- European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Department Memberadd
- Nicola Maggini is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the ... moreNicola Maggini is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Milan, where he is a member of spsTREND “Hans Schadee” (a research laboratory for the analysis of public opinion, social and political change). He is also a member of CISE (Italian Centre for Electoral Studies). Previously, he was a Jean Monnet Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute, and a part-time lecturer of Comparative Politics at New York University, Florence. He also participated as a Research Fellow of the University of Florence in two Horizon 2020 research projects: “SIRIUS-Skills and Integration of Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Applicants in European Labour Markets” and “TransSOL-Transnational solidarity at times of crisis”. He has been a Teaching Assistant for a sociology module at LUISS Guido Carli in Rome, and has taught Italian Political System at Middlebury College (Florence). He holds a BA in Political Science with Distinction (2005), an MA in Political Science with Distinction (2008) from the University of Florence and a doctorate with Distinction from the Italian Institute of Human Sciences (SUM) of Florence (2012). He has been Research Fellow at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Florence from 2012 to 2015. He has published in Italian and international scientific journals: among others, Journal of Common Market Studies, West European Politics, American Behavioral Scientist, South European Society and Politics, Journal of Contemporary European Research, Italian Political Science Review, Sociological Research Online, International Sociology and Quaderni di Scienza Politica. He is the author of Young People’s Voting Behavior in Europe. A Comparative Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).edit
This book uses various concepts of ‘age’ to examine young people’s voting behaviour in six European countries between 1981 and 2000. It addresses questions such as: what are the determinants of voting choices among young people, and to... more
This book uses various concepts of ‘age’ to examine young people’s voting behaviour in six European countries between 1981 and 2000. It addresses questions such as: what are the determinants of voting choices among young people, and to what extent are these factors different from those of adults? Through an innovative approach aimed at studying party choice with a strong empirical orientation, the author argues that age is less important in influencing voting choices than having been young and socialized to politics in a given historical period. Ultimately, values and political factors explain young people’s voting choices more than social identities, which marks a change from previous generations. This book will appeal to students and scholars in comparative politics, electoral behaviour, party politics, and political sociology.
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Le elezioni europee del 22-25 maggio 2014 sono apparse, già alla vigilia, tanto rilevanti da essere potenzialmente candidate a divenire le prime “vere” elezioni europee. La crisi economica scoppiata nell’autunno del 2008 ha fatto emergere... more
Le elezioni europee del 22-25 maggio 2014 sono apparse, già alla vigilia, tanto rilevanti da essere potenzialmente candidate a divenire le prime “vere” elezioni europee. La crisi economica scoppiata nell’autunno del 2008 ha fatto emergere in questi anni le istituzioni dell’Unione Europea come il principale centro decisionale in materia di politica economica degli stati membri e come attore capace di incidere fortemente sulla vita dei cittadini europei. Inoltre, l’entrata in vigore del Trattato di Lisbona ha rafforzato il legame tra il voto popolare e l’elezione del Presidente della Commissione, spingendo così verso una maggiore rilevanza di queste elezioni europee. Sulla base di questi presupposti molti commentatori hanno messo in discussione il consolidato framework teorico che inquadra le elezioni europee come second order elections. In particolare, ci si attendeva una maggiore centralità delle tematiche europee e un successo dei partiti euroscettici, i più abili a politicizzare – in chiave negativa – i temi legati all’Europa e all’euro. Con specifico riferimento al caso italiano, invece, queste elezioni rappresentavano un cruciale banco di prova per i partiti all’indomani del terremoto elettorale del 2013 e soprattutto per il nuovo governo di Matteo Renzi, arrivato al potere senza il vaglio delle urne. Qual è stato l’esito delle elezioni europee? Si è trattato delle prime first order elections? Quali fattori spiegano il successo territorialmente differenziato dei partiti euroscettici? E come interpretare il successo del PD di Matteo Renzi in Italia? Questo sesto Dossier CISE, oltre a contenere le analisi pubblicate sul sito web CISE prima e dopo le elezioni (riguardanti sia il contesto italiano che quello europeo) raccoglie i contributi di studiosi italiani e stranieri sulle elezioni in ognuno degli altri 27 paesi dell’Unione Europea. Il risultato è un lavoro comparato di fatto unico in ambito internazionale, prodotto rapidamente all’indomani del voto con l’obiettivo di suggerire i primi spunti di interpretazione sugli esiti di queste cruciali elezioni europee.
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The European Parliament elections of 22-25 May 2014 had already been anticipated, before the vote, as potentially so relevant to become the first “true” European elections. Not only because of the economic crisis – which in recent years... more
The European Parliament elections of 22-25 May 2014 had already been anticipated, before the vote, as potentially so relevant to become the first “true” European elections. Not only because of the economic crisis – which in recent years has seen the emergence of EU (and international) institutions as key players of economic policy for Euro member states, with relevant effects for the everyday life of citizens – but also due to the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, which has reinforced the link between the popular vote and the election of the President of the EU Commission. In this context, several commentators had anticipated a potential inadequacy of the consolidated theoretical framework that conceptualizes EP elections as second-order elections. In particular, European issues could be expected to gain a substantial importance in electoral campaigns, with a potential success of Eurosceptic parties due to their ability to politicize – in a negative direction – issues related to Europe and the Euro. A further question is then related to Italy: the third Eurozone economy, on the eve of assuming the Presidency of the EU, and with a government led by a young and energetic Matteo Renzi, but lacking an electoral legitimation. Also, a country that in 2013 saw the largest success of an anti-establishment party ever recorded in Europe. This leads to the main questions behind this book. What were electoral outcomes across Europe? Are we observing the first true first-order European elections? What factors might explain the heterogeneous electoral fortunes of Eurosceptic parties? And how should we interpret the success of the Renzi government in Italy? This book addresses these questions by presenting analyses performed by a large, international research group: for the first time, the CISE has expanded beyond its core group of Italian researchers, by assembling an additional research group of 26 young, brilliant electoral scholars from all across Europe. This allowed us to publish on the CISE website – few days after the elections – concise electoral reports about all 28 EU countries, which are now collected in this book, together with other analyses by the CISE core group. The result is a unique effort, providing – few weeks after the vote – fresh and detailed data, along with first interpretations of electoral results in all EU countries, in order to help practitioners, citizens and scholars develop a first impression – and overall interpretation – of these crucial European elections.
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Il successo del Movimento 5 Stelle, con le vittorie storiche di Roma e Torino; le difficoltà del centrosinistra, con il PD di Renzi che subisce per la prima volta una pesante battuta d’arresto; la tenuta del centrodestra che dimostra,... more
Il successo del Movimento 5 Stelle, con le vittorie storiche di Roma e Torino; le difficoltà del centrosinistra, con il PD di Renzi che subisce per la prima volta una pesante battuta d’arresto; la tenuta del centrodestra che dimostra, quando è unito, di essere ancora un polo competitivo. Il tutto in un contesto di crescente astensionismo, volatilità e frammentazione del quadro politico, con la stragrande maggioranza delle sfide decise solo al ballottaggio e la presenza di leader locali e candidati civici competitivi in diverse città. Questi, in estrema sintesi, i risultati principali emersi dalla elezioni comunali del 2016. Una tornata elettorale che poteva apparire un appuntamento di secondaria importanza alla vigilia, ma che si è invece rivelato uno snodo cruciale per il futuro della politica italiana. ‘Cosa succede in città?’ è la domanda a cui cerca di dare risposta questo ottavo Dossier CISE che raccoglie tutte le analisi sul tema pubblicate sul sito web CISE prima e dopo le elezioni: l’analisi della situazione di partenza (dalle primarie al quadro dell’offerta politica); i risultati del primo turno (con approfondimenti sulla partecipazione al voto, risultati di partiti e aree politiche, flussi elettorali, voto di preferenza e sull’evoluzione del sistema partitico); i risultati dei ballottaggi, che delineano il quadro definitivo delle vittorie e delle sconfitte e mostrano con chiarezza quello che è forse il principale dato politico in chiave nazionale di queste elezioni locali: la capacità del Movimento 5 Stelle di vincere sistematicamente i ballottaggi ottenendo le ‘seconde preferenze’ degli elettori dei candidati sconfitti al primo turno, confermando di essere una forza politica con un consenso trasversale, l’unico vero ‘partito della nazione’. Le analisi di questo Dossier CISE, basate su dati aggregati e stime di flussi elettorali, forniscono una base empirica per la discussione e l’interpretazione di questa tornata elettorale e offrono degli spunti di riflessione per ricerche future.
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The 2018 Italian election produced striking results, with both a historic success for the two challenger parties (League and M5S) and massive defeats for the two mainstream parties (PD and FI). This article analyses party campaign... more
The 2018 Italian election produced striking results, with both a historic success for the two challenger parties (League and M5S) and massive defeats for the two mainstream parties (PD and FI). This article analyses party campaign strategies and their consistency with the opportunity structures provided by the configuration of Italian public opinion. Relying on issue-yield theory, original survey data were collected for both issue support and priority among Italian voters, and party emphases on issues in the electoral campaign – through Twitter data. The findings indicate a generalised ideological inconsistency of the constituencies of the main parties, while campaign strategies appear much more ideologically consistent. Moreover, it is found that parties focused mostly on conflict-mobilisation strategies, rather than on problem solving. Finally, the article shows that, in general, parties acted strategically, by aligning their campaign to the available opportunities, although with relevant variations across parties.
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This study aims to explain the solidarity behavior toward a specific needy group that is not part of the national community (refugees) in comparison with vulnerable in-groups (the disabled or the unemployed), taking into account the... more
This study aims to explain the solidarity behavior toward a specific needy group that is not part of the national community (refugees) in comparison with vulnerable in-groups (the disabled or the unemployed), taking into account the interplay between individuals’ political orientations and their social dispositions based on the ranking preferences of solidarity beneficiaries. Through a multivariate regression analysis of survey data in eight European countries, we find that respondents’ ranking preferences have a lower impact on solidarity practices toward refugees, which are strongly fostered by progressive political orientations. This means that support for refugees relies on a universalistic conception of solidarity and entails political commitment to both leftist positions on economic issues and to libertarian stances on cultural issues. The latter only affect solidarity actions toward needy out-groups, unveiling the tensions between universalistic-particularistic concerns that are embodied in individual perceptions of deservingness between groups and in the cultural–identitarian dimension of political conflict.
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In the wake of the harshest economic crisis since 1929, in several European countries there has been a rise of Eurosceptic parties that oppose EU integration. The 2014 European Parliament elections were a fundamental turning point for... more
In the wake of the harshest economic crisis since 1929, in several European countries there has been a rise of Eurosceptic parties that oppose EU integration. The 2014 European Parliament elections were a fundamental turning point for these parties. In this article, after a theoretical discussion on the concept of Euroscepticism, we provide an updated classification of Eurosceptic parties after the 2014 European Parliament elections. We show the cross-country variability of such parties’ results and present two hypotheses aiming at explaining Eurosceptic parties’ results, one related to each country’s economic context and one related to each country’s political-institutional context. Through a comparative approach and the use of quantitative data, we test the two hypotheses by creating two standardised indices of economic and political-institutional contexts. Three important findings are shown: Eurosceptic parties perform better in either rich, creditor countries or in poor countries; Eurosceptic parties perform better in countries with peculiar political-institutional features, such as high levels of party system instability and a more permissive electoral system; finally, and crucially, favourable political-institutional contexts seem to be more important than favourable economic contexts for Eurosceptic parties’ electoral results
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This article has the purpose to assess if and how party system nationalization affects individual voting behaviour. Previous studies on party system nationalization have focused on systemic processes, exclusively dealing with aggregate... more
This article has the purpose to assess if and how party system nationalization affects individual voting behaviour. Previous studies on party system nationalization have focused on systemic processes, exclusively dealing with aggregate data. The authors address this topic from a new empirical perspective, arguing that party system nationalization could act as a context dimension interacting with the vote choice function. How does this specific context dimension moderate the explanatory power of individual-level characteristics? On which determinants of vote choice does party system nationalization have a greater impact? To answer these questions, the authors focus on 23 European countries through the use of the 2009 European Election Study. The empirical analysis shows that in nationalized contexts the impact of the left-right dimension on party support is higher than in territorialized contexts, whereas that of class as well as of culture-related variables is lower. The authors also discuss the implications of these findings.
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The weakening of traditional parties and of their territorial rooting which has occurred over the last decades has brought back the scholarly interest on the local dynamics, namely, on the social and political transformations involving... more
The weakening of traditional parties and of their territorial rooting which has occurred over the last decades has brought back the scholarly interest on the local dynamics, namely, on the social and political transformations involving local areas. An increasing number of scholars has therefore focused on the \uabperipheries\ubb, those urban areas that are traditionally associated with a high level of socio-economic distress, wherein inhabitants feel themselves as economically disadvantaged, socially marginalized and politically excluded. This paper is part of such research strand by investigating the variation in the electoral results in three Italian cities \u2013 Bologna, Florence, and Rome \u2013 in relation to the spatial distance from the urban centre and to the socio-economic distress. More notably, the paper answers two main questions: a) are the most distant areas from the historical centre also those with a higher level of socio-economic distress? b) what kind of relationship is there between voting and socio-economic distress, and how does such relation change over the post-crisis years? To answer these questions, we consider the results of four elections (parliamentary elections 2008, 2013, 2018; European elections 2019) in the three cities investigated, which are similarly characterized by an electoral decline of the Pd (but also of the Pdl/FI) to the benefit of M5s and League (and in part also of FdI), besides being located in central Italy. By using an original dataset combining socio-economic and electoral variables at the district level, the article analyzes the variation in the electoral support for the main Italian political parties, with a particular focus on both mainstream (Pd and Pdl/FI) and antiestablishment parties (M5s and League)
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Das Issue Competition Comparative Project (ICCP) ist ein vergleichendes Forschungsprojekt zum Thema Parteienwettbewerb. Ziel ist es, den Parteienwettbewerb aus der Perspektive des Themenwettbewerbs zu analysieren, d.h. politische Parteien... more
Das Issue Competition Comparative Project (ICCP) ist ein vergleichendes Forschungsprojekt zum Thema Parteienwettbewerb. Ziel ist es, den Parteienwettbewerb aus der Perspektive des Themenwettbewerbs zu analysieren, d.h. politische Parteien und Führer als rationale, stimmmaximierende politische Unternehmer zu konzipieren, die die verfügbaren Themenmöglichkeiten in einem Kontext, in dem die Wähler über ideologische Grenzen hinweg verfügbar sind, strategisch nutzen. Die erste ICCP-Datenerhebungsrunde erstreckte sich auf sechs westeuropäische Länder (Niederlande, Frankreich, Vereinigtes Königreich, Deutschland, Österreich und Italien), die 2017 und 2018 Parlamentswahlen abgehalten haben. Der Wahlkampf von politischen Parteien und Parteiführern wurde untersucht, indem ihre Aktivitäten auf Twitter in den vier Monaten vor dem Wahltag beobachtet, gesammelt und analysiert wurden. Für jede Partei in den 6 ICCP-Ländern wurde die Überwachungstätigkeit auf dem öffentlichen Profil der Partei und auf dem öffentlichen Profil der wichtigsten Spitzenreiter/Führungskräfte der Partei durchgeführt. 1. Umfragedatensatz Themen: Politikinteresse; Wahlabsicht; Bewertung der aktuellen wirtschaftlichen Situation; erwartete wirtschaftliche Situation in 12 Monaten; Wahlbereitschaft verschiedener politischer Parteien; Parteiidentifikation; Stärke der Parteiidentifikation; Parteinähe zu verschiedenen Parteien; Partei, die für das Erreichen unterschiedlicher politischer Ziele glaubwürdig ist; Befragter weist dem politischen Ziel eine hohe, durchschnittliche oder niedrige Priorität zu; Position zu Positionierungsfragen (Selbstplatzierung auf einer Skala von 1-6, mit Werten 1-3, die einem Ziel entsprechen, und Werten 4-6, die dem rivalisierenden Ziel entsprechen); gemeinsame politische Ziele (Wertigkeitsprobleme); links-rechts Selbstplatzierung; Anerkennung oder Missbilligung der bisherigen Regierungsbilanz; Kandidatenmerkmale (Kenntnisse über Politik, stark, ehrlich und vorsichtig) waren anwendbar. Demographie: Geschlecht; Alter (Geburtsjahr, Alt [...]
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Globalisation and EU integration have reshaped political alignments in western Europe, with the emergence of new conflicts within a political space still ideologically structured in two dimensions (economic and cultural). However, recent... more
Globalisation and EU integration have reshaped political alignments in western Europe, with the emergence of new conflicts within a political space still ideologically structured in two dimensions (economic and cultural). However, recent challenger parties appear to question such alleged bi-dimensionality, e.g. combining anti-immigrant stances with progressive views on moral issues. In light of such challenges, the article aims to understand whether citizens’ positions on policy issues can still be interpreted according to latent ideological dimensions, exploring possible differences across distinct party electorates and age groups (young vs. older people). The article analyses the ideological consistency of voters’ issue preferences and the dimensionality of the issue space in seven western European countries through original survey data and scaling techniques. Results show that most citizens (especially young and right-wing voters) take ideologically inconsistent positions on cult...
(edited book) Primo Paese occidentale a essere colpito dalla pandemia da Covid-19, dal febbraio 2020 l’Italia è stata investita da un intreccio di cambiamenti sociali, economici e politici senza precedenti. L’emergenza sanitaria ha... more
(edited book) Primo Paese occidentale a essere colpito dalla pandemia da Covid-19, dal febbraio 2020 l’Italia è stata investita da un intreccio di cambiamenti sociali, economici e politici senza precedenti. L’emergenza sanitaria ha comportato uno stravolgimento delle modalità di convivenza e interazione sociale, a cui si sono presto associate una crisi economica e una riconfigurazione generale dello scenario politico. Alla luce di tutto ciò, quali segni la pandemia lascerà sull’opinione pubblica italiana? Concentrandosi sui risvolti più specificatamente politici, il volume curato da Nicola Maggini e Andrea Pedrazzani (Università degli Studi di Milano) prova a capire i cambiamenti dell’opinione pubblica italiana. In particolare, quali ripercussioni ha avuto sinora la pandemia sulle idee che gli italiani hanno sui temi di rilevanza pubblica, sui loro atteggiamenti valoriali, sulle loro predisposizioni politiche e sui loro orientamenti di voto? Che cosa è cambiato rispetto alla fase precedente la pandemia e che cosa invece è rimasto sostanzialmente immutato? E come si va ridefinendo lo spazio di competizione elettorale? Per rispondere a queste domande, i curatori si sono avvalsi del contributo dei membri del Laboratorio SPS-TREND “Hans Schadee” del Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali e Politiche dell’Università degli Studi di Milano utilizzando i dati originali della ricerca ResPOnsE Covid-19. Come siamo cambiati?
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La letteratura sulla scelta di voto è pressoché sterminata. Le potenziali spiegazioni del perché un individuo decida di votare un certo partito (o un candidato) anziché un altro sono svariate e hanno dato origine a floridi filoni di... more
La letteratura sulla scelta di voto è pressoché sterminata. Le potenziali spiegazioni del perché un individuo decida di votare un certo partito (o un candidato) anziché un altro sono svariate e hanno dato origine a floridi filoni di ricerca sul comportamento elettorale (tra gli studi classici, si vedano per esempio Lazarsfeld, Berelson e Gaudet 1944; Downs 1957; Campbell et al. 1960; Popkin 1991). L’approccio seguito in questo volume assume che la decisione di voto si articoli in due passaggi: il primo concerne la disponibilità (o propensione) che l’individuo ha a votare per ciascuna delle opzioni in campo; il secondo ha a che fare con la traduzione di queste disponibilità nella scelta per un partito specifico (Van der Eijk et al. 2006). Il presente capitolo si concentra sul secondo di questi passaggi, esaminando come le disponibilità di voto degli italiani si siano tradotte nella scelta (ipotetica) di votare per un determinato partito nel corso della pandemia da Covid-19.
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This article has the purpose to assess if and how party system nationalization affects individual voting behaviour. Previous studies on party system nationalization have focused on systemic processes, exclusively dealing with aggregate... more
This article has the purpose to assess if and how party system nationalization affects individual voting behaviour. Previous studies on party system nationalization have focused on systemic processes, exclusively dealing with aggregate data. The authors address this topic from a new empirical perspective, arguing that party system nationalization could act as a context dimension interacting with the vote choice function. How does this specific context dimension moderate the explanatory power of individual-level characteristics? On which determinants of vote choice does party system nationalization have a greater impact? To answer these questions, the authors focus on 23 European countries through the use of the 2009 European Election Study. The empirical analysis shows that in nationalized contexts the impact of the left-right dimension on party support is higher than in territorialized contexts, whereas that of class as well as of culture-related variables is lower. The authors also discuss the implications of these findings
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This article analyze the results of the italian municipal elections held in May 2011. First we make simple count of the municipalities won by varius political blocs, secondly we make a comparison with the results of regional elections of... more
This article analyze the results of the italian municipal elections held in May 2011. First we make simple count of the municipalities won by varius political blocs, secondly we make a comparison with the results of regional elections of 2010. We have conpared data concerning both the performances of political blocks and those of the political parties who appeared in this elections. We also presents the results of disaggregated data, both from the demographics standpoint and from geographical point view. The analysis shows a clear electoraldefeat of the center-right coalition both in terms of municipalities lost and in terms of percentage of votes obtained. The fact that these two phenomena have occured especially in the North, its traditional area of electoral strenght, make this defeat particulary significant. The centre left coalition, due the difficulties of itsopponent, gets a good results in terms of number of municipalities won, while not improving itsperformance in therm of...
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Il successo del Movimento 5 Stelle, con le vittorie storiche di Roma e Torino; le difficoltà del centrosinistra, con il PD di Renzi che subisce per la prima volta una pesante battuta d’arresto; la tenuta del centrodestra che dimostra,... more
Il successo del Movimento 5 Stelle, con le vittorie storiche di Roma e Torino; le difficoltà del centrosinistra, con il PD di Renzi che subisce per la prima volta una pesante battuta d’arresto; la tenuta del centrodestra che dimostra, quando è unito, di essere ancora un polo competitivo. Il tutto in un contesto di crescente astensionismo, volatilità e frammentazione del quadro politico, con la stragrande maggioranza delle sfide decise solo al ballottaggio e la presenza di leader locali e candidati civici competitivi in diverse città. Questi, in estrema sintesi, i risultati principali emersi dalla elezioni comunali del 2016. Una tornata elettorale che poteva apparire un appuntamento di secondaria importanza alla vigilia, ma che si è invece rivelato uno snodo cruciale per il futuro della politica italiana. ‘Cosa succede in città?’ è la domanda a cui cerca di dare risposta questo ottavo Dossier CISE che raccoglie tutte le analisi sul tema pubblicate sul sito web CISE prima e dopo le elezioni: l’analisi della situazione di partenza (dalle primarie al quadro dell’offerta politica); i risultati del primo turno (con approfondimenti sulla partecipazione al voto, risultati di partiti e aree politiche, flussi elettorali, voto di preferenza e sull’evoluzione del sistema partitico); i risultati dei ballottaggi, che delineano il quadro definitivo delle vittorie e delle sconfitte e mostrano con chiarezza quello che è forse il principale dato politico in chiave nazionale di queste elezioni locali: la capacità del Movimento 5 Stelle di vincere sistematicamente i ballottaggi ottenendo le ‘seconde preferenze’ degli elettori dei candidati sconfitti al primo turno, confermando di essere una forza politica con un consenso trasversale, l’unico vero ‘partito della nazione’. Le analisi di questo Dossier CISE, basate su dati aggregati e stime di flussi elettorali, forniscono una base empirica per la discussione e l’interpretazione di questa tornata elettorale e offrono degli spunti di riflessione per ricerche future.
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As a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, several governments adopted disease containment measures limiting individual freedom, especially freedom of movement. Our contribution aims at studying the role played by party preferences in... more
As a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, several governments adopted disease containment measures limiting individual freedom, especially freedom of movement. Our contribution aims at studying the role played by party preferences in explaining attitudes towards those freedom limitations during the pandemic, taking into account the moderating role played by confidence in institutions and collectivist-individualistic orientations. Focussing on Italy, as the first western democracy to be hit by Covid-19 and to adopt harsh restrictive measures, we analyse data coming from the ResPOnsE COVID-19 project. Our study initially investigates whether attitudes towards freedom restrictions are associated with the dynamics of the pandemic and the institutional responses to it. Then, through multilevel regression models, we test several hypotheses about the relationship between party preferences, confidence in institutions, collectivistic orientations and public acceptance of Covid-19 containmen...
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Supplemental material, Online_Appendix for Politicization of Solidarity Toward Out-Groups: The Case of Refugees by Nicola Maggini and Eva Fernández G. G. in American Behavioral Scientist
Over the last years, Italian civil society organisations have been working on a daily basis to mitigate the impact of both the global economic crisis and the refugee crisis, which have increased social vulnerabilities. Relying on the data... more
Over the last years, Italian civil society organisations have been working on a daily basis to mitigate the impact of both the global economic crisis and the refugee crisis, which have increased social vulnerabilities. Relying on the data gathered through 30 in-depth interviews with transnational solidarity organisations’ representatives, this chapter analyses solidarity practices in three fields of activity: disability, unemployment and migration. Results show that solidarity attitudes, practices and discourses are strongly influenced by the policy domain in which the organisations are active. Furthermore, the crisis led organisations to search for new strategies and approaches, even though it has been an ineffective vector of transnationalisation due to lack of resources, and the necessity to cope with pressing needs at national and local level/s.
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In about two months, precisely between the 22nd and the 25th of May depending on the country, voters from 28 member states of the European Union will be called to the ballot boxes to elect the new members of the European Parliament.... more
In about two months, precisely between the 22nd and the 25th of May depending on the country, voters from 28 member states of the European Union will be called to the ballot boxes to elect the new members of the European Parliament. Traditionally considered “second order” elections (Reif and Schmitt, 1980) with respect to the more important national ones, the 2014 European elections appear to have acquired centrality and wider importance compared to the past. This does not depend exclusively on the growing importance of the European Parliament and of its legislative functions in the Union but especially on the consequences of the economic crisis that hit sovereign debts across Europe since 2008, leading the EU to emerge as the main decision maker regarding the political economy of member states.
While official science has given its answer to the question on the origin of the Coronavirus (animal to human transmission), alternative theories on human creation of the virus – purposely or inadvertently – have flourished. Those... more
While official science has given its answer to the question on the origin of the Coronavirus (animal to human transmission), alternative theories on human creation of the virus – purposely or inadvertently – have flourished. Those alternative theories can be easily located among the family of conspiracy theories, as they always assume some secretive activity of some groups acting on their self-interest and against the good of the many. The article assesses the prevalence of these beliefs during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, studies its development during the pandemic, and investigates its potential determinants. In particular, it analyses the relationship between beliefs in alternative theories on the origin of the virus and political orientation, by arguing that the association cannot be attributed to (politically) motivated reasoning, as the issue has not been highly politicized in the Italian context. Alternatively, the article suggests that the main factor driving beliefs in a...
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This volume is published with the contribution of the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Florence, with funds from the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union (Project SharEU -... more
This volume is published with the contribution of the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Florence, with funds from the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union (Project SharEU - 574729-EPP-1-2016-1-IT-EPPJMO-CoE)
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In the wake of the harshest economic crisis since 1929, in several European countries there has been a rise of Eurosceptic parties that oppose EU integration. The 2014 European Parliament elections were a fundamental turning point for... more
In the wake of the harshest economic crisis since 1929, in several European countries there has been a rise of Eurosceptic parties that oppose EU integration. The 2014 European Parliament elections were a fundamental turning point for these parties. In this article, after a theoretical discussion on the concept of Euroscepticism, we provide an updated classification of Eurosceptic parties after the 2014 European Parliament elections. We show the cross-country variability of such parties’ results and present two hypotheses aiming at explaining Eurosceptic parties’ results, one related to each country’s economic context and one related to each country’s political-institutional context. Through a comparative approach and the use of quantitative data, we test the two hypotheses by creating two standardised indices of economic and political-institutional contexts. Three important findings are shown: Eurosceptic parties perform better in either rich, creditor countries or in poor countrie...
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The European elections to be held between 22 and 25 May 2014 (depending on the country) may acquire, according to many observers, a centrality and significance much wider than in the past. To understand it, it is worth looking at how many... more
The European elections to be held between 22 and 25 May 2014 (depending on the country) may acquire, according to many observers, a centrality and significance much wider than in the past. To understand it, it is worth looking at how many Europeans go to the polls to elect their representatives in the European Parliament. In fact, in the field of electoral studies, European elections have always been regarded as “second-order” elections (Reif and Schmitt, 1980), i.e., elections where the stakes are lower—or perceived as such—than in the general elections—when the competition aims at the formation of a government of their own country—and consequently, the turnout is lower than in national elections. To understand the results in terms of electoral participation of the upcoming European elections, it is therefore necessary to have a clear picture of the historical evolution of turnout levels in the course of the seven European elections, which were held between 1979 and 2009. Figure 1 ...
The European Parliament (EP) elections that took place between the 22nd and the 25th of May 2014 (depending on the country) have gained a much higher relevance than in the past. This can be understood by looking at how many European... more
The European Parliament (EP) elections that took place between the 22nd and the 25th of May 2014 (depending on the country) have gained a much higher relevance than in the past. This can be understood by looking at how many European citizens turned out to choose their representatives at the EP. In the field of electoral studies, EP elections have always been considered as a second-order elections (Reif and Schmitt, 1980), i.e., elections in which the stakes are lower (or are perceived as lower) compared to general elections (in which the formation of the national government is at stake). As a consequence, turnout is lower compared to national elections. As already mentioned in a previous article,2 over time, there has been a decrease in the turnout: in 1979, 62% of the voters went to the polls while 43% turned out in 2009, with a decrease of 19 percentage points. The first figure of these elections is that this decreasing trend in the turnout has stopped. In the entire European Unio...
On 4 March 2018 Italy went to the polls amidst an intense wave of anti-establishment sentiment. The parties that contributed most to, and capitalized from, this political climate were the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S-Five Star Movement) and... more
On 4 March 2018 Italy went to the polls amidst an intense wave of anti-establishment sentiment. The parties that contributed most to, and capitalized from, this political climate were the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S-Five Star Movement) and the Lega Nord (Lega-Northern League), that is, the challenger, populist parties. Given the Eurosceptical nature of the M5S and even more of the Lega, the election result has been regarded by many as a blow to Europe. However, while the victory of Eurosceptic parties in the 2018 election is a matter of fact, whether Euroscepticism was one of the main explanations for it remains to be determined. Thus, the goal of this article was to assess exactly the role played by Euroscepticism in the outcome of the 2018 Italian general election. For this purpose, we analysed how and to what extent EU-related issues were able to shape parties’ strategies and voters’ preferences. More specifically, we examined, on the one hand, the emphasis given to them by the parties both in their manifestos and in their official Twitter feeds during the electoral campaign, and, on the other hand, the voters’ preferences and priorities on those issues and, in comparison, on other issues. Results show that it is hard to support the interpretation that Euroscepticism was a main determinant of the election outcome. The (still minoritarian) negative views of the EU and the euro did not play a direct role either in shaping parties’ mobilization strategies or in structuring the voting choices.
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IntroduzioneThis article has the purpose to assess if and how party system nationalization affects individual voting behaviour. Previous studies on party system nationalization have focused on systemic processes, exclusively dealing with... more
IntroduzioneThis article has the purpose to assess if and how party system nationalization affects individual voting behaviour. Previous studies on party system nationalization have focused on systemic processes, exclusively dealing with aggregate data. The authors address this topic from a new empirical perspective, arguing that party system nationalization could act as a context dimension interacting with the vote choice function. How does this specific context dimension moderate the explanatory power of individual-level characteristics? On which determinants of vote choice does party system nationalization have a greater impact? To answer these questions, the authors focus on 23 European countries through the use of the 2009 European Election Study. The empirical analysis shows that in nationalized contexts the impact of the left-right dimension on party support is higher than in territorialized contexts, whereas that of class as well as of culture-related variables is lower. The...
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Against the background of crisis and cuts, citizens can express solidarity with groups in various ways. Using novel survey data this article explores the attitudes and behaviours of citizens in their expressions of solidarity with... more
Against the background of crisis and cuts, citizens can express solidarity with groups in various ways. Using novel survey data this article explores the attitudes and behaviours of citizens in their expressions of solidarity with disabled people and in doing so illuminates the differences and similarities across two European contexts: Italy and the UK. The findings reveal pools of solidarity with disabled people across both countries that have on the one hand similar foundations such as the social embeddedness and social trust of citizens, while on the other hand contain some differences, such as the more direct and active nature of solidarity in Italy compared to the UK and the role of religiosity as an important determinant, particularly in Italy. Across both countries the role of ‘deservingness’ was key to understanding solidarity, and the study’s conclusions raise questions about a solidarity embedded by a degree of paternalism and even religious piety.
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The 2014 European elections have now ended with the consequent allocation of the seats among the various parties at the national level. The national parties will then have to gather into political groups2 within the European Parliament... more
The 2014 European elections have now ended with the consequent allocation of the seats among the various parties at the national level. The national parties will then have to gather into political groups2 within the European Parliament (EP). In this article, I will firstly analyse the electoral results of the parties that belonged to the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) group in the previous parliament. This political group gathers the populist and Eurosceptic parties and, in some cases, even some explicitly anti-Euro and antiEU parties in the EP (Taggart, 1998; Taggart and Szczerbiak, 2004; Szczerbiak and Taggart, 2008). As Figure 1 shows, the EFD gained 38 seats3 out of 751— which correspond to 5% of the total EP seats—increasing its presence in the parliament by seven seats compared to 2009 (when it gained 31 seats). As already mentioned in a previous article4, the EFD was born as a political group on 1 July 2009, and in the previous legislatures, it was made of 13 parties f...
This chapter aims to investigate whether (restrictive) policy measures on migration across seven European countries (the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, Switzerland and the UK) are better explained by political factors,... more
This chapter aims to investigate whether (restrictive) policy measures on migration across seven European countries (the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, Switzerland and the UK) are better explained by political factors, rather than the actual number of migrants/refugees/asylum seekers, their integration process or the effective European societies’ demographic and economic needs, within each national context. The analysis shows, indeed, that restrictive legislative and policy measures on immigration and integration issues seem to be not justified by the reality of immigration in the selected European countries. Conversely, these restrictive measures can be explained by some relevant political factors: prevalence of negative attitudes towards immigration among European citizens and salience of the immigration issue; electoral relevance of populist radical-right parties who mostly mobilized on immigration issues and significant diffusion of their authoritarian/traditio...
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As in 2006, the recent elections were very close. But, unlike in 2006, the 2013 election reached a stalemate. Pierluigi Bernard's center-left coalition won in the Chamber of deputies by only a 0.4% vote margin against Silvio... more
As in 2006, the recent elections were very close. But, unlike in 2006, the 2013 election reached a stalemate. Pierluigi Bernard's center-left coalition won in the Chamber of deputies by only a 0.4% vote margin against Silvio Berlusconi's center-right. However, thanks to the electoral system, the winning coalition enjoys a substantial majority of seats. Not so in the Senate where the center-left is still the coalition that got a plurality of the popular vote, but the different electoral system from that of the Chamber did not translate it into a majority of seats. This is in a nutshell the outcome of the 2013 elections in Italy.Indeed, the widespread expectation was that the center-left would win with a larger margin. Most of the polls had indicated a consistently favourable trend supportive of Bernard's coalition up to the last few days before the vote. What happened at the ballot box on February24th and 25th is still an enigma to some extent. In this article we will try...
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The municipal elections held in June 2016 involved around 15 million voters and 1,342 councils, of which 143 had more than 15,000 inhabitants, including the four largest cities in the country (Rome, Milan, Naples, and Turin). Looking... more
The municipal elections held in June 2016 involved around 15 million voters and 1,342 councils, of which 143 had more than 15,000 inhabitants, including the four largest cities in the country (Rome, Milan, Naples, and Turin). Looking beyond the number and importance of the councils involved, this round of elections was particularly significant because it fell halfway through an electoral cycle that had begun in 2013 with the historic success of the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, Five Star Movement) in the general election (Maggini and De Lucia 2014; Tronconi 2015a), which saw a shift from the traditional bipolar system of the Second Republic to a “tripolar” system (Chiaramonte and Emanuele 2014; Tronconi 2015b). After this “electoral earthquake” (Chiaramonte and De Sio 2014), the beginning of the new cycle was marked by other critical political and electoral events: the replacement of Enrico Letta with Matteo Renzi in Palazzo Chigi (February 2014), the remarkable success of the Partito De...
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As a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, several governments adopted disease containment measures limiting individual freedom, especially freedom of movement. Our contribution aims at studying the role played by party preferences in... more
As a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, several governments adopted disease containment measures limiting individual freedom, especially freedom of movement. Our contribution aims at studying the role played by party preferences in explaining attitudes towards those freedom limitations during the pandemic, taking into account the moderating role played by confidence in institutions and collectivist-individualistic orientations. Focussing on Italy, as the first western democracy to be hit by Covid-19 and to adopt harsh restrictive measures, we analyse data coming from the ResPOnsE COVID-19 project. Our study initially investigates whether attitudes towards freedom restrictions are associated with the dynamics of the pandemic and the institutional responses to it. Then, through multilevel regression models, we test several hypotheses about the relationship between party preferences, confidence in institutions, collectivistic orientations and public acceptance of Covid-19 containment measures limiting individual freedom. Findings show that party preferences are associated with different attitudes towards freedom restrictions to contain the pandemic, but this occurs only if people have individualistic orientations. Collectivistic orientations and confidence in institutions are positively associated with acceptance of freedom restrictions, regardless of party preferences. As regards the latter, neither a classical ideological explanation (conservative people more inclined to accept limitations to personal freedoms) nor a government-opposition explanation (supporters of government parties more inclined to accept freedom restrictions) seems to be adequate to fully account for the mechanisms behind acceptance of Covid-19 harsh containment measures. Thus, we offer an alternative ideological explanation by pointing out the ambiguous nature of contemporary right-wing populisms.
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While official science has given its answer to the question on the origin of the Coronavirus (animal to human transmission), alternative theories on human creation of the viruspurposely or inadvertentlyhave flourished. Those alternative... more
While official science has given its answer to the question on the origin of the Coronavirus (animal to human transmission), alternative theories on human creation of the viruspurposely or inadvertentlyhave flourished. Those alternative theories can be easily located among the family of conspiracy theories, as they always assume some secretive activity of some groups acting on their self-interest and against the good of the many. The article assesses the prevalence of these beliefs during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, studies its development during the pandemic, and investigates its potential determinants. In particular, it analyses the relationship between beliefs in alternative theories on the origin of the virus and political orientation, by arguing that the association cannot be attributed to (politically) motivated reasoning, as the issue has not been highly politicized in the Italian context. Alternatively, the article suggests that the main factor driving beliefs in alternative accounts on the origins of the virus is institutional trust. Political orientation moderates its effects, depending on specific conditions (e.g. cue taking, position of the supported party either in government or opposition), and eventually reinforcing scepticism towards epistemic authorities for those with low trust in institutions. Data come from the ResPOnsE COVID-19 survey, carried out with daily samples from April to July 2020 (N > 15.000) to monitor the development of the Italian public opinion during the Coronavirus pandemic.
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The weakening of traditional parties and of their territorial rooting which has occurred over the last decades has brought back the scholarly interest on the local dynamics, namely, on the social and political transformations involving... more
The weakening of traditional parties and of their territorial rooting which has occurred over the last decades has brought back the scholarly interest on the local dynamics, namely, on the social and political transformations involving local areas. An increasing number of scholars has therefore focused on the «peripheries», those urban areas that are traditionally associated with a high level of socio-economic distress, wherein inhab- itants feel themselves as economically disadvantaged, socially marginalized and politi- cally excluded. This paper is part of such research strand by investigating the variation in the electoral results in three Italian cities – Bologna, Florence, and Rome – in rela- tion to the spatial distance from the urban centre and to the socio-economic distress. More notably, the paper answers two main questions: a) are the most distant areas from the historical centre also those with a higher level of socio-economic distress? b) what kind of relationship is there between voting and socio-economic distress, and how does such relation change over the post-crisis years? To answer these questions, we consider the results of four elections (parliamentary elections 2008, 2013, 2018; European elections 2019) in the three cities investigated, which are similarly charac- terized by an electoral decline of the Pd (but also of the Pdl/FI) to the benefit of M5s and League (and in part also of FdI), besides being located in central Italy. By using an original dataset combining socio-economic and electoral variables at the level, the article analyzes the variation in the electoral support for the main Italian political parties, with a particular focus on both mainstream (Pd and Pdl/FI) and anti- establishment parties (M5s and League).
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The weakening of traditional parties and of their territorial rooting which has occurred over the last decades has brought back the scholarly interest on the local dynamics, namely, on the social and political transformations involving... more
The weakening of traditional parties and of their territorial rooting which has occurred over the last decades has brought back the scholarly interest on the local dynamics, namely, on the social and political transformations involving local areas. An increasing number of scholars has therefore focused on the «peripheries», those urban areas that are traditionally associated with a high level of socio-economic distress, wherein inhab- itants feel themselves as economically disadvantaged, socially marginalized and politi- cally excluded. This paper is part of such research strand by investigating the variation in the electoral results in three Italian cities – Bologna, Florence, and Rome – in rela- tion to the spatial distance from the urban centre and to the socio-economic distress. More notably, the paper answers two main questions: a) are the most distant areas from the historical centre also those with a higher level of socio-economic distress? b) what kind of relationship is there between voting and socio-economic distress, and how does such relation change over the post-crisis years? To answer these questions, we consider the results of four elections (parliamentary elections 2008, 2013, 2018; European elections 2019) in the three cities investigated, which are similarly charac- terized by an electoral decline of the Pd (but also of the Pdl/FI) to the benefit of M5s and League (and in part also of FdI), besides being located in central Italy. By using an original dataset combining socio-economic and electoral variables at the level, the article analyzes the variation in the electoral support for the main Italian political parties, with a particular focus on both mainstream (Pd and Pdl/FI) and anti- establishment parties (M5s and League).