Ideology in the campaign programmes of Portuguese political parties: the 2009 European elections

This contribution is focused upon the electoral campaign programme messages of the political parties competing for the 2009 European elections. The contents of the parties‟ electoral programmes reflect their political and ideological importance and serve as a fundamental basis for understanding each parties place and positions concerning their project for developing the State. The importance of the parties‟ electoral programmes is evident from what they reflect, or should reflect, in terms of their political concept of the State in national terms as well as, from a broader political perspective, in European and in international terms. The starting point for this research is the assumption that ideology is a fundamental political category, though its loss of impact and of social and political relevance in Western democratic States, at least since late sixties. This research analysis as a working corpus considers the programmes of the five most representative Portuguese political parties campaigning for the 2009 European Elections. This study is based upon applying content analysis technique to the programme contents of Portuguese political parties (political parties with national Parliamentary representation) for the 2009 European elections and it will focus upon ideology as a central category as well as upon several other key political concepts basic to the programmes being analysed. The expected results will focus upon the importance of ideology and of political values of the principal Portuguese political parties in relation to their proposals, their vision and their projects for the Portuguese State as well as European representation.


Introduction
The 2009 European elections occurred in a very competitive year for Portugal, in electoral terms, as there were three elections during a four month time span, beginning on the 7 th of June (with the European Parliamentary elections) and ending on the 11 th of October (with the local elections). In the meantime Portuguese Parliamentary elections took place on the 27 th of September, 2009 and were themselves impressive, when considering both the number of parties who campaigned, a total of 15 being represented, and also the intensity of the media coverage 1 . The Portuguese electoral system, on a national scale, is based upon two principal sovereign institutions which are the President and Parliament. The Parliamentary elections allow the country"s 308 Councils to be represented at a national Assembly composed of 230 MPs, who also represent Portuguese emigrants both within and outside Europe (4 MPs being assigned to this office). The allocation of the 230 Parliamentary seats is arrived at by applying the Hond"t method, based on a proportional distribution of seats.
The Portuguese electoral law envisages a 13 day period for campaign activities for all types of elections except those for the European Parliament, in which case the period is 12 days. However, most parties begin their political campaigns several weeks, sometimes months, before Election Day.
The first campaign activities aimed at the European Elections in Portugal were less intense and experienced little media coverage in comparison to the Portuguese Parliamentary elections. In the case of these later elections the campaign started at the end of August (the summer holiday period), with several initiatives having been undertaken by the five major political parties. In the case of the European elections the political campaign message wasn"t clearly autonomous, as would be the case in two further successive elections. The length of the European elections was far more visible in terms of the so-called pre-campaign, about one month before the Election Day.
The national results for the 2009 European Elections were as follows:  the "Europe of Freedom and Democracy" (EFD) (with 31 MEPs) 3 . The European system is one of proportional representation and follows the previous of each State, though each State has to have a proportional base whether supported by party lists or by a unique transferable vote system 4 .
Ideology is the key-concept of this research which will be segmented and expressed under several categories constructed by following either a so called "miles" process (Bardin, 1977) or by using previous contributions developed using this technique applied to political purposes and similar bodies of analysis (Espírito Santo, 2008). Semantically next to the key-concept of "ideology" the categories "socio-political values" and "political values" were also taken into consideration and constructed based upon previous research with a common methodological basis and applied to similar political propaganda materials (Espírito Santo, 2008). The category socio-political values includes basic key ideas that do not have a direct ideological connotation and are widely used whether in social or in political terms as basic concepts that support the functions and structures of society (eg. youth, confidence, justice, solidarity and so on). What is meant in relation to the political values is a range of expressions that symbolically have been used in political terms by parties or political agents and that are directly or indirectly connected to a broader and more national vision of how the State functions (eg. Equality, nationalism and national cohesion, stability, democracy and so on). Ideology as a category includes all the expressions that indicate a doctrinarian position in political terms that can be sufficiently distinctive among the ideological quadrants several various parties (eg. Right, left, socialism, conservatism, liberalism and neoliberalism).
Validity is in its essence achieved by a clear demonstration of the necessary steps to undertake this research (Bringberg, McGrawth, 1985). The validity of the present methodological research process was assured throughout the various phases of the categories and the indicators and the means in which they were constructed, essentially by exposing clearly concrete hypothesis that would lead the way of the research (see below). This was achieved by assuring that an exhaustive approach was taken when constructing the categories and the indicators in order to assure that the results obtained would be both redundant and adequate either to serve the aims of the research or of the characteristics of the materials. The correspondent indicators of those three categories being considered were constructed considering a criterion of mutual exhaustiveness as well as by making the greatest effort to represent both the political sense and the prevalent message of each of the items considered in the body of analysis used as a basis of this research. The category indicators can be seen below in table 3. For obvious reasons an indicator known as "Europe" was not included in the results analysis as its use was self-evident within the analysed political messages which, as previously mentioned, were directed towards the European campaign elections.
Some new indicators were added after taking into consideration the previous research quoted (Espírito Santo, 2008), referred to above, and were applied to national political propaganda materials which included "security", "equality", "conservadorism", "liberalism and neoliberalism". These key words allowed for concrete definitions of the "political" and "ideological" value categories and clearly contributed in showing a more defined position in terms of the political vision of the parties competing for the European elections in order to capture its electorate.
The analyses segments which were taken into account were "word" and "issue" and "presence" was considered as a registration unit. Frequency, although usually found in content analysis research has not been used here. The reason why frequency has been adopted in this research is that even though the body of analysis extends, in some cases, to several pages it would seldom reflect redundancy in terms of key words or issues.

Presentation and discussion
Political programmes are among the most important political sources of information for a significant part of electors, which has been seen concerning the European elections (Cayrol, 1989). It means that the final decision to vote can be taken in relation to the contents of a political programme.
This point is particularly relevant if we especially consider the role of the campaign and the publicity of the political programmes for the Parliament elections as an important element in appealing for greater proximity between European institutions and their citizens, moreover when considering the traditional low electoral turnout in Parliamentary elections.
The political programmes analysed differed greatly from one another in terms of general shape and form with regard to both the number of pages and their image content. The PPD/PSD political programme entitled "For the National Interest -A European Contract with the Portuguese People" which was part of the slogan "Politics of Truth" was the shortest in length (four pages) and the last to come under public opinion. Its political position generally outlined in its first line the need for national interest and national structural as political priorities. The PS programme was the longest (at 32 pages) of the five analysed and was also attractive in terms of visual quality but overly detailed and too long. It was titled "The people first -a New Direction for Europe". It is important to note that the PS did not win these elections, finishing only second. This was very much due to being both the party in Government that was naturally punished but also due to what we consider the effect of not having an appealing campaign leader. The leader (a former PCP party supporter and activist) performed poorly during the campaign (some incidents also occurred in relation to this head party list). Its position has generally been positive and pro-Europe. The BE programme called "Electoral compromise" was poor in visual terms and took up 14 pages. The political European position and tone which it adopted was critical of the European basis of the project. The PCP-PEV programme, 16 pages in length and also poor in visual terms (like the majority of its rivals it"s on line version was poorly structured and was not at all visually attractive). The PCP-PEV was named "PCP Programmatic Declaration". The CDS/PP programme was six pages long and also poor in its graphic presentation. It was called "European Politics, External Affairs and Emigration". Its contents were greatly developed upon the idea of the importance of external affairs as well as international and European issues.  When comparing the two right wing parties it is clear that the PSD used more socio-political and political programmatic message resources than the CDS whose political programme rarely expressed range of typical political or ideological concepts used by the other parties. The usual CDS central idea is "internal security", which was also, naturally, referred in this programme along with the central issue of external affairs along with emigration. The PSD, on the other hand, did not present an ideological programme, considering instead the key issues that were normally featured in the other parties" programmes. Of the left wing parties the most prevalent categories were youth, solidarity, security, democracy, right and left which together with the other indicators seem to indicate not only a somewhat more socio-political but also an "ideological" programme for these parties.
It is also important to stress that the PSD like the PS (the two main contenders) used the key idea of nationalism. However, in the case of the PSD this idea was used contextually as a means of detaching the national interest. For the PS, Europe was a central idea, the basis of the programme message and was presented clearly and positively as well as ideologically to the left.
The PS programme was long and detailed both in terms of concrete measures and concepts.
The PS programme is the most anchored ideologically, using specifically key indicators to cement its positions, such as "right", "left", "socialism" and "conservatism".
Comparing the PSD and the CDS programmes it is clear that these two parties do not evoke similar concerns in relation to European issues, despite belonging to the same European Group

Conclusion
In democracy, political programmes are the starting point for political action and compromise and an important basis for voters when making electoral decisions. Bearing this importance in mind political programmes can make a difference in relation to the understanding of the convergences and differences between the electoral pledges made by the principal contenders. Understanding electoral pledges allows for a better understanding of the State wide, key democratic values for a shorter mandate period, however it is long enough for one to comprehend the State"s priorities in terms of several key concepts and strategies which guide the leading political parties.
This research was focused upon the importance of the electoral message, in programme terms, and was influenced by a methodology based on applying content analysis technique to those political materials. Three basic content analysis categories helped in characterizing the political programme message of each party, which were the socio-political, political and ideological values.
The conclusion is that ideology is still important in terms of a political pledge. However, it is not the fundamental programme issue when compared to the remaining categories. It can be said that ideology is not even the key solution for winning elections, as was demonstrated in the 2009 European elections: the party that carried the shorter and one of the lesser or non-ideological messages was the eventual winner of the Portuguese European Parliament elections. Left wing parties still frequently use ideology as a symbolic, distinctive and pragmatic tool. However, even in the case of these parties the socio-political and political values are competing to provide electoral solutions to the everyday problems of voters. In other words, the solutions presented by the parties based on concrete issues and problems were one of the strategies in the messages used to court electors and were as important as their ideological demarcation, in the case of the left wing parties. In the case of the right wing party"s ideology was not even a consideration, if we observe a set of key, specific and distinctive ideas, and the message was focused upon socio-political and political concerns and symbolic ideas.