António José Seguro brought with him a clear message: stability must be asserted as an active commitment of the political system. The diagnosis is pertinent. With increasing fragmentation and no stability, governing has become little more than a moment between elections.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa – alongside Eanes – is associated with the highest number of dissolutions of the Assembly of the Republic in democracy. It did so in a cycle that coincided with a growing deterioration in the quality of representation, institutional scrutiny and political trust, as demonstrated by indicators such as V-Dem or International IDEA.
It is, therefore, understandable that the new President seeks to refocus the system on the idea of stability. The problem begins when this ambition approaches a logic of stability as an end in itself, disconnected from the conditions that produce it.
Strangely, the thoughtfulness that characterizes Insurance got lost in the rush – and recent examples show how this can be a costly mistake. From António Costa’s collage of the absolute majority of the PS, by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, to Pedro Nuno Santos’ “practically impossible” on the Budget for 2025, trying to condition the political context from the outset, sooner rather than later, ends up biting the hand that feeds it.
By removing the automatic association between the lead of a Budget and the dissolution of Parliament, Seguro introduces a relevant inflection in the informal functioning of the regime. The rejection of a Budget has worked, in practice, as a moment of political rupture – not due to constitutional imposition, but due to a consolidated convention.
By signaling that government stability can persist even with a rejected Budget, the President changes the balance of the budgetary process. On the one hand, the Government’s incentive to negotiate compromise solutions is reduced, knowing that non-approval will not result in a political crisis. On the other hand, the political cost for parties that make the Budget unfeasible is reduced.
The combined effect is clear: the degrees of freedom of all participants are reinforced, but the main moment of political accountability in the system is weakened. The Budget ceases to be a mandatory point of convergence and becomes a potentially tactical exercise, less demanding in terms of commitment.
This is where original sin comes to fruition. Stability is not decreed, it is built. It results from negotiation, commitment and effective functioning of institutions. It is not independent of these factors; it depends on them. Separating it from the conditions that form it is weakening it and introducing increased risks.
As Peter Mair or Colin Crouch emphasize, when the institutional mechanisms of representation lose density, political conflict does not disappear: it moves outside of them, in more volatile forms that are difficult to contain.
Stability is essential, but it is not an end in itself. Guaranteeing it artificially, reducing the role of the mechanisms that produce it – is really emptying it.
And empty stability is no longer a solution: it becomes a problem.
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