and in times of economic crisis.

Strategic silence as a third way. Political parties and transitional justice

How do political parties react to transitional justice (TJ) processes? Do they always have to choose between supporting and rejecting the punishment of the outgoing elite and their collaborators? While Huntington emphasized the existence of two major approaches to TJ – for and against – this article argues there is a third way that has been relatively understudied – strategic silence. It will be argued that, under certain conditions, political calculations can lead to the adoption of silence as a deliberate strategy by certain political actors in TJ processes. Focusing on the Portuguese case (1974–1976), the article explores why, and under what conditions, silence is perceived as the best strategy in dealing with the past following the defeat or breakdown of an authoritarian regime.

Dealing with the Past in Central and Southern European Democracies: Comparing Spain and Poland

This chapter intends to contribute to a better understanding of the reasons why the issues of the authoritarian past remain present and divisive in some consolidated democracies. The starting point is the growing consensus around the idea that, with time, the ‘politics of the past’ becomes instrumentalized as part of the ‘politics of the present’ (Welsh, 1996; Elster, 2004; Williams, Fowler and Szczerbiak, 2005; Wustenberg and Art, 2008). The goal of the chapter is to examine, by focusing on two European democracies – Poland and Spain, to what extent political elites perceive the issues of the past as being able to provide political gains.

Party–interest group relations in Portugal: Organizational linkages and party strategies (2008–2015)

Abstract This paper investigates the relations Portuguese parties establish with interest and societal groups. The analysis presents the organizational linkages on which parties rely for establishing connections and describes the different strategies implemented towards the interest and societal groups. The parties analysed vary in terms of ideology, organizational model and institutional position (governing vis-a-vis opposition parties). A special focus is set on the 2008–2015 period that comprises the outbreak of the economic crisis and the austerity policies implemented by the right-wing government between 2011 and 2015.

Ordens honoríficas e semipresidencialismo: a Ordem da Liberdade e os Presidentes da República Portuguesa (1976-2017)

This article analyses the way in which the Presidents of the Portuguese Republic have been using the Order of Freedom, an honorific order created after the break down of the dictator ship to honor those who fought for freedom and democracy, based on the 501 decorations awarded between 1977 and July 2017. The question that this article ask sis: Is the Order of Freedom used as a political reward or merely symbolically? The results show that the symbolic dimension prevails but the analysis of the profile of the decorated and of the presidential mandates reveals patterns that do not allow us to abandon the hypothesis of the instrumentalization of the order.

Violence, Repression and Terror in Mass Dictatorships: A View from the European Margins

Repression remains the core feature of dictatorships, and fear, terror, violence, intimidation and surveillance are at the core of the systems of political domination and maintenance of modern dictatorships. Nevertheless, if repression is a structural dimension of mass dictatorships, “political” and\or “state terror,” while always potentially present, is not when we define the latter as the arbitrary extermination of individuals by organs of political authority or groups (Dallin 1970, p. 1).