The first cut on this record has been cross-format focused for Airplay success.

The men beat on their drums. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm going to Hello and welcome to Politics Theory Other.

My name is Alex Doherty and today I'm joined by Katerina Principi to discuss Portuguese

social democracy, the financial crisis and Eurozone austerity.

You can listen to the podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes and ACAS, and as always you can follow on Facebook and Twitter at Poll Theory Other.

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Katerina Principi is a social movement activist from Portugal. She's a member of the

Block Ojascareda, the Portuguese left block, and a contributing editor at Jacobin. She's also the co-editor

of the book, Europe in Revolt, mapping the new European left. So on the UK left, Portugal is often

seen as this exception to Eurozone austerity.

There's this conventional story that the Socialist Party came to power in 25 with the support

of the Communist Green Alliance and the Bloch de Skaida.

And that the government then eased up on austerity and steered Portugal to sustainable

growth and got control of the deficit.

And just this week in The Guardian there was an article by Joseph Stiglitz on the Eurozone

and he was lauding the Portuguese government very much along these lines.

But in a recent article in Jacobin, you argued that the Portuguese government should not be

characterized as an anti-austerity government. What do you mean by that?

Yes, actually, I have that article from Stiglitz to read, and I haven't read it, but it's on my list.

So, I mean, how do we traditionally characterize austerity?

It's a set of political and economical rules that normally tend to hire taxes and lower state expenditure

and liberalizing labor laws.

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