Policy framing and denizen enfranchisement in Portugal: why some migrant voters are more equal than others

Defending popular sovereignty: discursive conflict in French and Swedish parliamentary debates on immigrant voting rights (1968-2017)

“…However, at a descriptive level, it is apparent that parties across the aisle rallied around proposals that could be framed in ways that were either compatible with the dominant conception of popular sovereignty (as in French debates over the enfranchisement of EU citizens) or as a matter of policy rather than politics (as in the case of local voting rights in Sweden). This is consistent with the findings of previous research on the debates that led to successful campaigns to enfranchise non-citizens in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Portugal (Jacobs 1998(Jacobs , 1999Pedroza 2013).…”

“…These findings echo previous research on successful campaigns to enfranchise noncitizen residents in other European countries (Jacobs 1998(Jacobs , 1999Pedroza 2013), as well as other studies about the impact of earlier suffrage movements on norms of political inclusion (McCammon et al 2001;McCammon 2012;McConnaughy 2013). They provide a sobering yet hopeful lesson for more general discussions on the suffrage (regarding, for example, the enfranchisement of other groups, such as individuals with mental disabilities, felons, and minors), as well as debates about other forms of immigrant inclusion (such as those related to social rights and welfare entitlements).…”

“…There is, of course, a large literature on discursive frames that spans several disciplines (for a classical review, see Benford and Snow 2000). Benford and Snow's conceptualization of frames has also been used on previous work on the discursive strategies of movements to enfranchise non-citizens (Jacobs 1998;Pedroza 2013). See, for instance, Pedroza's reformulation of Benford and Snow's definition of frames as 'concrete signifying devices and strategies of agents immersed in a context of interpretive struggles' (Pedroza 2013, 869).…”

Democratic Deficits in Europe: The Overlooked Exclusiveness of Nation-States and the Positive Role of the European Union

“…When we look at the laws, Portugal seems to be very generous in granting alien voting rights, but this does not translate into large numbers of enfranchised immigrants. Case studies like Pedroza (2013) help us to understand why this is so. But for a quantitative assessment tool, the most pragmatic solution is to take both understandings into account.…”

“…5-7). In addition, in the normative debate the local-national distinction is much more prominent (Pedroza 2013). The average score of the local level is combined with the score for the national level with a simple arithmetic mean as well.…”