The Engineering, Decision and Public Policies lecture held on 4 December was an opportunity for Técnico students to analyse and better understand what leads part of the electorate to vote for radical right-wing and/or populist parties. Pedro Magalhães, a researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences, analysed the growth and the organic nature of these movements in contemporary society, in Abreu Faro Auditorium at Alameda campus.
What explains the slow growth of most European radical right parties and how do you explain the sudden growth in other cases? Do the electorates of these parties vote for them with an ideological background, or do a significant part only do so out of protest? How can these electorates be characterised? Are there common elements in the electorates of different countries? And how can we describe the Portuguese case? These and other questions were answered during the lecture – some of them raised by the political scientist, many others by the students.
Not feeling their interests represented by the democratic system was presented as a key point, particularly when talking about representation in the electoral sense of the term – rural areas, which tend to have a higher number of votes that don’t result in the election of any Member of the Parliament (MP) during the legislative elections, see the radical right have ‘disproportionately high support’. These are “the political consequences of living in ‘places that don’t matter’”, the title chosen by Pedro Magalhães for the lecture, denouncing how the feeling of abandonment of the population in rural areas, typically with lower levels of political trust, can motivate voting for these parties.
Many people in rural areas feel that their interests are not adequately represented by the democratic system, particularly when it comes to electoral representation. These areas often have a significant number of votes that do not lead to the election of any Member of Parliament (MP) during legislative elections. As a result, support for radical right parties tends to be disproportionately high in these regions. This phenomenon is described by Pedro Magalhães in his lecture titled “The Political Consequences of Living in ‘Places That Don’t Matter’.” He emphasizes that the sense of abandonment felt by the rural population—often accompanied by lower levels of political trust—can drive voters toward these radical parties.
The researcher also shared some characteristics often identified by surveys in radical right voters. Men, middle-aged people and voters with secondary education are more likely to vote in this area of the political spectrum. The traits common to populist parties were also emphasised. According to Pedro Magalhães these are structures that dependent on the need to ‘find a guilty’. Using Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde’s expression, these are parties that ‘ask very good questions and have very bad answers to them’.
The Engineering, Decision and Public Policy curricular unit is part of the ‘Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences’, and aims to develop students’ critical thinking about how engineering and decision-support systems—including risk assessment, data analysis, decision analysis, statistical analysis, optimisation, participatory modelling, communication, and scenario planning—can improve political analysis and decision-making in a real context.
The previous lectures held within this context were led by Inês Drumond, vice-president of the Portuguese Securities Market Commission (CMVM), Ana Fontoura Gouveia, former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate, Adalberto Campos Fernandes, former Minister of Health and António Leitão Amaro, current Minister of the Presidency, and Alexandra Leitão, former Minister for Modernisation of the State and Public Administration.
