Beyond 'Usual Suspects' – Citizens' Perceptions of Institutions and Regional-Level Government in Azores and Madeira

In the last five decades, regions over the globe have enhanced their authority scope (Keating, 1998; Hooghe et. al, 2016) and created a meso-level of government with a range of political powers over a diversity of policy areas (Keating, 1998; Hough and Jeffery, 2006; Swenden, 2006; Marks et. al., 2008). Understand the territorial scope and the regional authority and how citizens understand the regional level has independent policy making capacity from the national state is an issue that have been overlooked. Nonetheless, empirical evidence has shown that individuals understand their own reality through the lens of their own circumstances and form opinions accordingly with their region of residence (Cohen, 1996). Decentralization of state authority creates opportunities for political parties and voters to mobilize and respond to locally defined issues (Thorlakson, 2007). Thus, how do citizens perceive functional responsibilities assigned to regional governments? and, How do they evaluate regional government actions? Individual-data is difficult to gathered, and smaller regions tend to be under-represented in opinion surveys research. This is the case of the Portuguese autonomous region (Azores and Madeira). Is with these questions in mind that we propose to construct a survey in order to collect new data and capture the citizen’s perceptions towards decentralization in the Portuguese autonomous regions: Azores and Madeira. For that we will use as main dimensions of analysis a) regional institutions, b) fiscal autonomy and c) voting behaviour.