The deep roots of the Carnation Revolution: 150 years of military interventionism in Portugal

The military coup on 25 April 1974 initiated the Carnation Revolution that put an end to the New State, the longest-lasting authoritarian regime in twentieth-century Europe. There are several alternative explanations about what caused such a process of regime substitution in Portugal. This article focuses on one of them: military discontent and participation in politics. It analyses the history of civil-military relations from the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars until the demise of the New State. It shows that the attitude of the military in 1974 was not merely conjunctural and that the tendency to intervene in politics was entrenched in the armed forces since the fall of the ancien régime. Although the nature and intensity of its participation in state affairs evolved throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Portuguese military never completely accepted civilian supremacy. Military interventionism was nurtured by political polarization, institutional weakness, and disagreements over foreign policy, the use of the armed forces against internal enemies and the deficient equipment and preparation of the troops. Periods of active involvement in politics alternated with others in which interventionism remained latent

From chasing populists to deconstructing populism: a new multidimensional approach to understanding and comparing populism

This paper challenges some widespread theoretical assumptions and practices in the study of populism and proposes a new multidimensional approach to generate and analyse data on this latent construct. Rather than focusing on categorising subjects as populists or not, it recommends reaching a better understanding of what populism is, the salience and relative weight of its attributes and how they interact creating an inner populist logic. Despite the increasing media and academic attention, historical discrepancies in how to conceptualise and operationalise populism have hindered cumulative progress in the literature. Initially most efforts were devoted to the study of specific movements, without a clear comparative angle, and the concept of populism was often conflated with that of nationalism. When the literature started to pay more attention to the analysis of the attributes associated with populism serious disagreements emerged concerning its true essence. Populism has been conceptualised as an ideology, a cynical strategy, a performative style and a discursive logic of articulation. The disputes between these competing interpretations have arguably slowed down the generation of comparative data. Although this article is meant to be a critique of the current state of the field and a call to make it pivot into a slightly different direction, it does not adopt an iconoclast stance and largely tries to reconcile the different existing research traditions – ideational, discursive, performative and strategic. It shows that their efforts are to a great extent complementary but mostly operating on different rungs of the ladder of abstraction. This paper argues that shifting from minimal definitions into a multidimensional approach may stimulate the generation of comparative data on a wider range of attributes and facilitate the identification of degrees and varieties within populism. This paper develops a new analytical framework which deconstructs populism into five dimensions: (1) depiction of the polity, (2) morality, (3) construction of society, (4) sovereignty and (5) leadership. These dimensions, that synthesise the most influential conceptualisations of populism, are empirically and theoretically interconnected and encompass ideational, discursive and performative attributes suggested in the literature. These dimensions are in turn composed of lower order attributes forming a multilayered network structure. This multidimensional framework provides a heuristic template that can be adapted and operationalised in diverse ways depending on the hypotheses, type of data and subjects of the analysis. Some examples of how to turn these dimensions into variables to capture supply‐ and demand‐side populism are introduced. Future empirical research could help map and better understand the network of interactions and intersections among these dimensions and attributes. This could be the key to settle some of the current conceptual debates about populism and its varieties

The Pegasus spyware scandal: a critical review of Citizen Lab's "CatalanGate"

This document dissects the report “CatalanGate: Extensive Mercenary Spyware Operation against Catalans Using Pegasus and Candiru”, published on 18 April 2022, by Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, and reveals a series of serious methodological and ethical issues that severely undermine its value as evidentiary basis for parliamentary committees and court trials. This critical review shows that Citizen Lab’s research design, fieldwork, and reporting of findings in the “CatalanGate” report clash with commonly accepted norms of academic research conduct and integrity. The variety and gravity of the pitfalls discovered suggest that Citizen Lab and the political organisations that collaborated with them in the elaboration of the report may have tried to purposefully induce a strong political bias to shape public opinion and achieve strong media impact. This critical review recommends the University of Toronto to launch an independent investigation on this report and to retract its publication. The CatalanGate report cannot be considered a rigorous academic work. It breaches most academic research conventions and does not respect the protocols and principles of digital forensic investigation. It appears to have been designed and conducted with the purpose of becoming a political instrument for Catalan nationalists, feeding evidence for lawsuits that both Apple and secessionist parties were planning, and attempting to justify ex-post the nullity of several trials that had taken place after the unilateral secession attempt in October 2017 —based on the pretended illegal monitoring of lawyers by the Spanish authorities at the time these trials took place—. As such, it could be considered as a key element in a disinformation campaign. It is beyond the scope of this review to assess whether Spain spied —legally or illegally— on some of the participants in the investigation or if Pegasus was the spyware of choice. This review shows, however, that the CatalanGate report does not meet the minimal requisites to be used as evidentiary basis for either legal procedures or parliamentary committees of enquiry. An independent investigation for research misconduct is expected in cases as serious as this one. Any parliamentary committee or court of justice investigating CatalanGate should request independent forensic experts —without connections to Citizen Lab or Amnesty Tech— to reproduce the analyses and assess their validity and reliability. It is important to rule out false positives as well as to identify any potential alterations or fabrications of evidence, such as manufactured positive results, taking advantage of the absence of a chain of custody of evidence in this investigation. The lack of checks on the actions of internet security and privacy watchdogs, such as Citizen Lab, and their potential “capture” by Big Tech corporations and partisan political groups should be a source of concern for the European Union. Citizen Lab is right to demand public accountability and transparency from European Member states, but it is also important that they also adhere to these same principles and that accusations against governments do not drive attention away from responsibilities and challenges incurred by Big Tech corporations regarding internet security

Civilian control of the military in Portugal and Spain: a policy instruments approach

Despite their economic, political and cultural similarities, Portugal and Spain experienced different trajectories of civil-military relations during the twentieth century. After having handed power over to a civilian dictator, Salazar, the Portuguese military eventually caused the downfall of his authoritarian Estado Novo regime and led the transition to democracy. In contrast, in Spain the military, which had helped Franco to defeat the Republic in 1939 remained loyal to the dictatorship’s principles and, after his death, obstructed the democratisation process. This research sheds light on these different patterns by comparing the policy instruments that governments used to control the military throughout Portuguese and Spanish dictatorships and transitions to democracy. First, it applies Christopher Hood’s (1983) ‘NATO’ (nodality, authority, treasure and organisation) framework for the study of tools of government in order to identify trajectories and establish comparisons across time and countries. These tools can be considered as the institutions that structure the relationship between the governments and the military. This thesis documents that the tools used in both counties differed considerably and evolved over time and that only from 1982 onwards a process of convergence can be observed. Second, this thesis contrasts two types of neo-institutional explanations for the evolution of tool choice and civil-military relations. One based on historical junctures and path-dependence (historical causes) and the other on the continuous impact of environmental factors (constant causes). is research demonstrates that both approaches are largely intertwined and to a great extent become complementary and necessary to capture complexity in tool choice. In sum, this thesis shows that dialogue and exchange between different analytical approaches contributes to a deeper understanding of multifaceted social phenomena. The utilisation of public policy analytical frameworks, such as the NATO scheme and neoinstitutionalism, provides a new angle on the evolution of civil-military relations in Portugal and Spain

Borders, exclusion, and the populist radical right ‘meta-us’

Most analyses of populism emphasise the divide that populist parties establish between ‘the people’ and a corrupt ‘other’. Drawing on a new study, José Javier Olivas Osuna argues that this construction of boundaries and borders between people is far less binary than is commonly recognised. His research suggests that populist parties frequently blur boundaries depending on the context, allowing them to create a ‘meta-us’ that acts as a common front against perceived threats

Populism analytical tools to unearth the roots of Euroscepticism

Populist leaders around the globe magnify pre-existing frustrations and dramatise crises to erode confidence in elites and institutions. They adapt their othering and blame attribution discourses to specific geographical realities to take advantage of local problems and prejudices. Most Eurosceptic parties apply a similar populist logic of articulation simplifying political problems, morally delegitimising their political adversaries and supranational institutions, appealing to an idealised and somewhat homogeneous notion of society, as well as presenting popular sovereignty as threatened by Brussels and mainstream parties. Populism literature has developed theories and measurement tools that are very useful to explain the emergence of Eurosceptic movements and to what extent their narratives resonate with citizen’s pre-existing attitudes and/or contribute to shaping them. This paper shows the value of using populism as an epistemic framework to analyse Euroscepticism and understand how parties tailor their messages (supply-side) to trigger specific beliefs and behaviours (demand-side) in the inhabitants of different geographic contexts

COVID-19: A Political Virus? VOX’s Populist Discourse in Times of Crisis

Spain has been one of the hardest hit countries by the COVID-19 pandemic, and this crisis presented a window of opportunity for VOX, as it has for other far right parties, to raise its visibility as opposition force. This paper investigates whether the discourse of VOX has evolved during the pandemic and affected the political dynamics in Spain. This article proposes a new multidimensional strategy to measure the degree of populism in political communications, via quantitative and qualitative content analysis. It dissects the parliamentary speeches of the leader of VOX, Santiago Abascal, in the debates for the approval and extension of the “state of alarm” to fight against COVID-19 between March and June 2020. In order to assess the changes and relative intensity of populist features in Abascal’s parliamentary speeches we compared them with his speech during Pedro Sánchez’s investiture session as the Spanish President of the Government, in January 2020, and VOX’s latest political manifestos—2019 European and Spanish General Elections—, as well as with speeches of the representatives of the five main parties and coalitions during the COVID-19 debates in the Spanish Congress.Our paper shows that populists’ discourses are context-dependent and that their performances are not only shaped by crisis but also constitutive of crisis. The density of populist references in Abascal’s speeches grew steadily during the period analysed. Morality and antagonism overshadowed sovereignty and society as key populist attributes, and the tone of the discourse became increasingly hyperbolic. Moreover, Abascal’s discursive performances had a sort of contagion effect in other parties in the parliamentary sessions studied. People’s Party (Partido Popular–PP) leader Pablo Casado chose to follow VOX and harshly criticized the government, meanwhile the discourses of the speakers of Together We Can (Unidas Podemos–UP) and Catalan Republican Left (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya–ERC), adopted a demonizing rhetoric against VOX and PP also grounded on a populist logic of articulation. This polarizing dynamic between competing Manichean discourses contributed to reinforce the sense of crisis by adding a political dimension to the already existing health and economic problems

The profiteers of fear? Right-wing populism and the COVID-19 crisis in Europe: Spain

Spain has been one of the countries hardest hit by the Covid-19 crisis in terms of both the number of victims and the economic impact. Thus, on March 13, 2020 the government of Pedro Sánchez decreed a state of alarm, giving way to one of the most restrictive confinements in Europe. Meanwhile, the Spanish right-wing party VOX has clashed hard with the government during the Covid-19 crisis and even filled a no-confidence motion last October, 21st 2020. The party has also encouraged several protests against lockdown last May and October. This study aims to analyse VOX’s behaviour during the Covid-19 crisis and see to what extent it has taken advantage (or not) of the crisis. As VOX is a quite recent political party, the paper comes back on VOX’s trajectory from its foundation in 2013 to 2018/2019, when it gets parliamentary representation. It then focuses on VOX’s actions and discourse, at the Congress and other arena. Having positioned themselves as the radical opposition to Pedro Sánchez’s government during the first wave, where it is assumed that all parties will muck in together, does not seem to have damaged them yet. However, it does not seem as if they have benefited from the situation, at least not in the short term

Recalibrating populism measurement tools: methodological inconsistencies and challenges to our understanding of the relationship between the supply- and demand-side of populism

The analysis of the congruence between the demand- and supply-side of populism is key to understand the relationship between citizens and populist parties, and to what extent this is mainly a “pull” or “push” phenomenon. Although the study of populism has experienced an unprecedented growth across social sciences during the last decade, research directly addressing this connection remains scarce. Moreover, most existing tools used to measure populism have not been created paying much consideration to their compatibility with those applied in the other side of this demand supply divide. This article critically revisits the influential Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) Module 5 dataset to illustrate shortcomings regarding current efforts to measure the demand- and supply-sides of populism. We show that according to CSES data the, often presumed, correspondence between “populist” attitudes and likelihood of voting for “populist parties” is only partial and country specific. But more importantly, we identify three main potential sources of such mismatch linked to instrumental issues: (i) problems with the choice, design and operationalization of attitudinal survey items; (ii) problems in the assessment of parties’ populism; and (iii) instrument biases that make them more elective with some varieties of populism than with others. These methodological limitations are hindering our ability to settle longstanding theoretical debates concerning the correspondence between the demand- and supply-side, the relative centrality of attributes, and varieties of populism. Therefore, we invite scholars working in this field to update existing measurement tools, or develop new ones, considering the multidimensionality of this latent construct, the diversity of movements, and the need to apply consistent criteria and operationalization techniques when assessing degrees of populism in citizens and parties

COVID-19: a political virus? VOX’s populist discourse in times of crisis

Spain has been one of the hardest hit countries by the COVID-19 pandemic, and this crisis presented a window of opportunity for VOX, as it has for other far right parties, to raise its visibility as opposition force. This paper investigates whether the discourse of VOX has evolved during the pandemic and affected the political dynamics in Spain. This article proposes a new multidimensional strategy to measure the degree of populism in political communications, via quantitative and qualitative content analysis. It dissects the parliamentary speeches of the leader of VOX, Santiago Abascal, in the debates for the approval and extension of the “state of alarm” to fight against COVID-19 between March and June 2020. In order to assess the changes and relative intensity of populist features in Abascal’s parliamentary speeches we compared them with his speech during Pedro Sánchez’s investiture session as the Spanish President of the Government, in January 2020, and VOX’s latest political manifestos—2019 European and Spanish General Elections—, as well as with speeches of the representatives of the five main parties and coalitions during the COVID-19 debates in the Spanish Congress.Our paper shows that populists’ discourses are context-dependent and that their performances are not only shaped by crisis but also constitutive of crisis. The density of populist references in Abascal’s speeches grew steadily during the period analysed. Morality and antagonism overshadowed sovereignty and society as key populist attributes, and the tone of the discourse became increasingly hyperbolic. Moreover, Abascal’s discursive performances had a sort of contagion effect in other parties in the parliamentary sessions studied. People’s Party (Partido Popular–PP) leader Pablo Casado chose to follow VOX and harshly criticized the government, meanwhile the discourses of the speakers of Together We Can (Unidas Podemos–UP) and Catalan Republican Left (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya–ERC), adopted a demonizing rhetoric against VOX and PP also grounded on a populist logic of articulation. This polarizing dynamic between competing Manichean discourses contributed to reinforce the sense of crisis by adding a political dimension to the already existing health and economic problems