The Leadership of Executive Heads in Spain and Portugal during the Debt Crisis, 2008ꟷ2016

This paper analyzes the leadership and the political career of the prime ministers of the Iberian countries in the context of the debt crisis between 2008 and 2016. Specially, the analysis focuses on the influence of the economic crisis in the processes of political construction of the leadership of the Iberian prime ministers and/or presidents: José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Mariano Rajoy in Spain, and José Sócrates and Pedro Passos Coelho in Portugal. In spite of the substantial differences of the crisis in the mentioned countries and their different systems of government, both are member of the European Union and share the Napoleonic model of Public Administration. The empirical approach is based in the constructivism and the methodology uses the life-history applied to the leaders. In this respect, our empirical interest is to know the dynamics of the political leadership in the context of debt crisis and to observe the influence of the crisis and their effects in the rise or fall of the prime ministers and their governments.