Who are they? The Parliamentary deputies in Portugal, 11th-13th legislatures. Social and political outline

• Autor(a) principal: Freitas, Judite A. Gonçalves de
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Pittaris, Aristotelis
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10284/8576
• topic: Parliamentary elites; Prosopography; Political representation; Gender representation; Portugal

The study combines the assumptions of the elite’s studies with the dynamics of democratic societies, starting with the empirical collection of data on the Portuguese parliamentary elites from the 11th to the current legislature (13th), with the purpose of building a prosopographic database. The data processing was carried out by legislature, aiming to identify and analyze statistically the relevant quantities of biographic data about the MPs. The study was a cross-sectional survey in which political and sociodemographic issues of the Portuguese deputies where explored and correlated to define the group's profile. In this way, the collected data provided a comparative evaluation of the three legislatures (2009-2011, 2011-2015 and 2015 to present) and created an interrelation between two main analysis dimensions: the sociodemographic one (age, gender representation, educational credentials and occupation) and the political one (parliamentary group, previous held positions (political or party background); career paths – local and / or central power, ex-ministers, number of terms on office). The profile of the members of Parliament as a whole become visible, and the variances marked by electoral processes.