Scienza Politica

This volume explores the evolution of populism in Italy in the last decade. On SCIENZA POLITICA 13 the one hand, the contributions in this volume provide an updated “state of the art” of research on Italian populism, on the other hand - by starting from the assumption of the multifaceted nature of populism - this book provides the reader with fundamental tools to explore populism from a diachronic and multi-dimensional approach. The authors  investigate in depth different di - mensions, from the internal organisation of populist parties to their commu - nication styles, from their positioning on specific issues, such as immigration and corruption, to the different strategies they use in different arenas and contexts.

Questo libro propone un esame approfondito della protesta in Italia durante la crisi economica (2009-2014), integrando metodi di ricerca diversi, e focalizzando l’analisi sugli aspetti macro (contesto), meso (proteste, organizzazioni)e micro (cittadini, partecipanti, attivisti) all’interno di un coerente quadro teorico. In questo modo spera di fornire un’analisi esauriente arricchita dalla comparazione con altri paesi del Sud Europa. Attraverso la prospettiva storica-comparata, l’autore cerca di dimostrare che le differenze negli esiti della protesta anti-austerity in questi paesi siano dipese da processi storico-politici che affondano le loro radici nelle diverse modalità di transizione alla democrazia di massa.

The last decades have seen an increase in the use of primary elections and one-member-one-vote systems to select party leaders and election candidates. Despite significantly increased attention to this from the contemporary political science literature, there is still a lack of truly comparative works at the European level. The book addresses this gap in our understanding by analyzing one hundred leadership elections – selecting party chairs and chief executive candidates at the national level – carried out by the mainstream centre-left and centre-right parties in five Western European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom) over the last thirty years. In doing so, this book proposes a new theoretical framework for empirically assessing the extent to which Western European parties have adopted more inclusive procedures of selection, and investigates the impact of these procedures on the divisiveness of leadership elections, party leaders’ survival in office and parties’ electoral performance.

Alla metà degli anni Settanta del secolo passato, commentando lo stato dell’arte degli studi sui partiti politici, G. Sartori evidenziava il divario esistente tra la mole delle conoscenze empiriche accumulate, da un lato; e la scarsità di elaborazioni teoriche, dall’altro. A oltre quarant’anni di distanza, l’assenza di una ‘teoria dei partiti politici’ e la parcellizzazione degli studi caratterizzano ancora la Scienza Politica. L’obiettivo di questa ricerca è duplice. In primo luogo, essa si propone di far dialogare la Teoria delle Organizzazioni e la letteratura dedicata al mutamento organizzativo dei partiti politici. In secondo luogo, attraverso questo lavoro si intende sviluppare una teoria formale delle organizzazioni di partito che combini gli assunti del neo-istituzionalismo con un innovativo approccio multi-dimensionale. L’analisi empirica si concentra sul caso italiano, tra il 1994 e il 2018. Le caratteristiche della transizione ‘continua’ del sistema politico italiano rendono quest’ultimo un banco di prova unico per uno studio diacronico e comparato dei processi di sviluppo organizzativo dei partiti.

This book aims at investigating, through the analysis of voting records, existing surveys and original survey data, the voting behaviour of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). As the European Parliament’s centrality within the European Union’s institutional structure has increased, its political groups have been generally described as cohesive actors: MEPs from the same political group are likely to vote together, regardless of their nationality. Yet, this tells us only part of the story: what happens when particular interests trigger contrasts between European and national allegiances? Is the European Parliament truly supranational or do national dynamics still exist at European level? And, in this second case, to what extent? This study aims at answering these questions through an innovative mixed-method approach. In particular, new data from an original survey is used to integrate traditional quantitative methods of parliamentary behaviour analysis. Finally, this is coupled with an in-depth qualitative assessment of the empirical data. This book contributes to the literature by providing a refined theory of voting behaviour in the European Parliament and original evidence on the recurrent question of political group membership versus national affiliation. It can be of interest to scholars of voting behaviour as well as to practitioners concerned with the internal dynamics of  the European Parliament.

This book aims at investigating, through the analysis of secondary literature, electoral manifestos, congress documents and media statements, the current structuring of political parties of the Left into various sub-families. In particular, have old partitions between the sub-families of the Left largely faded out? And have new lines of competition amongst left parties emerged? Historically, political parties situated to the left of social democracy were diverse and difficultly they were classified in a single coherent political family. Several subtypes have been distinguished in the literature. This had made of the Left a less homogeneous party family than the Christian-democratic, Socialist, Green or Liberal ones. But recently things have changed. The neo-liberal and austerity measures adopted in Europe through the very last years under the auspices of the mainstream parties and of the EU institutions not only have facilitated a broad rise of Eurosceptic and populistic responses, but also have reshaped the Left field geography, which now has to be reassessed. In addition, the book focuses on to what extent and through which means left parties cooperate at the EU level (and in some cases even integrate) in the shadow of austerity. This study on the multifaceted constellation of European left-wing parties aims at providing a contribution to existing literature in the field. Therefore, it could be of interest to scholars, but also to all those who are fascinated with anticipating the possible evolution of the Anti-Austerity Left in Europe.  

Le pressanti necessità di riforma...

I partiti politici sono stati attori importanti del processo di integrazione europea

Il processo di integrazione europea ha conosciuto nell'ultimo quindicennio un formidabile sviluppo