Portugal's Plight: The Role of Social Democracy

Portugal has never quite managed to regain the influence it once had on the international economic scene when it parlayed Vasco da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India into a global trading empire. Yet by late 2010 the small Iberian nation had come to be seen around the world as a crucial...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The independent review (Oakland, Calif.) Calif.), 2011-12, Vol.16 (3), p.325
Main Author: Bragues, George
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Budget deficits
Democracy
Economic crisis
Eurozone
GDP
Gross Domestic Product
Politics
Social democracy
Sovereign debt
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Summary:Portugal has never quite managed to regain the influence it once had on the international economic scene when it parlayed Vasco da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India into a global trading empire. Yet by late 2010 the small Iberian nation had come to be seen around the world as a crucial corridor through which, if the so-called bond vigilantes were to pass, the euro sovereign debt crisis would imperil Spain, a much bigger economy whose distress might spell the end of European currency union. If the trouble plaguing the euro zone were ever going to stop, many had come to the conclusion that it had to do so in Portugal. Portugal's plight is a warning to other Western industrialized nations, all of which have welfare states of one extent or another to finance. Portugal is among the first to succumb to this challenge only because it expanded its social democracy relatively quickly and had a smaller capital accumulation from which to draw resources for the delivery of public services.
ISSN:1086-1653
2169-3420