- University of Lausanne
Institut d’Etudes Politiques (IEP)
Quartier UNIL-Mouline
Bâtiment Géopolis
Bureau: 5223
CH-1015 Lausanne
. - +41 21 692 31 37
Diego Garzia
University of Lausanne, Institut d'Etudes Politiques (IEP), Faculty Member
- I am an SNF Professor of Political Science at the University of Lausanne. I studied at the Universities of Rome “Sap... moreI am an SNF Professor of Political Science at the University of Lausanne.
I studied at the Universities of Rome “Sapienza” (BA, MSc), Leiden (MA), Oxford and Siena (PhD). After my doctoral studies, I held a Jean Monnet Fellowship at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies (2012-2014) and an "Ambizione" Fellowship at the University of Lucerne (2017-2019).
My academic interests center on the interplay between voters, political parties and leaders in democratic elections. My current research project, funded by an "Eccellenza" Fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation (2020-2024), focuses on affective polarization and its electoral consequences, with a particular emphasis on negative voting in comparative and longitudinal perspective.
I currently serve in the steering committees of the Consortium of National Election Studies (CNES), the Italian National Election Study (ITANES) and the ECPR Research Network on Voting Advice Applications (VAAs).edit
Leaders without Partisans examines the changing impact of party leader evaluations on voters' behavior in parliamentary elections. The decline of traditional social cleavages, the pervasive mediatization of the political scene, and the... more
Leaders without Partisans examines the changing impact of party leader evaluations on voters' behavior in parliamentary elections. The decline of traditional social cleavages, the pervasive mediatization of the political scene, and the media's growing tendency to portray politics in "personalistic" terms all led to the hypothesis that leaders matter more for the way individuals vote and, often, the way elections turn out. This study offers the most comprehensive longitudinal assessment of this hypothesis so far. The authors develop a composite theoretical framework - based on currently disconnected strands of research from party, media, and electoral studies - and test it empirically on the most encompassing set of national election study datasets ever assembled. The labor-intensive harmonization effort produces an unprecedented dataset pooling information for a total of 129 parliamentary elections conducted between 1961 and 2018 in 14 West European countries. The book provides evidence of the longitudinal growth in leader effects on vote choice and on turnout. The process of partisan dealignment and changes in the structure of mass communication in Western societies are identified as the main drivers of personalization in voting behavior.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The last half-century has been a defining period for the development of political science in Europe: disciplinary norms have become institutionalized in professional organizations, training units, and research centres; the scholarly... more
The last half-century has been a defining period for the development of political science in Europe: disciplinary norms have become institutionalized in professional organizations, training units, and research centres; the scholarly community has dramatically grown in size across the continent; the analytical and methodological tools of the discipline are increasingly sophisticated; and the knowledge disseminated under the label “political science” is bigger than it has ever been. Political Science in Europe takes stock of these developments and reflects on the achievements of the discipline, and the challenges it faces. Is there a distinctive "European" blend of political science? Is the European political science community cohesive and inclusive? How does the discipline cope with the neoliberalisation of academia, and the diffusion of illiberal politics? Leading and up-and-coming political scientists answer these questions by discussing the discipline's key concepts and intellectual trends, its professional structures, and its relationship with its social, economic, and political environment.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Voting Advice Applications – VAAs – have become a widespread online feature of electoral campaigns in Europe, attracting growing interest from social and political scientists. But until now, there has been no systematic and reliable... more
Voting Advice Applications – VAAs – have become a widespread online feature of electoral campaigns in Europe, attracting growing interest from social and political scientists. But until now, there has been no systematic and reliable comparative assessment of these tools.
Previously published research on VAAs has resulted almost exclusively in national case studies. This lack of an integrated framework for analysis has made research on VAAs unable to serve the scientific goal of systematic knowledge accumulation.
Against this background, Matching Voters With Parties and Candidates aims first at a comprehensive overview of the VAA phenomenon in a truly comparative perspective. Featuring the biggest number of European experts on the topic ever assembled, the book answers a number of open questions and addresses debates in VAA research. It also aims to bridge the gap between VAA research and related fields of political science.
Previously published research on VAAs has resulted almost exclusively in national case studies. This lack of an integrated framework for analysis has made research on VAAs unable to serve the scientific goal of systematic knowledge accumulation.
Against this background, Matching Voters With Parties and Candidates aims first at a comprehensive overview of the VAA phenomenon in a truly comparative perspective. Featuring the biggest number of European experts on the topic ever assembled, the book answers a number of open questions and addresses debates in VAA research. It also aims to bridge the gap between VAA research and related fields of political science.
Research Interests:
The conventional wisdom that parliamentary elections are now, more than at any time in the past, determined by voters' assessments of party leaders has been fiercely contested by comparative electoral research. To overcome the obvious... more
The conventional wisdom that parliamentary elections are now, more than at any time in the past, determined by voters' assessments of party leaders has been fiercely contested by comparative electoral research. To overcome the obvious mismatch between customary expectations about the role of party leaders and the conclusions drawn by scholarly research in the field, this book provides an innovative framework for the study of voting behavior in light of the ongoing personalization of politics. Through analysis of election study data from Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, this book highlights the progressive inability of social-psychological models of voting to account for individuals' choices. Throughout the last four decades, voters' attitudes towards party leaders have apparently become a crucial determinant of their feelings of affinity with certain parties. Once the role of leaders as drivers of partisanship is taken into account, their electoral effect emerges as a force that can – more often than not – make the difference between victory and defeat.
Research Interests:
Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have literally taken Europe by storm in the past decade, with millions of voters turning to these web-based tests at election time. VAAs help users casting a vote by comparing their policy preferences on... more
Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have literally taken Europe by storm in the past decade, with millions of voters turning to these web-based tests at election time. VAAs help users casting a vote by comparing their policy preferences on major issues with the programmatic stands of political parties on such issues. These applications are aimed primarily at increasing voters’ understanding of what parties stand for by means of an immediate and enjoyable approach. In turn, this can increase voters’ interest in political matters, motivate them to discuss about politics, and hopefully gather further information. More recently, the impressive numbers of users visiting VAA-websites have led some political scientists to hypothesize an effect of these tools also on voters’ electoral behaviour. Questions about VAAs’ ability to motivate users to turn out and vote (possibly for the party advised by the application) have been repeatedly raised. However, little empirical evidence has been collected so far – this lack being particularly evident in comparative perspective. This volume represents the first systematic attempt to answer such questions through a comparative framework. The cases included range from established applications such as Dutch StemWijzer and German Wahl-O-Mat to ‘first attempts’ from Southern and Eastern Europe, in order to portray in detail the various stages of development of the VAA-phenomenon around the continent. The time-point under analysis is, in each case, the European election of June 2009. The second-order nature of this electoral competition – where voters are thought to vote for parties closer to their preferences and ideological outlook – seems in fact an ideal context to assess the potential of these applications. The volume’s major aim is that of igniting a fruitful exchange between academic and practitioners on applications that are likely to become an ever more used and appreciated feature of electoral campaigns in the years to come.
Edited by Lorella Cedroni (University of Rome “Sapienza”) and Diego Garzia (University of Siena). The volume features contributions by: Jochum de Graaf, Roberto De Rosa, Kris Deschouwer, Agata Dziewulska, Gabriela Felder, Jan Fivaz, Andreas Ladner, Marco Lisi, Marina Costa Lobo, Stefan Marschall, Christine Mayer, Michiel Nuytemans, Outi Ruusuvirta, Christian K. Schmidt, Michal Skop, Maarten Vink, Stefaan Walgrave, Martin Wassermair.
Edited by Lorella Cedroni (University of Rome “Sapienza”) and Diego Garzia (University of Siena). The volume features contributions by: Jochum de Graaf, Roberto De Rosa, Kris Deschouwer, Agata Dziewulska, Gabriela Felder, Jan Fivaz, Andreas Ladner, Marco Lisi, Marina Costa Lobo, Stefan Marschall, Christine Mayer, Michiel Nuytemans, Outi Ruusuvirta, Christian K. Schmidt, Michal Skop, Maarten Vink, Stefaan Walgrave, Martin Wassermair.
About one third of American voters cast a vote more "against" than "for" a candidate in the 2020 Presidential election. This pattern, designated by negative voting, has been initially understood by rational choice scholarship as a product... more
About one third of American voters cast a vote more "against" than "for" a candidate in the 2020 Presidential election. This pattern, designated by negative voting, has been initially understood by rational choice scholarship as a product of cognitive dissonance and/or retrospective evaluations. This article revisits this concept through the affective polarization framework in the light of the rise of political sectarianism in American society. Based on an original CAWI survey fielded after the 2020 election, our regression analysis demonstrates that the predicted probability of casting a negative vote significantly increases among individuals for whom out-candidate hate outweighs in-candidate love. Negative voting is less prevalent among partisans as their higher levels of in-group affection can offset out-group contempt. By asserting the enduring relevance of negative voting in American presidential elections, we aim at stimulating further research and discussion of its implications for democratic representation.
Research Interests:
Existing research on political parties' policy positions has traditionally relied on expert surveys and/or party manifesto data. More recently, Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have been increasingly used as an additional method for... more
Existing research on political parties' policy positions has traditionally relied on expert surveys and/or party manifesto data. More recently, Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have been increasingly used as an additional method for locating parties in the policy space, with a closer focus on concrete policy issues. In this manuscript, we examine the reliability of party positions originated from a VAA, utilising the euandi longitudinal dataset, which provides data on positions of over 400 unique political parties across 28 EU member states from the European Parliament elections of 2009, 2014 and 2019. We cross-validate euandi data with the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES). Our results attest the reliability of the euandi trend file vis-à-vis remaining data sources, demonstrating the validity of VAA-based methods to estimate the policy positions of European political parties. Convergence is especially high with CHES party placements. We also explore the sources of divergence in the estimation of policy positions across the three methods, finding little evidence of a systematic source of bias in the estimates between datasets. We conclude with an inventory of arguments in favour of party position measurements used by VAAs for the study of policy-making in European democracies.
Research Interests:
This article aims to offer some analytical tools for putting the newly formed Draghi government in perspective. As Mario Draghi is in many ways the technocrat par excellence, this article provides a comparison of his cabinet with the... more
This article aims to offer some analytical tools for putting the newly formed Draghi government in perspective. As Mario Draghi is in many ways the technocrat par excellence, this article provides a comparison of his cabinet with the technocratic Monti government of 2011–2013. We list the similarities and differences between the two cabinets, highlighting that they are both technocrat-led but that the difference in their policy-mandates triggers substantially different levels of party-involvement, and possibly also of long-term responsiveness to public opinion. Interestingly, both cabinets began life enjoying high levels of popularity. In the case of Monti, popularity dropped soon after the presentation of the first austerity package. In the case of Draghi, there is no austerity on the near horizon, and there are the conditions for popularity to remain high. These conditions are strengthened by a policy environment which is today more favourable to expansive budgetary policies. The duration of Draghi’s popularity is, however, contingent on a number of unpredictable factors, the most important of which is the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
Research Interests:
Recent developments in Western societies have motivated a growing consideration of the role of negativity in public opinion and political behavior research. In this article, we review the scant (and largely disconnected) scientific... more
Recent developments in Western societies have motivated a growing consideration of the role of negativity in public opinion and political behavior research. In this article, we review the scant (and largely disconnected) scientific literature on negativity and political behavior, merging contributions from social psychology, public opinion, and electoral research, with a view on developing an integrated theoretical framework for the study of negative voting in contemporary democracies. We highlight that the tendency toward negative voting is driven by three partly overlapping components, namely, (1) an instrumental-rational component characterized by retrospective performance evaluations and rationalization mechanisms, (2) an ideological component grounded on long-lasting political identities, and (3) an affective component, motivated by (negative) attitudes toward parties and candidates. By blueprinting the systematic relationships between negative voting and each of these components in turn, and suggesting multiple research paths, this article aims to stimulate future studies on negative voting in multi-party parliamentary systems to motivate a better understanding of the implications of negativity in voting behavior in contemporary democracies.
Research Interests:
Existing research has begun to tackle the electoral consequences of affective polarization through the lens of negative partisanship. However, not equal attention has been paid to voters' polarized opinions toward political leaders and... more
Existing research has begun to tackle the electoral consequences of affective polarization through the lens of negative partisanship. However, not equal attention has been paid to voters' polarized opinions toward political leaders and their impact on electoral behavior. This paper offers a comparative, longitudinal assessment of the relationship between negativity towards party leaders and vote choice in multi-party systems. We develop our negative personalization hypothesis and test it empirically on an original pooled dataset featuring 109 national election surveys from 14 Western European parliamentary democracies collected over the last six decades. Our findings confirm the existence of a robust relationship between negative party-leader evaluations and vote choice. Furthermore, the results demonstrate a sizable growth in the incidence of negative personalization across time, now of a magnitude that compares to that exerted by in-party-leader evaluations. This finding constitutes a central innovation adding to the personalization of politics literature.
Research Interests:
About one third of American voters cast a vote more ‘against’ than ‘for’ a candidate in the 2020 Presidential election. This pattern, designated by negative voting, has been initially understood by rational choice scholarship as a product... more
About one third of American voters cast a vote more ‘against’ than ‘for’ a candidate in the 2020 Presidential election. This pattern, designated by negative voting, has been initially understood by rational choice scholarship as a product of cognitive dissonance and/or retrospective evaluations. This working paper revisits this concept through the affective polarization framework in the light of the rise of political sectarianism in American society. Based on an original CAWI survey fielded after the 2020 election, our regression analysis demonstrates that the predicted probability of casting a negative vote significantly increases among individuals for whom out-candidate hate outweighs in-candidate love. Negative voting is less prevalent among partisans as their higher levels of in-group affection can offset outgroup contempt. By asserting the enduring relevance of negative voting in American presidential elections, we aim at stimulating further comparative research and discussion of its implications for democratic representation.
Research Interests:
Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are online tools that assist citizens with their voting decisions. They are offered to voters before elections in many countries and have experienced remarkable success. Recently flourishing research on... more
Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are online tools that assist citizens with their voting decisions. They are offered to voters before elections in many countries and have experienced remarkable success. Recently flourishing research on VAAs addresses this phenomenon and provides explanations for the dissemination and popularity of these tools. Moreover, VAAs have been analyzed regarding their effects on political parties, candidates, and on voters in regard to their electoral behavior. Research shows that using a VAA indeed makes a difference, while the effect depends strongly on the way a VAA is designed and by whom it is used. The abundance of data generated by VAAs bears potential for comparative studies of public opinion and party systems over time and across countries, and thereby bridges research on VAAs to general questions of political science research.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Partisan dealignment is recurrently presented in the literature as one of the main drivers of the ‘personalisation of politics’. Yet, on the one hand, the claim that leader effects on voting behaviour are increasing across time is short... more
Partisan dealignment is recurrently presented in the literature as one of the main drivers of the ‘personalisation of politics’. Yet, on the one hand, the claim that leader effects on voting behaviour are increasing across time is short on comparative evidence. On the other hand, there is limited empirical evidence that such an increase is due to dealignment. This article explores the longitudinal relationship between partisan dealignment, leader effects and party choice, through a novel dataset pooling 109 national election surveys collected in 14 Western European parliamentary democracies across the last six decades. The results show that leader effects increased over time as a function of the decline of party identification. Additional panel evidence from selected countries shows that partisan dealignment is responsible for increasing leader effects on party choice at the individual level. The longitudinal dimension of this study contributes to the most contested aspect of the personalisation of politics debate.
Research Interests:
This paper explores the extent to which different party systems in Europe effectively represent their citizens. We argue that many European countries suffer from a "representative deficit", which occurs when a significant portion of... more
This paper explores the extent to which different party systems in Europe effectively represent their citizens. We argue that many European countries suffer from a "representative deficit", which occurs when a significant portion of citizens have to vote for a political party whose stated views are actually quite different from their own. We measure the extent of this deficit in different European countries using data from EU Profiler and euandi, two Voting Advice Applications which served millions of users during the EP elections in 2009 and 2014 respectively. We find wide variation in the extent to which political parties are accurately tuned in to the preferences of their voters , a variation which is not clearly linked to the number of political parties or the pro-portionality of the electoral system. We attempt to explain some of this variation, and explore the reasons why some party systems offer better representation than others.
Research Interests:
Charismatic leaders are often assumed to drive the electoral success of populist radical right parties. Yet, little attention is given to how voter evaluations of leaders influence individual voting behavior. To our knowledge, no... more
Charismatic leaders are often assumed to drive the electoral success of populist radical right parties. Yet, little attention is given to how voter evaluations of leaders influence individual voting behavior. To our knowledge, no systematic and comparative tests of this empirical question exist. In this paper, we test to what extent voters' support for populist radical right parties is fueled by leaders' appreciation. In order to examine leader effects on the populist radical right vote, we rely on an original dataset pooling 29 National Election Studies from ten established West European parliamentary democracies (1985-2018). Our analysis finds that: (1) voters' evaluation of party leaders is significantly associated with voting for populist radical right parties; (2) leader evaluations are more important than left-right self-placement when it comes to voting for the populist radical right, and (3) leader effects are more important for populist radical right voters than for other voters.
Research Interests:
This article offers a comparative analysis of parties' position on foreign and security issues in the EU28 across the EP elections of 2009 and 2014. First, we map the position of the parties on selected foreign policy and security issues... more
This article offers a comparative analysis of parties' position on foreign and security issues in the EU28 across the EP elections of 2009 and 2014. First, we map the position of the parties on selected foreign policy and security issues in both 2009 and 2014. Second, we measure the extent to which party positions on such issues remained stable across these five years. Third, we offer an explanatory analysis of the competing factors potentially affecting changes in parties' position. By means of multivariate regression models, we test the effect of party ideology, overall attitude toward EU integration , and structural factors at the party level in view of answering the following question: Do parties hold "genuine" positions over EU foreign and security policy, or are they rather due to their relatively more encompassing attitude toward EU integration? The data come from two transnational voting advice applications developed during the 2009 and 2014 European elections campaigns, respectively.
Research Interests:
This data article provides a descriptive overview of the “EU Profiler/euandi trend file (2009–2019)“ dataset and the data collection methods. The dataset compiles party position data from three consecutive pan-European Voting Advice... more
This data article provides a descriptive overview of the “EU Profiler/euandi trend file (2009–2019)“ dataset and the data collection methods. The dataset compiles party position data from three consecutive pan-European Voting Advice Applications (VAAs), developed by the European University Institute for the European Parliament elections in 2009, 2014 and 2019. It includes the positions of 411 parties from 28 European countries on a wide range of salient political issues. Altogether, the dataset contains more than 20 000 unique party positions. To place the parties on the political issues, all three editions of the VAA have used the same iterative method that combines party self-placement and expert judgement. The data collection has been a collective effort of several hundreds of highly trained social scientists, involving experts from each EU member state. The political statements that the parties were placed on, were identical across all the countries and 15 of the statements remained the same throughout all three waves (2009, 2014, 2019) of data collection. Because of the unique methodology and the large volume of data, the dataset offers a significant contribution to the research on European party systems and on party positioning methodologies.
Research Interests:
Television is customarily put forward as a driver of the "personalization of politics." The characteristics of this visual medium arguably accentuate personality at the expense of substantive programmatic goals, downplaying partisan... more
Television is customarily put forward as a driver of the "personalization of politics." The characteristics of this visual medium arguably accentuate personality at the expense of substantive programmatic goals, downplaying partisan attachments and ideology as determinants of the vote in favor of candidate and party leader assessments. While there is evidence of this trend for presidential democracies, notably the United States, this linkage is yet to be fully explored for parliamentary democracies undergoing a process of personalization. This study addresses this gap through an analysis of pooled national election study data from thirteen Western European parliamentary democracies collected between 1982 and 2016. Our results show that leader effects are significantly stronger among individuals with a television-dominant media diet. The findings provide support to the yet underdeveloped theoretical relationship between media change and the personalization of politics, while also speaking to the broader question involving the importance of media for contemporary democratic elections.
Research Interests:
Partisan dealignment has been frequently advanced as a pivotal driver of the personalization of voting behavior. As voters' long-term attachments with parties eroded, it is argued that partisanship has lost importance to short-term... more
Partisan dealignment has been frequently advanced as a pivotal driver of the personalization of voting behavior. As voters' long-term attachments with parties eroded, it is argued that partisanship has lost importance to short-term factors, like voters' evaluations of party leaders. Such theoretical reasoning has been applied recurrently in research dedicated to explaining vote choice. However, we hypothesize that dealignment can downplay partisanship's impact vis-à-vis leaders in the same way regarding turnout decisions. This article aims at demonstrating the importance of voters' evaluations of party leaders in their probability to turn out in parliamentary elections through a novel data set pooling 52 national election surveys from 13 Western European parliamentary democracies between 1974 and 2016. The results confirm the increasing relevance of leaders in explaining turnout decisions and a decline of partisanship's mobilizing ability. These trends are further accentuated among individuals with a television-dominated media diet, demonstrating the role of media change in driving this process.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This chapter deals with persuasion processes in modern elections. It focuses on the im pact of so-called Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) that are becoming ever more popular among citizens in the Western world and beyond. By matching the... more
This chapter deals with persuasion processes in modern elections. It focuses on the im pact of so-called Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) that are becoming ever more popular among citizens in the Western world and beyond. By matching the political preferences of voters with the supply side (i.e., parties and candidates) in the campaign, these tools af fect voters in several ways. Among others, they have a positive impact on turnout, as both observational and experimental studies could show. Furthermore, they trigger a process of self-persuasion, in which users reflect on the VAA-generated output in terms of parti san preferences, cognize these results, and change/reinforce their priors.
Research Interests:
In occasion of the European Parliament elections of 2019, the EUI in collaboration with the University of Lucerne in Switzerland launched euandi2019 (reads: EU and I). The academic relevance of the euandi2019 endeavour lies primarily in... more
In occasion of the European Parliament elections of 2019, the EUI in collaboration with the University of Lucerne in Switzerland launched euandi2019 (reads: EU and I). The academic relevance of the euandi2019 endeavour lies primarily in its choice to stick to the party positioning methodology already employed by the EU Profiler in 2009 and by euandi2014, as well as in the choice to keep as many policy items as possible in the 2019 questionnaire in order to allow cross-national, longitudinal research on party competition and voting behaviour in the EU across a ten-year period. In this paper, we present the euandi2019 project in a nutshell, the making of the questionnaire and the way in which political parties have been coded. Then, we illustrate the functioning of the application and the specifics of the resulting user dataset, comprising the opinions of over 1.2 million users that completed the euandi2019 questionnaire during the four weeks preceding the EP elections.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Partisan dealignment is recurrently presented in the literature as a main driver of the “personalization of politics”. Yet, on the one hand, the claim that leader effects on voting behaviour are increasing across time is short on... more
Partisan dealignment is recurrently presented in the literature as a main driver of the “personalization of politics”. Yet, on the one hand, the claim that leader effects on voting behaviour are increasing across time is short on comparative evidence. On the other hand, there is limited empirical evidence that such increase is due to dealignment. This article addresses these claims, exploring the longitudinal relationship between dealignment and the determinants of vote choice through a novel dataset pooling 90 national election surveys from 14 Western European parliamentary democracies in the period 1961-2016. The results suggest that both critics and proponents of the personalization thesis got it partially right. Leader effects did not increase over time, but their relative importance did: leader images came to matter more as party attachments came to matter less. Partisan dealignment is the key contextual dynamic in downplaying the electoral impact of partisan attachments vis-à-vis leaders evaluations.
Research Interests:
This paper provides an empirical assessment of the relationship between media exposure and leader effects on voting through an analysis of Italy––an ideal case for the study of the personalization of politics and its connection with... more
This paper provides an empirical assessment of the relationship between media exposure and leader effects on voting through an analysis of Italy––an ideal case for the study of the personalization of politics and its connection with political communication. The results show the dominance of leader effects among voters strongly exposed to television and a somewhat differentiated impact on Internauts. By looking at leader effects across different audiences, this paper elaborates on the missing link between electoral research and political communication, and it eventually speaks to the broader question of how important media is for the outcome of contemporary democratic elections.
Research Interests:
This introductory essay to the Special Issue presents the articles which from various perspectives – representation, personalisation, partisanship and accountability – analyse the changing relationship between parties and voters in... more
This introductory essay to the Special Issue presents the articles which from various perspectives – representation, personalisation, partisanship and accountability – analyse the changing relationship between parties and voters in contemporary Italian politics. This collection shows that the Italian party system appears responsive to people’s demands and that public opinion holds governments accountable, and responsible for their actions. On the other hand, substantive changes have emerged with respect to the nature of partisanship, its supposed unique connection to a single party, and its determinants. Finally, as party leaders appear increasingly crucial for voter attitudes and choice, in making financial contributions, external donors pay more attention to individual politicians at the expense of their parties.
Research Interests:
Abstract: Previous studies have portrayed the personalisation of politics as a consequence of changes in the electoral market and the resulting transformations at the party level. However, empirical research has not reached a consensus on... more
Abstract: Previous studies have portrayed the personalisation of politics as a consequence of changes in the electoral market and the resulting transformations at the party level. However, empirical research has not reached a consensus on the degree to which this process has had an impact on citizens’ voting choices. An emerging body of comparative literature would seem to support the idea that party-leader evaluations have become an actual driver of partisanship at the individual level. However, existing evidence on the topic is placed in some doubt by the cross-sectional design used. To the extent that both the dependent variable (i.e. partisanship) and the main predictor (e.g. leader evaluations) are measured at the same point in time, the causal dynamics underlying the relationship between partisanship and leader evaluations remain unclear. Against this background, this article takes advantage of a unique panel dataset assembled for the Italian National Election Study (ITANES) in November and December 2013. The time-frame of the survey allows for an unprecedented causal assessment of the effect of leadership changes (the PD and the LN) as well as party-label changes (from the PdL to FI and the NCD) on patterns of closeness to parties at the individual level. The results shed new light on the changing relationship between voters and Italian political parties, ever more focussed upon their leaders and their characteristics.
Research Interests:
Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) help users casting a vote by offering an explicit ranking of viable options. The wide amount of readily available information provided by VAAs to users has been shown to contribute to reducing the... more
Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) help users casting a vote by offering an explicit ranking of viable options. The wide amount of readily available information provided by VAAs to users has been shown to contribute to reducing the transactional costs involved in gathering relevant political information. Available evidence also supports the idea that VAA users are more likely to cast a ballot in elections as a result. The extent to which electoral participation is caused by using a VAA, however, remains unclear. Against this background, we reassess the mobilizing effect of VAAs by means of a multi-method approach. Our cross-sectional analysis of 12 national election study data sets provides further support to the idea that VAA usage increases users’ chances of casting a ballot in elections as compared to non-users. This conclusion is strengthened by the results of a randomized field experiment conducted in the context of the 2013 Italian parliamentary election.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
EP elections have so far been consistently characterized as “second-order”. We hypothesize that key processes are emerging which undermine the appropriateness of this model. We argue that, as a consequence of EU policies trying to address... more
EP elections have so far been consistently characterized as “second-order”. We hypothesize that key processes are emerging which undermine the appropriateness of this model. We argue that, as a consequence of EU policies trying to address the economic and financial crisis, a stronger politicization of Europe has emerged. Accordingly, the national consequences of EU policies have put Europe on the table of national electorates. Together, these processes may lead to an overall increase in saliency of EP elections, so we hypothesize, and to a homogenization of political competition across EU members. We explore this framework in the context of the 2009 and 2014 EP elections. In line with extant applications, we first attempt to assess the core
predictions of the second-order model through tests on aggregate electoral results. We then investigate specific explanatory mechanisms for the 2014 EP elections, by relating party performance with party stance on political issues.
predictions of the second-order model through tests on aggregate electoral results. We then investigate specific explanatory mechanisms for the 2014 EP elections, by relating party performance with party stance on political issues.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have experienced a great deal of success over the past decade, and are now used in many countries around the world. This editorial introduces a Special Issue resulting from a section of the 2015 European... more
Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have experienced a great deal of success over the past decade, and are now used in many countries around the world. This editorial introduces a Special Issue resulting from a section of the 2015 European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) conference in Montreal, organized by the ECPR's official VAA Research Network. It discusses the global spread and the popularity of these tools, addresses the history and different branches of VAA research, the current state of the art, and the remaining puzzles in the field. It also focuses attention on the wealth of research that is examining the effects of VAAs on political parties, candidates, and voters, as well as how VAA design choices affect the advice given to voters and their subsequent voting behavior. We hope this Special Issue will also highlight the potential of VAA-generated data for studying party positioning over time and across countries, allowing for comparative analyses of the characteristics and development of parties and party systems. Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have experienced a great deal of success over the past decade. They are now used in many countries around the world, and previously isolated VAA research efforts and projects have recently been pooled in an effort to establish a research community focusing on the idea, design, and implications of these tools. This Special Issue of Policy & Internet gathers together articles first presented at a section of the 2015 European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) conference in Montreal, 1 organized by the ECPR's official VAA Research Network. By bringing together these articles we hope this Special Issue will help focus attention on the wealth of research that is examining the effects of VAAs on parties, candidates, and voters, and how VAA design choices affect the voter advice given and subsequent voter behavior. We also hope the issue will highlight the potential in VAA-generated data for studying party positioning over time and across countries, allowing for comparative analyses of the characteristics and development of parties and party systems.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Throughout the years, political scientists have devised a multitude of techniques to position political parties on various ideological and policy/issue dimensions. So far, however, none of these techniques was able to evolve into a ‘‘gold... more
Throughout the years, political scientists have devised a multitude of techniques to position political parties on various ideological and policy/issue dimensions. So far, however, none of these techniques was able to evolve into a ‘‘gold standard’’ in party positioning. Against this background, one could recently witness the appearance of a new methodology for party positioning tightly connected to the spread of Voting Advice Applications (VAAs), i.e. an iterative method that aims at improving existing techniques using a combination of party self-placement and expert judgement. Such a method, as pioneered by the Dutch Kieskompas, was first systematically employed on a large crossnational scale by the EU Profiler VAA in the context of the 2009 European Parliamentary elections. This article introduces the party placement datasets generated by euandi (reads: EU and I), a transnational VAA for the 2014 EP elections. The scientific relevance of the euandi endeavour lies primarily in its choice to stick to the iterative method of party positioning employed by the EU Profiler in 2009 as well as in the choice to keep as many as 17 policy statements in the 2014 questionnaire in order to allow for cross-national, longitudinal research on party competition in Europe across a five-year period. This article provides a brief review of traditional methods of party positioning and contrasts them to the iterative method employed by the euandi team. It then introduces the specifics of the project, facts and figures of the data collection procedure, and the details of the resulting dataset encompassing 242 parties from the whole EU28.
Research Interests:
This article offers an empirically driven critical consideration of the idea of transnationalising Europe’s voting space, which would mean allowing European citizens to vote for a party from any member state at the European Parliament... more
This article offers an empirically driven critical consideration of the idea of transnationalising Europe’s voting space, which would mean allowing European citizens to vote for a party from any member state at the European Parliament elections.We argue that such a move would reduce the second-order problem in European elections, as it would force political parties to move away from campaigning solely on national issues. We also claim that it would improve the extent to which Europeans are represented in their parliament and would be particularly welcomed by citizens currently dissatisfied with the state of their national democracy. We offer evidence to back up these claims, based on data on the political preferences of almost half a million Europeans and 274 European parties.
Research Interests:
In occasion of the European Parliament elections of 2014, EUDO launched euandi (reads: EU and I). The academic relevance of the euandi endeavour lies primarily in its choice to stick to the party positioning methodology already employed... more
In occasion of the European Parliament elections of 2014, EUDO launched euandi (reads: EU and I). The academic relevance of the euandi endeavour lies primarily in its choice to stick to the party positioning methodology already employed by the EU Profiler in 2009 as well as in the choice to keep as many policy items as possible in the 2014 questionnaire in order to allow cross-national, longitudinal research on party competition and voting behaviour in the EU across a five-year period. In this paper, we present the euandi project in a nutshell, the making of the questionnaire and the way in which political parties have been coded. Then, we illustrate the functioning of the application and the specifics of the resulting user dataset, comprising the opinions of 400.000 unique users that completed the euandi questionnaire during the six weeks preceding the EP elections of 2014.
Research Interests:
This article provides an empirical assessment of the causal structure underlying the core dependent variable of electoral research (the vote) and two of its most notable predictors (partisanship and leader evaluations). A critical review... more
This article provides an empirical assessment of the causal structure underlying
the core dependent variable of electoral research (the vote) and two of its most notable
predictors (partisanship and leader evaluations). A critical review of traditional models of
voting highlights the need to account for the reciprocal relationship between the main predictors
as well as for the potential feedback stemming from the dependent variable. In the
light of these considerations, a new ‘iron triangle’ of electoral research would seem to take
shape, with partisanship, leader evaluations and the vote tight to each other by a strong link
of reciprocal causation. Making use of pre-/post-election surveys from Britain and Italy, the
empirical analysis provides evidence for a strong effect of past behavior on political attitudes.
However, past behavior seems to exert its effect mainly on partisan attitudes, whereas
party leader evaluations appear only slightly affected. The results point to the considerably
weakened role of partisanship as attitudinal anchor of vote choice. Leader evaluations, on
the contrary, emerge as a crucial component in the voting decision.
the core dependent variable of electoral research (the vote) and two of its most notable
predictors (partisanship and leader evaluations). A critical review of traditional models of
voting highlights the need to account for the reciprocal relationship between the main predictors
as well as for the potential feedback stemming from the dependent variable. In the
light of these considerations, a new ‘iron triangle’ of electoral research would seem to take
shape, with partisanship, leader evaluations and the vote tight to each other by a strong link
of reciprocal causation. Making use of pre-/post-election surveys from Britain and Italy, the
empirical analysis provides evidence for a strong effect of past behavior on political attitudes.
However, past behavior seems to exert its effect mainly on partisan attitudes, whereas
party leader evaluations appear only slightly affected. The results point to the considerably
weakened role of partisanship as attitudinal anchor of vote choice. Leader evaluations, on
the contrary, emerge as a crucial component in the voting decision.
Research Interests:
Building on MEP Andrew Duff’s proposal to create a limited pan-European constituency for electing representatives to the European Parliament, this paper argues that there are good reasons for believing that such an institution would... more
Building on MEP Andrew Duff’s proposal to create a limited pan-European constituency for electing representatives to the European Parliament, this paper argues that there are good reasons for believing that such an institution would better be built around national parties rather than Europarties as they currently exist. Using data from a Voting Advice Application (VAA), the EU Profiler, we demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of individuals who used this device would be better represented in the European Parliament, in terms of their policy preferences, if they could vote for a party from a different member state than their own. Furthermore, we find that there is significant active demand to be able to vote in this manner, and that such demand is positively correlated with citizens who found that they would be better represented given the opportunity to vote transnationally. Ultimately, we argue that a transnational electoral constituency administered by a VAA that could match individuals with the closest partisan offer in Europe would not only improve the level of representation in the EP but also contribute to forging deeper transnational links in the EU.
Research Interests:
Nell’insieme sempre più diversificato di piattaforme che caratterizza la comunicazione politica ed elettorale, la popolarità dei leader può variare in modo diverso a seconda dei canali di informazione politica utilizzati dagli elettori e... more
Nell’insieme sempre più diversificato di piattaforme che caratterizza la comunicazione politica ed elettorale, la popolarità dei leader può variare in modo diverso a seconda dei canali di informazione politica utilizzati dagli elettori e della maggiore o minore congruenza dello stile comunicativo di un leader con quello di ogni dato medium. A partire dai dati dell’inchiesta Itanes Rolling Cross Section (Rcs) condotta via Cawi su 8.700 intervistati nei 40 giorni precedenti il voto del febbraio 2013, questo articolo analizza la struttura e le dinamiche di popolarità di Berlusconi, Bersani, Monti e Grillo, con una particolare enfasi sulle relazioni tra valutazione del leader e tipo di esposizione mediale degli intervistati. I risultati mostrano come persistano forme di «media partisanship » e polarizzazione ideologica in Italia, soprattutto nei canali televisivi Mediaset e nei quotidiani orientati a sinistra. Gli elettori che utilizzano Internet come principale fonte di informazione politica appaiono come i più forti sostenitori dei leader del proprio partito, mentre livelli più elevati di «attivismo online» sono associati a un maggiore interesse per la politica e, quindi, a valutazioni dei leader mediamente più alte. Pur apparendo relativamente politicizzato, chi riceve informazioni elettorali anche via Facebook si caratterizza, al contrario, per un atteggiamento più critico verso tutti i leader politici. Infine, i fruitori abituali di programmi di intrattenimento Tv continuano a presentare evidenti atteggiamenti pro-Berlusconi. In conclusione, se le preferenze politiche si strutturano chiaramente per tipo di di esposizione mediale, le loro dinamiche lungo la campagna elettorale appaiono omogenee attraverso i diversi media. n’analisi
finale del caso di Beppe Grillo fornisce una riprova della natura «ibrida» e interconnessa dell’attuale sistema mediale, dove un attore politico può avere successo anche in quelle arene in cui non «recita» direttamente (come Grillo in Tv).
finale del caso di Beppe Grillo fornisce una riprova della natura «ibrida» e interconnessa dell’attuale sistema mediale, dove un attore politico può avere successo anche in quelle arene in cui non «recita» direttamente (come Grillo in Tv).
Research Interests:
In recent decades, citizens have grown increasingly distrustful of politics and its actors. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to shed light on the role of citizens themselves in the process by focusing on the determinants... more
In recent decades, citizens have grown increasingly distrustful of politics and its actors. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to shed light on the role of citizens themselves in the process by focusing on the determinants of their voting choices. As a matter of fact, a substantial proportion of voters in democratic elections actually cast a ‘dishonest vote’ – that is, a vote cast in favour of a candidate who is perceived as dishonest by the voter herself. Based on the available literature on political psychology and electoral behaviour, a number of competing hypotheses are advanced. These are tested using national election study data from the Second Italian Republic (2001–08). The statistical analyses presented show that the key determinant of the dishonest vote in Italian elections lies in a perception of every candidate being dishonest and, more generally, in a belief that politicians are ‘all the same’. The probability of casting a dishonest vote is higher among voters characterised by a lack of interest in politics and a comparatively lower degree of ‘civicness’. The results are then discussed along with their major implications for our understanding of democratic elections in times of growing political distrust.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Propensity-to-vote (PTV) scores are ever more commonly used in electoral research as a measure of electoral utilities. Yet a growing literature employs them as dependent variable in the voting equation in place of the lower information... more
Propensity-to-vote (PTV) scores are ever more commonly used in electoral research as a measure of electoral utilities. Yet a growing literature employs them as dependent variable in the voting equation in place of the lower information granted by vote recall questions. However, this choice can be seen as problematic because of the very structure of election survey research. To the extent that voters' PTVs are measured in post-election surveys (as it is often the case) these are likely to result endogenously produced by actual voting behavior in the past election – thus partly undermining the validity of the PTV question which, ideally, should not be related to any specific election. In this paper, we try to disentangle the relationship between short-term political attitudes (leader evaluations, issue proximity, economic assessments) and voters' changing patterns of propensities to vote in both an electoral and a non-electoral context. The latter scenario serves as a means to rule out the potentially contaminating effect of voting choices on voters' PTVs. The data comes from two panel surveys of Italian voters conducted by ITANES in occasion of the 2006 general election, and in 2011 (that is, in a non-electoral year) respectively.
Nowadays it is commonplace to argue that candidates’ personal characteristics play a large part in determining how individuals vote. In the domain of political marketing this assumption is often given for granted, and no clear conceptual... more
Nowadays it is commonplace to argue that candidates’ personal characteristics play a large part in determining how individuals vote. In the domain of political marketing this assumption is often given for granted, and no clear conceptual understanding of how image crafting techniques affect voters has emerged. This article is an attempt to link political marketing’s concern for impression management strategies with our knowledge of leader effects in democratic elections. A counterfactual analysis of post-election survey data from the last three Italian elections demonstrates that political candidates can actually gain votes—and at times win elections—due to the way in which their personality profile is perceived by voters.
This chapter assesses the validity of different interpretative models of voting behavior in European elections in the light of the June 2009 results. We focus, on the one hand, on models linking the European vote to national political... more
This chapter assesses the validity of different interpretative models of voting behavior in European elections in the light of the June 2009 results. We focus, on the one hand, on models linking the European vote to national political concerns (second order model) and the domestic electoral cycle (electoral cycle model); on the other hand, we assess the ability of a model based on the role of party positions and campaigning (Europe matters model) to explain those occurrences at odds with traditional interpretations. A composite model is advanced, with the aim of providing an account for the 2009 European election results.