Government Of Portugal Research Articles

Improving COVID-19 contact tracing and testing of exposed individuals in Cameroon using digital health technology: a cluster randomised trial

Contact tracing was described as a key strategy to contribute to controlling the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome of Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) but implementing it can be a challenge. Digitalisation of contact tracing is among the proposed solutions being explored in sub-Saharan African settings. We assessed the effectiveness of a digital tool to expand SARS-CoV-2 testing in exposed individuals in Cameroon. We conducted a cluster-randomised (1:1) trial in eight health districts, including 22 facilities and SARS-CoV-2 testing units, randomly assigned to a digital (intervention) or standard (control) contact tracing approach. The intervention consisted of a contact tracing module added to the digital platform "Mamal PRO" used for monitoring and coordination of Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic response in Cameroon. The primary outcome was the proportion of contacts declared by SAR-CoV-2 index patients who were successfully traced and tested for SARS-CoV-2 evaluated with a Poisson regression model with cluster adjustment. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT05684887). Between October 18, 2022, and March 31, 2023, we enrolled 164 index patients in the intervention arm and 149 in the control arm, who identified 854 and 849 contacts, respectively. In the intervention arm, 93.8% (801/854) of identified contacts were successfully reached by the tracing unit versus 54.5% (463/849) in the control arm. The intervention significantly increased the likelihood of successfully tracing contacts (adjusted relative risks (RR) 1.72 [95% CI: 1.00-2.95], p=0.049). The median (interquartile range, IQR) time to successfully tracing contacts was 0 days [IQR: 0, 1] in the intervention and 1 day [IQR: 0, 2] in the control arm. In the intervention arm, 21.3% (182/854) of identified contacts received SARS-CoV-2 testing compared to 14.5% (123/849) in the control arm (adjusted RR 1.47 [95% CI: 0.44-4.90], p=0.530). Digitalising the contact tracing process improved exposure notification and facilitated the tracing of a greater number of contacts of individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 in resource-limited settings. The study was funded by FIND, United Kingdom (FCDO 40105983), Switzerland (81066910), Netherlands (SDD 4000004160), Canada (DFATD 7429348), The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (FIND-ACT-A DX PARTNERSHIP 20.08.2020), The Rockefeller Foundation (2020 HTH 059), Germany (BMZ Covid-19 Diagnostic and Surveillance Response 27.07.2021), Australia (DFAT 76442), Kuwait (M239/2020), The Government of Portugal and Partners (ANF, BCP, CGF, APIFARMA) and The BlackRock Foundation (Grant Agreement as of April 20, 2022).

Integration of sustainability in the curricula of public higher education institutions in Portugal: do strategic plans and self-report align?

PurposeThis study aims to explore the alignment between strategic plans of the Portuguese public higher education institutions (HEIs) and their perception of the integration of sustainability in education and curricula.Design/methodology/approachThe strategic plans from 15 institutions were selected for content analysis; data about the integration of sustainability in education and curricula, from these HEI, were collected with an online questionnaire (self-report survey). Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed.FindingsStrategic plans of the Portuguese public HEIs seem to not be sufficiently aligned with self-assessment integration of sustainability in education and curricula.Research limitations/implicationsThe classifications used in the content analysis were constructed and revised by the authors to reduce coder interpretation issues and subsequent bias in the results. However, some subjectivity could remain. The analysis of strategic plans and self-report surveys answered by top management, or a technician, does not assess the practices and sustainability implementation in education and curricula.Practical implicationsThis study allows the self-report of already-implemented practices to be compared to the planned strategy of HEI governance in Portugal as stated in their strategic plans.Originality/valueAn analysis and respective insights on the lack of connection between strategic planning and self-report practices about sustainability implementation, using Portugal as a case study.

Economic forecasts and executive approval

ABSTRACT This research note investigates how different sources of economic information affected citizens’ approval of the government in Portugal from 2001 to 2018. It compares the predictive power of the revised and most accurate data on GDP growth with other economic indicators that were available to the public at the time, such as the first estimates of recent growth and the forecasts of future growth. It finds that approval is best predicted by information about forecasted growth for the current year. These results provide further indirect evidence that the state of the economy, as it plays out directly in people’s lives and experiences, may be less consequential for evaluations of the government than the mediated information about it that is conveyed to the public.

The impact of the EU economic governance in Portugal

This article discusses the main changes introduced to the Portuguese labour market following the adoption of the Memorandum of Understanding of 2011. The intent behind the Memorandum's demands was to reduce the costs related to employment contracts, to expand both internal and external flexibility, and to relaunch collective bargaining under a new and more decentralised framework. However, several measures ended up being at odds not only with the Portuguese Constitution, but also with ILO Conventions and the (Revised) European Social Charter. We address the changes to wage policies, working time, employment protection legislation, and collective bargaining, which gave way to a new ‘flexibility-oriented’ labour relations model, characterised by a global reduction of labour protection levels. We argue that not only were these measures unable to fix the problems of the Portuguese labour market, but they also had crippling effects on social rights in general and, most particularly, on workers’ rights. Moreover, despite the overcoming of the economic crisis, as well as the changes to the political scene, the most significant alterations were maintained. This demonstrates that bailout reforms leave their mark, particularly when they correspond to measures previously under discussion and when their implementation is supported by external pressures.

Political Communication on Facebook

The citizens' weakened confidence in politics has encouraged political actors to establish direct communication with them. As social media platforms grow in popularity, political institutions have been using them for more autonomy in public communication. This study analyses the use of Facebook, the most popular social media worldwide, by República Portuguesa, the government of Portugal, and La Moncloa, the government of Spain. First, a literature review on social media use by governments is presented. Then, the results of a manual categorization of a sample of posts published throughout January 2021 are presented. The posts were categorized according to DePaula, Dincelli and Harrison’s (2018) typology of government social media communication, which consists of information provision, input seeking, online dialogue/offline interaction, and symbolic presentation. The article provides an understanding of the use of each governmental party’s Facebook posts as a communication tool.

Policy Networks, Philanthropy, and Education Governance in Portugal: The Raise of Intermediary Actors

This article focuses on an emerging phenomenon in Portugal: the most visible and frequent presence of new collective actors in public policy processes. Often linked to philanthropic foundations, these actors call themselves to influence the educational agenda, and even the educational practices, and are highly dependent on expert knowledge. They are intermediary actors who perform cognitive and social operations that connect ideas, individuals and technical devices involved in policy processes. The article analyses the emergence of these intermediary actors and their attempts to influence and reshape the governance of education, through new political networks. Based on earlier empirical-based research inspired by network ethnography, and grounded on the political sociology of public action, the article presents a proposal for mapping these emerging intermediary actors, according to a) the spaces of collective action they use/create; b) their targets; c) their autonomy in the production of expert knowledge for policy. And depicts two trends related to their agency: the use of a more cognitive (rather than normative) regulation, more intensive and knowledge-based, converging to a new interactive and intuitive ways of knowledge dissemination; an increasingly intertwined regulation, involving several different social worlds, promoting and establishing new policy networks and the spread of the new philanthropy reasoning.

A última guerra pela Colônia do Sacramento (1777)

Em 1774 os portugueses reconquistaram o Rio Grande de São Pedro, que estava na mão dos espanhóis desde 1762, desencadeando uma resposta dos espanhóis que organizaram uma grande ofensiva militar. Sob o comando de D. Pedro de Cevallos, nomeado vice-rei do Rio da Prata, uma frota espanhola tomou a ilha de Santa Catarina e a Colônia do Sacramento em 1777. A mudança do governo em Portugal, com a morte de do rei José I levou a um acordo com a Espanha que resultou num tratado de paz que deteu a ofensiva espanhola e resultou na devolução da ilha de Santa Catarina aos portugueses, porém a Colônia do Sacramento foi definitivamente cedida à corte de Madrid.

Metrics for an accountable energy transition? Legitimating the governance of solar uptake

For recent techno-economic advances in solar energy to enable sustainable energy transformation, society must address institutional inertia and entrenched resistance by powerful stakeholders. Legitimation of power and specific metrics produces institutional authority to govern energy transitions, by reconfiguring accountability relations between situated actors. This article studies how metrics are legitimated and thus analyzes solar energy governance in Portugal. It identifies accountability relations by tracking four practices of legitimation – discursive, bureaucratic, technocratic and financial – in relation to metrics that help perform expertise and authority within changing topographies of power during sectoral transition. The approach unpacks both (i) how metrics modulate the dynamics of shifts and resistance, and (ii) how their insufficient specification privileges a reductive structural understanding of energy sectors. Drawing on expert interviews, desk-based and field observations, the study explicates how up to 2018, solar energy governance in Portugal limited disruptive change, validated incremental change, and left transformative potential untapped.

The effects of amalgamations on voter turnout: Evidence from sub-municipal governments in Portugal

The 2013 territorial reform of sub-municipal units (SMUs) of government in Portugal presents an interesting opportunity to understand the effect of amalgamations on democratic outcomes. Like other reforms of its kind, the Portuguese amalgamation reform was triggered by economic motivations, aimed at improving local services but seeking mostly to reduce the level of public expenditures. Much less relevance was given to the political impacts of territorial consolidation. The aim of this research is to assess the impacts of the Portuguese territorial reform on political participation measured as voter turnout in SMU elections. We use data from five election cycles (2001–2017) to compare turnout levels in amalgamated jurisdictions vis-à-vis the ones that did not amalgamate as a result of the process of territorial reform. The results of this quasi-experimental design indicate that turnout levels after the reform have decreased in the 2013 election and recovered in the 2017 election, but the negative effects were much more pronounced in amalgamated SMUs than in non-amalgamated SMUs.

Medium Theory; or, “The War of the Worlds” at Regular Intervals

This article rethinks media and mediation in light of medium theory. It does so through the analysis of the alarming potential brought by the reenactment of Orson Welles’s “The War of the Worlds” radio broadcast in Portugal in 1958. Locally branded as “A Invasão dos Marcianos” (“The Invasion of the Martians”), the article associates the alarming nature of the broadcast with the structure of fear of an attack from communist Russia in the context of Cold War paranoia under the right-wing regime of Salazar as well as in light of the impending revelation of the third secret of Fátima. Conceiving medium theory as a methodology with which to see through into the elements that constitute the medium as such, this article proposes to reconceptualize media as a distinctive space-time zone, a rhythmic middle, through which to call up associated temporalities of governance in Portugal (and elsewhere) over the course of the twentieth century.

The role of the external auditor in corporate governance: The case of companies listed in the NYSE Euronext Lisbon

This study investigates the effects of the presence of the external auditor on corporate governance in Portugal, in the way listed companies are managed, based on the verification of compliance with the corporate governance regulations of the Securities Market Commission, as well as the transparency of information and the reduction of agency problems, fraud and economic crimes. By comparing government reports of companies listed on NYSE Euronext Lisbon, during several periods and with surveys conducted in the 1st half of 2013 in Portugal to the external auditors responsible for the majority of the legal certification of accounts of companies during 2007 to 2011, a significant direct relationship in the fulfillment of the recommendations of corporate governance and its verification by the external auditor is concluded. Based on multiple regression and multinomial logistic models, it is concluded that a greater involvement of the ROC in complying with corporate governance recommendations, allows for greater transparency of information and a reduction of agency problems, fraud and economic crimes

Os incêndios florestais de 2017 e os mecanismos de regulação na governação do risco em Portugal

O conhecimento e análise das dinâmicas operativas dos processos de governação do risco são condições explicativas fundamentais para o entendimento das opções e orientações que os Estados adotam na prossecução das suas estratégias de segurança. Tendo por base estes pressupostos, discutir-se-ão neste artigo as implicações respeitantes à gestão dos incêndios florestais que, apresentando leituras distintas, e até interpretações diferenciadas nas perceções e representações sociais, assumem cada vez mais uma importância fundamental no quadro global da segurança em proteção civil. Selecionam-se, para o efeito, duas importantes dimensões, caraterizadoras das tipologias teórico-analíticas dos modelos de governação do risco: padrões políticos e cidadania. Assim, apresentar-se-ão, nas suas componentes sociais, as causalidades e as consequências, práticas e simbólicas que, por efeito dos acontecimentos vividos em 2017, têm estado na origem dos mecanismos de reconfiguração das políticas públicas de governação do risco em Portugal.

Think tanks, policy networks and education governance: The rising of new intra-national spaces of policy in Portugal

This article focuses on the role of think tanks in education governance in Portugal, We are interested in contributing to a literature that discusses the emergence of new intra-national spaces of policy, and examines how the actors operating in those spaces work and influence education policy. This article is based on an empirical study conducted by EDULOG, a think tank for education that has been operating since 2015. We mapped EDULOG’s activities, the information generation activities, organizations, and actors connected to EDULOG using a network ethnography and social network analysis. This study shows that a) this organization articulated a network of actors from different sectors, including the academy, business and government agencies; and b) EDULOG acts as a space of social and cognitive intermediation, committed to developing knowledge geared towards policy decision and problem solving.

From Enemies to Allies? Portugal's Carnation Revolution and Czechoslovakia, 1968–1989

This article analyses the relationship between Portugal and Czechoslovakia between 1968 and 1989, with a specific focus on the influence of the Carnation Revolution. This analysis includes the Portuguese communist migration to Czechoslovakia, the contact between the Portuguese and Czechoslovak communists during Portugal's transition process, a diplomatic incident in 1982 and the specific conditions within the Portuguese student community at Czech and Slovak universities. The article also explores the fact that Czechoslovak communists, despite hopes that southern Europe might ‘go socialist’, did in fact very little to support communist forces in Portugal after the collapse of the Caetano regime. Likewise, the post-dictatorial governments in Portugal did little to help Eastern European dissidence. Instead, political players in both countries saw each other much more in terms of economic advantage and realpolitik.

Metamorphoses in politics, entrepreneurial values and health governance in Portugal

O artigo avalia o impacto das atuais estrategias empresariais na governacao em saude a partir de dois principais relatorios de enquadramento das politicas publicas, nomea­damente O Futuro da Saude em Portugal (APAH/ APDH, 2007) e Um Futuro para a Saude: Todos temos um papel a desempenhar (Crisp, 2014), confrontando-os com visoes institucionais obtidas atraves de entrevistas aprofundadas a informantes pri­vilegiados. Com base no projeto de mundializacao da saude ancorada na perspetiva neoliberal de Terceira Via, pretende-se analisar as mudancas programadas nas relacoes sociais de trabalho e do cuidado a saude da populacao portuguesa. Os resultados evi­denciam que as reformas projetadas para o futuro da saude em Portugal ja estao em curso ha pelo menos uma decada, conformando um processo de privatizacao e empre­sarializacao do setor da saude.

Crisis and Education in Southern Europe: The Effects of Austerity and Ideology

Since the mid-1970s, the countries of Southern Europe have been approaching European education patterns. This result can be observed in the positive dynamics and convergence with the rest of Europe. However, despite these visible results, the convergence was more evident up until the outbreak of the crisis, where the overall economic and political conditions also brought changes in policymaking in education to the Southern European countries, both in terms of policy priorities and educational outcomes. Therefore, while economic hardship and austere programs are a common trait in recent years, the changes cannot be directly or simply attributed to economic or financial constraints; these changes are mainly due to different political options endorsed by the governments of Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece. The main empirical sources are the Eurostat and theoecd. Other empirical material relates to national reports produced in the framework of an international project:ecseInternational Report, Educational Challenges in Southern Europe. Equity and efficiency in a time of crisis.

The condition of Portuguese democracy during the Troika’s intervention, 2011–15

Abstract Four main elements characterized Portuguese democracy during the financial bailout by the Troika: first, a government that governed well beyond its 2011 electoral mandate; second, an enormous imbalance in the sacrifices required of citizens (wage earners and retired) and capital; third, powerful delegitimization as a consequence of poor economic and public finance results; fourth, the last of the problems behind Portuguese dissatisfaction with how democracy functioned was, until the 2015 elections, the opposition’s inability to propose alternatives, primarily because the Partido Socialista (PS – Socialist Party) was a weak opposition to the government and until recently the left-wing parties seemed unable to cooperate to create a governmental alternative. What we show here with updated data (2012 and 2014) and specific measures to tap the phenomena is that there are specific elements to the erosion of democratic support and institutional trust as a result of the Troika years and the way austerity policies were imposed by the right-wing government (2011–15), as well as due to the pattern of opposition until the elections of 4 October 2015. The 2015 general election brought about major changes. The resulting minority Socialist Party PS government, supported in parliament by the parties of the radical left – Bloco de Esquerda (BE – Left Bloc), Partido Comunista Português (PCP – Portuguese Communist Party) and Partido Ecologista ‘Os Verdes’ (PEV – Ecology Party ‘The Greens’) – marks a major change with left-wing parties cooperating for the first time in the government of Portugal.

11 ILO Committee on Freedom of Association: Complaint against the Government of Portugal presented by the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers– National Inter-Union Body (CGTP–IN), Case No. 3072, Report in which the Committee Requests to be Kept Informed of Developments, Report No. 375, 11 November 2015

11 ILO Committee on Freedom of Association: Complaint against the Government of Portugal presented by the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers– National Inter-Union Body (CGTP–IN), Case No. 3072, Report in which the Committee Requests to be Kept Informed of Developments, Report No. 375, 11 November 2015

Explanatory factors for the use of the financial report in decision-making: Evidence from Local Government in Portugal

This study aims to identify to what extent certain factors perceived by internal decision-makers (politicians and financial officials) influence the usefulness they consider the information presented in the financial reports of municipalities has for decision-making purposes.It follows a quantitative research approach at a first stage, using a questionnaire. At a second and complementary stage, it uses a qualitative research perspective, with interviews in a small group of municipalities, which might be seen as case studies, in order to explore and understand the (external and internal) contextual factors that determine the usefulness of the financial report in decision-making by internal decision-makers.The main findings show that the pressure of professional organizations and of a national problem (external factors), as well as the lack of knowledge and training on the accounting information system (internal organizational factor) are factors that most influence the usefulness of the financial report for internal decision-making. Qualitative analysis confirms these results, reinforcing a factor relating to a work overload.Two important implications of this study are the following: first, professional bodies and the financial situation in the country; while stimulating informational needs by internal users in the public sector they determine the usefulness they offer to financial reporting for decision-making. Second, the lack of knowledge of the accounting information system, especially by local politicians, is a hindering factor of the usefulness given to financial reporting for internal decision-making. Nowadays, when many countries are considering reforms of public sector accounting in line with the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS), supposedly increasing the sophistication, the level of information and usefulness of financial reporting, such factors must be taken into account.

O processo de implementação da política de coesão europeia em Portugal: o avanço do diálogo político-democrático e as nuances da governação multinível assimétrica

A Política de Coesão Econômica, Social e Territorial (PCEST) da UE responde por cerca de um terço do orçamento do bloco e foi desenhada no sentido de causar impactos socioeconômicos e políticos - aumento da participação democrática no âmbito comunitário. O objetivo do presente trabalho é analisar a influência da política de coesão europeia no tocante à evolução da Governação Multinível em Portugal e em suas regiões. Mais especificamente, procura-se analisar a atuação e a inter-relação entre os diversos atores envolvidos no processo de implementação (UE-DG-Regio, Governo Central, autoridades subnacionais e sociedade civil), seu grau de participação e as diferenças entre as regiões continentais e autônomas portuguesas. São destacados avanços e dificuldades do processo de implementação – no contexto do que foi conceituado como um processo de governança multinível assimétrica.http://dx.doi.org/10.14195/1647-6336_12_3