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Do attitudes towards the welfare state change in response to economic crises? Addressing this question is sometimes difficult because of the lack of longitudinal data. This article deals with this empirical challenge using survey data from the 2008 European Social Survey and from our own follow-up survey of Spring 2013 to track welfare attitudes at the brink and at the peak of the socio-economic crisis in one of the hardest hit countries: Portugal. The literature on social policy preferences predicts an increased polarization in opinions towards the welfare state between different groups within society – in particular between labour market insiders and outsiders. However the prediction has scarcely been tested empirically. A notoriously dualized country, Portugal provides a critical setting in which to test this hypothesis. The results show attitudinal change and this varies according to labour market vulnerability. However, we observe no polarisation and advance alternative explanations for why this is so.

Embora todas as constituições incluam direitos, e muitas delas incluam direitos sociais, a verdade é que algumas são mais generosas do que outras a este respeito. Mas nenhuma se aproxima da Constituição da República Portuguesa de 1976 no que toca à extensão e detalhe do seu catálogo de direitos sociais, económicos e culturais. As principais teorias sobre as origens de instituições geraram hipóteses explicativas da constitucionalização desta segunda geração de direitos. Sucede, porém, que estas hipóteses não conseguem explicar de forma totalmente convincente o processo de constitucionalização dos direitos sociais. Isto é ainda mais verdade em casos como o do nosso país, cujo carácter discrepante os tornam ainda mais difíceis de explicar. Neste artigo, estas teorias e respectivas hipóteses serão testadas por relação ao caso português o qual será, sempre que se revelar necessário, comparado com o espanhol. Visamos alcançar dois objectivos com este exercício. Por um lado, pretendemos identificar as limitações das explicações dominantes, incluindo as teorias e hipóteses sobre os mecanismos causais responsáveis pela inclusão de direitos sociais nas constituições. Por outro lado, o nosso propósito é o de conceber explicações alternativas sempre que as existentes se revelem inadequadas ou insuficientes., Constitutions are a key element of the normative script of the modern state. All constitutions lock in rights. Most include social provisions. Some are more generous than others in this regard. But none comes close to the Portuguese Constitution of 1976 in the length and detail of its list of social and economic rights. Prevailing theories of institutional origins have generated hypotheses to account for the constitutionalization of second-generation rights. But they fall short from providing a full understanding of constitutionalization and the accompanying emergence of judicial review. Outlier cases, such as the Portuguese, are even more poorly explained by extant explanations. In this article, we test them against the Portuguese case, which, whenever appropriate, is compared with Spain. With this we aim at two things: first, to identify shortcomings in the most familiar frameworks, theories and hypotheses on the causal mechanisms leading to the inclusion of social and economic rights in constitutions; second, to propose alternative explanations where existing ones prove inadequate or insufficient.

The article begins with the assumption that modernity is undergoing a profound change. The focus is on the structural transformation of two typical modern institutional regimes: the academic discipline and the territorial nation-state. Their demise as the predominant institutional forms in the realms of science and politics signals the end of the modern project—or at least the need for its profound redefinition. It is suggested that such a redefinition entails a radical conceptual shift in the social sciences and that the meta-theoretical expression of this shift can be designated as ‘dialogical pluralism’. At a theoretical level, both modernization theories and the recent program of ‘multiple modernities’ are rejected. A plural modernity, with several distinct varieties, seems a more promising perspective.