Fueled by new data from the Varieties of Democracy project, Democratic Quality in Southern Europe takes a close look at the democratic trajectories of France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain over the past fifty years. Despite similar beginnings, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain have experienced significant variations in the way their democracies have evolved. Covering ground from the protest movements of the late ’60s and early ’70s to the challenges that resulted from the financial crisis of the Great Recession, editor Tiago Fernandes expertly draws together a collection of essays that look beyond the impact of socioeconomic development in these five countries, exploring innovative and nuanced explanations for their diverging paths. Democratic Quality in Southern Europe combines new data with classical methodologies to create fresh, convincing hypotheses on the development, quality, and depth of democracy in this critical region. Contributors: Tiago Fernandes, Rui Branco, João Cancela, Edna Costa, Pedro Diniz de Sousa, Pedro T. Magalhães, Edalina Rodrigues Sanches, José Santana-Pereira, Tiago Tibúrcio " Democratic Quality in Southern Europe makes a valuable and original contribution to scholarly thinking about the processes of democratization within the region, expertly drawing upon original data from the Varieties of Democracy project.” ―Anthony M. Messina, co-author of Immigration, Security, and the Liberal State “Fernandes and his collaborators provide a sophisticated but accessible blend of argument and evidence explaining political similarities and differences across five polities. Blending historical perspective with mountains of empirical evidence, this collection is a ‘must-read’ for anyone who seeks to understand the varieties of democracy in Southern Europe.” ―Nancy Bermeo, coeditor of Mass Politics in Tough Times Tiago Fernandes is associate professor of political science at the University Institute of Lisbon. He is head of the Varieties of Democracy Regional Center for Southern Europe and was a visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies between 2009 and 2011. He most recently co-authored Memories and Movements: The Legacy of Democratic Transitions in Contemporary Anti-Austerity . In Portugal, the plebiscite, known as referendo , is the only existing legal instrument of direct democracy, having been established following two constitutional revisions in the 1980s. In Portugal, there are no mandatory constitutional referendums, popular initiatives or abrogative referenda. Alongside Greece, as we will see below, it is one of the Southern Europe countries with a most restrictive use of direct democracy. Miranda and Medeiros (2006) argued that the absence of a constitutional referendum is explained by the negative memory of the national plebiscite on the 1933 Constitution, which was a foundational moment of the New State ( Estado Novo ) dictatorship (1933-74). This memory seems to be symbolically stronger and more politically present in Portugal than in other post-authoritarian democracies, such as Italy, Greece, and Spain, where the need to submit constitutional revisions to the popular vote was inserted in their founding democratic constitutions. In the 1970s, right-wing parties frequently resorted to a strategy of trying to change the constitution via a referendum. During the transitional years, the center-right always campaigned for holding referenda for the approval of the constitution (Prime Minister Palma Carlos proposal in June 1974; the center-right PSD at the end of 1975). But these campaigns failed. In the late 1970s the center-right again proposed a referendum on the revision of the democratic constitution of 1976, considered too left-wing and with revolutionary overtones. By doing so, PSD’s leader Sá Carneiro sought to correct what he deemed a set of revolutionary and ideological biases in the Constitution (Filipe 2013). However, this also came to naught. It can be said that in Portugal demands for direct democracy have been mainly related to disputes over the Constitution, as a means for constitutional rupture by right-wing political forces (Filipe 2013). The process underlying the institution of plebiscites in democratic Portugal was troubled. The local plebiscite was the first to be recognized, in the constitutional revision of 1982. Despite various proposals for consecrating the plebiscite and the constitutional referendum, plebiscites at the national level were introduced only by the second constitutional revision in 1989 (Miranda and Medeiros 2006). In the end, it was decided that only the government or the parliament could call a plebiscite. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, many legislators and constitutional lawyers (e.g., Jorge Miranda, considered one of the fathers of the constitution) defended that this instrument should be built with particularly demanding legal guarantees, since it was considered that while it could be used c