Suchergebnisse

Major economic crises are focal events that often drive changes in various aspects of political systems. Although extensive work has been done to investigate the effect of exogenous shocks on political phenomena such as government termination, public opinion and policy outcomes, the impact of major crises on the process of policymaking has so far received scarce attention. Building on existing literature on policy agendas and legislative organization, this paper explores how the Eurozone crisis has affected the legislative agenda of the Italian parliament. The data used include information on the 1,110 bills submitted to parliament during Legislature XVI (2008–2013). Our analysis shows that, with the worsening of the crisis, bill proposals related to macroeconomic issues become increasingly more likely to enter the legislative agenda, displacing legislation dealing with other topics. Our argument is corroborated by a comparison between Legislature XVI and a pre-crisis legislature (2001–2006), as in the latter term the legislative agenda follows different patterns.

L'euroscetticismo si è affermato nel corso degli anni come risultato dell'emergere di una nuova dimensione di competizione politica, alternativa e trasversale alla tradizionale contrapposizione sinistra/destra, e più strettamente legata al grado di consenso per il processo di integrazione europea. La famiglia euroscettica ha così finito per accogliere un insieme ideologicamente eterogeneo di partiti, che spesso hanno come unico legame comune l'opposizione al processo di integrazione europea e alla cessione di ulteriori porzioni di sovranità da parte degli Stati membri verso l'Unione Europea (UE). Negli ultimi anni, la crisi e le misure di austerità introdotte a livello europeo hanno dato un'ulteriore spinta allo sviluppo del fronte euroscettico, consolidando le basi elettorali dei partiti già esistenti e portando alla nascita di nuovi partiti dichiaratamente anti-UE. In questo quadro si sono svolte le elezioni europee di maggio 2014, che, a parere di molti commentatori, hanno visto un'affermazione senza precedenti del fronte euroscettico. Ma chi sono i partiti euroscettici? Dove hanno raccolto più voti? E quale è stata la reale portata del loro successo? Dopo aver analizzato in chiave teorica lo sviluppo del concetto di euroscetticismo, questo capitolo si prefigge di rispondere a queste domande, individuando prima, tra i partiti che hanno partecipato alle elezioni di maggio 2014 nei 28 Stati membri dell'Unione, quelli appartenenti alla famiglia euroscettica, e analizzando poi il loro andamento elettorale in confronto alle precedenti elezioni europee. I dati in nostro possesso confermano una crescita generalizzata del fronte anti-UE rispetto alle precedenti consultazioni elettorali, ma con forti differenze a livello di singola nazione.

The formation of the 'yellow-green' government that took office in Italy after the general election held on 4 March 2018 looked puzzling to many commentators as the two coalition partners – the Five Star Movement and the League – appeared to be quite distant on the left–right continuum. In this article, we argue that despite being widely used in the literature, a unidimensional representation of parties' policy positions on the encompassing left–right scale is inadequate to explain the process of coalition governments' formation. We focus first on coalition outcomes in Italy in the period 2001–18. Our statistical analysis including, among other variables, parties' policy distance on the left–right dimension performs rather well until 2013 but fails to predict the coalition outcome in 2018. To solve the puzzle, we propose a two-dimensional spatial account of the Conte I government formation in which the first dimension coincides with the economic left–right and the second one is related to immigration, the European Union issues and social conservatism. We show that the coalition outcome ceases to be poorly understandable once parties' policy positions are measured along these two dimensions, rather than on the general left–right continuum.

Due to key differences in the policy priorities of the League and the Five Star Movement, the formation of the yellow-green cabinet appointed in Italy after the general election of March 2018 is inadequately explained by interpreting the main axis of party competition in terms of the classical left-right divide. Relying on a multi-dimensional spatial approach to party competition, this article attempts to account for the formation of the Conte cabinet by looking at the policy positions of political parties on a number of substantive policy dimensions. We analyse changes in the dimensionality of the policy space of party competition by using data from an expert survey fielded in the aftermath of the 2018 election and by comparing these data with similar expert survey data collected since 2001. Results highlight dramatic changes in the last two decades, showing a gradual decline in the salience of economic issues vis-à-vis an increase in the salience of non-economic domains such as European integration and immigration. We show that the formation of the Conte executive can be understood in light of the closeness of the two coalition partners' policy positions on non-economic policy dimensions.

Candidates for public office are part of the politically 'active minority' that serve as a fundamental link between voters and the ruling class. The selection of candidates can also define the traits of political personnel in the major political institutions and, more in general, the very nature of democratic representation. The study of candidates is particularly interesting in the case of the 2018 Italian elections as it allows us to understand the extent to which Italian citizens are willing to run for office despite a negative climate towards politics, and despite parties' choices under the new mixed electoral system – the so-called 'Rosato law'. This article investigates a number of key characteristics of the Italian candidates running for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies in 2018 and compares them with those who stood for office in the past elections from 1976 onwards. In particular, we focus on the following aspects: the overall number of candidacies and party lists, the use of multiple candidacies by different parties, and some relevant traits of candidates such as their age, gender and past experience as candidates. Results highlight the impact of the new electoral institutions, as in 2018 the overall number of Italian candidates and lists has decreased if compared to the 2013 elections. However, the new rules have not substantially reduced the number of those who run for office without any reasonable possibility of obtaining a parliamentary seat. In addition, the population of Italian would-be deputies has become more balanced in terms of gender – though not any younger – and the turnover rate among Italian candidates seems to be somewhat lower than in 2013. Furthermore, moving from 2013 to 2018, the leaders of Italian parties have made more moderate use of multiple candidacies as a tool for controlling party members. In the last elections, multiple candidacies were employed mostly for safeguarding the election of some prominent politicians.