Visiting Speakers

Pedro Magalhães

Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa
What Are (Semi-)Presidential Elections About?: Electoral Choices Government Losses in the 2006 Portuguese Presidential Election
Tuesday, November 9, 2006 - 4:15 pm - C103 Hesburgh Center

Made possible by Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD), the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and the Department of Political Science

Abstract
The Portuguese presidential election of 2006 represented a major upset for the incumbent Socialist Party (PS). In the March 2005 legislative elections, the PS had obtained 46.4 percent of the valid votes allowing it to form, for the first time in the history of this center-left party, a single-party cabinet supported by an absolute majority in parliament. However, less than one year later, the presidential candidate endorsed by the Socialist Party — Mário Soares, a former party leader, prime minister, and president of the republic — received only 14.3 percent of all valid votes. This paper explores three different potential accounts of this electoral outcome, each based in particular theoretical underpinnings and assumptions about electoral behavior in “less important” elections, such as presidential elections in semi-presidential regimes: “popularity contest”; “second-order” election; and “policy balancing”. On the basis of the results of a two-wave panel survey, several different hypotheses are tested concerning the determinants of vote choices and defections from the government party, and some conclusions are drawn about the potential generalization of findings to presidential elections in similar political systems.

Biography
Pedro Magalhães is a researcher at the Social Sciences Institute of the University of Lisbon, Director of the Center for Public Opinion Polls and Studies of the Catholic University and executive coordinator of the Portuguese Election Study. His research interests are electoral behavior, public opinion, political attitudes and political institutions. He has published books in Portugal and Spain, articles in journals such as Comparative Politics, West European Politics, International Journal of Public Opinion Research and others, and chapters in books published by Routledge, Oxford University Press, Columbia University Press, and others.

Manuel Villaverde Cabral

Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa
The Demise of Liberalism and the Rise of Authoritarianism in Portugal, 1880-1930
Thursday, March 1, 2007 – 4:15 pm – C103 Hesburgh Center

In addition to the above lecture, Manuel Villaverde Cabral participated in the following during his visit to campus:

Classroom visit: “Urban Testimonials”
Classroom visit: “Intensive Beginning Portuguese”
Lunchtime seminar: “The City-Effect on the Exercise of Citizenship: Old and New Modalities in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area”

Made possible by Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD), the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, and the Department of Sociology.

Abstract
The 50 years from 1880 to 1930 have remained until very recently the matrix of Portugal’s political culture, providing the Portuguese public sphere with its rich but constraining pattern of political and intellectual beliefs. It was the intellectual climate of those 50-odd years that presided over the elaboration of Portugal’s modern political identity in both its patriotic republican version and its traditional nationalist one. Hence, the compelling relevance of the period, which I singled out in order to show also that the process whereby Portugal fell under extreme right-wing authoritarianism in the late 1920s is not unlike parallel processes which occurred shortly after World War I in virtually all countries of the European periphery. Such transformation corresponds to the process of regime-change forecast, prior to the War, by the Italian political scientist and elite-theorist, Gaetano Mosca, under the graphic notion of the “twilight of the Liberal State.” In order to show how those processes developed in Portugal, I will deal first with (1) the evolution of the economy during the period; (2) the restructuring of social forces under the impact of economic change; (3) sketch the intellectual climate of the epoch; and (4) attempt to link together these economic, social and intellectual features in a description of their increasingly disruptive impact upon the Portuguese liberal system, both under the Constitutional Monarchy and, after 1910, under Republican rule.

Biography
Prior to his appointment at the Social Sciences Institute, Cabral was the Director of Portugal’s National Library from 1985 to 1990 and Vice Rector of the University of Lisbon (1998–2002). He is currently the chairman of the Academic Board of his Institute. Cabral has published extensively on contemporary Portuguese history and society, and he is a regular contributor to the mainstream media. He is the author of numerous books and edited volumes including his latest monograph Health and Illness in Portugal: A survey of Portuguese social attitudes and patterns of behaviour regarding the National Health System (in Portuguese, 2002). Among his fellowships and appointments, he was a Research Fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford (1976–79), held the Chair of Portuguese History at King’s College, London (1992–95); was a visiting professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison (1986); the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales-Paris (1990) and the Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro-Brazil (2003).

He holds a PhD in history from the University of Sorbonne, Paris.