A crise e a regulação internacional e europeia: o pacto orçamental como solução para a crónica indisciplina financeira do Portugal democrático?

The Portuguese sovereign debt crisis reproduces a pattern which is persistent in Portugal’s liberal and democratic ages. In the future, that pattern and the ensuing foreign interventions should be imperatively avoided. There are several explanations regarding what caused the Portuguese crisis, but fiscal indiscipline is a certain and important cause. Researching the most adequate solutions should involve Political Economics and, namely, examining the Portuguese politicians’ structure of incentives which results from domestic and European norms and from the social, economic and institutional context. The recent Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union is examined from the point of view of that structure of incentives.