Emanuele Massetti

The Party Politics of Territorial Reforms in Europe

This article develops a comprehensive and dynamic framework for analysing the party politics of territorial reforms in Europe (and beyond). The main focus is on explaining the strategy of political parties on the issue of territorial reform, by which is meant the position taken on, and the salience given to, the issue of how to allocate powers and resources across levels of government. The premise is that political parties can follow an electoral, ideological and territorial logic of action when deciding their strategy. The article distinguishes between the main drivers and argues that the choice of logic by political parties will be determined by the relative weight of strategic incentives, on the one hand, and ideological and organisational constraints, on the other. The framework also highlights the importance of contextual effects such as the polity’s institutional arrangements and the influence of time in the process of territorial restructuring, evident in the different moments of territorial reforms and the occurrence of feedback effects between them.

Between autonomy and secession Decentralization and regionalist party ideological radicalism

The literature on regionalist parties has traditionally focused on the origins of their electoral strength while their ideology remains an under-explored aspect of territorial party politics. This is surprising because for the question of whether decentralization ‘accommodates’ or ‘empowers’ regionalist pressure one needs to consider both. In this paper we single out the factors that increase the probability of adopting a radical (secessionist) as opposed to a moderate (autonomist) ideological stance, with a particular focus on the effect of decentralization. We make use of a large and original dataset, covering 11 countries, 49 regions, and 78 parties for the 1940s–2000s. Beyond the level of decentralization and decentralization reforms, we analyze the impact of two sets of factors: the first concerns regional identity and includes regional language, regional history and geographical remoteness; while the second concerns institutional/political variables which include voting systems, competition from statewide parties and from other regionalist parties, and office responsibility. We find that all variables matter for regionalist party ideology but with different effects across regional and national electoral arenas. We also find that level of decentralization and regional reform is significantly associated with radicalism, which suggests that policy success and accommodative strategies by statewide parties may lead to a polarization on the centre-periphery dimension.

From class to region: how regionalist parties link (and subsume) left-right into centre-periphery politics

The primary dimension of political contestation for regionalist parties is the centre-periphery dimension but they are pressured to adopt positions on the left-right dimension by competition with state-wide parties. We argue that the relative economic position of a region is a key variable for explaining how regionalist parties adopt left-right positions and link them to the centre-periphery dimension. Based on a quantitative analysis of 74 regionalist parties – distributed in 49 regions and 11 countries – over four decades, we find strong evidence that regionalist parties acting in relatively rich regions tend to adopt a rightist ideology, while regionalist parties acting in relatively poor regions tend to adopt a leftist ideology. A qualitative illustration of two paradigmatic cases, the Lega Nord (LN) and the Scottish National Party (SNP), appears to support our interpretation that left-right orientations are subsumed into centre-periphery politics through the adoption of two ideal types of regionalist discourse: one labelled as ‘bourgeois regionalism’ (Harvie, 1994) and one labelled as ‘internal colonialism’ (Hechter, 1975).

Sailing with Northern Winds: Party Politics and Federal Reforms in Italy

Territorial reforms have been on the political agenda in Italy for the last two decades, becoming a stable issue of party competition. The breakthrough of Lega Nord (LN) in the party system has represented the main driver for federal reforms. The article argues that the bipolar and majoritarian institutional environment of the Second Republic has compelled the main state-wide parties to adopt an electoral logic that led them to accommodate the LN’s claims. However, the ideological orientations and the territorial interests of centre-left coalition proved more compatible with this accommodative strategy than those of the centre-right coalition. The majoritarian and adversarial style of government–opposition relations has made compromise on territorial reforms difficult, contributing to their rising salience in party competition.

A world of difference: the sources of regional government composition and alternation

Abstract This article aims to explain longitudinal and cross-sectional variation in regional government composition – oversized majorities and incongruence between regional and national governments (cross-cutting) – and regional government alternation. The analysis focuses on the explanatory value of a wide range of regional-level institutional variables, such as majoritarian vs. proportional voting systems and established practices of consociationalism. In addition, it provides a tentative exploration of the impact of regional (i.e. non-state-wide) parties on government composition and alternation. The findings show that most institutional variables have the expected impact, e.g., majoritarian voting systems increase government alternation and consensual practices decrease both cross-cutting and alternation. The analysis also suggests that regional parties impact on government composition and alternation in two ways. Strong regional parties increase cross-cutting and, once in office, they tend to reduce alternation. Smaller regional parties out of office tend to increase alternation and to decrease oversized government as their seat shares grow.

Decentralisation reforms and regionalist parties’ strength: accommodation, empowerment or both?

The article aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the impact of decentralisation on regionalist parties’ strength in both national and regional elections. We consider decentralisation both as a putatively crucial event, that is, the creation of an elected regional government, and as a process. Our study is based on a dataset including aggregate vote shares for 227 regionalist parties competing in 329 regions across 18 Western democracies. Our findings show that decentralisation as an event has a strong impact on the number of regionalist parties, as it triggers processes of proliferation and diffusion. Decentralisation as a process has an overall empowerment effect in regional elections, while it does not have an effect in national elections. However, our analysis also reveals that the overall null effect in national elections is actually the result of an empowering effect on new regionalist parties and of an accommodating effect on old regionalist parties.

Italy: Between Growing Incongruence and Region-Specific Dynamics

Since the early 1990s the Italian political system has undergone substantive change. Politically, there has been the collapse of traditional political parties and the slow rebuilding of a new party system centered on bipolar competition and on an augmented salience of territorial politics. Institutionally, a number of reforms have changed local, regional and national voting systems, and brought about a stronger decentralization of power toward subnational units. These changes appear to have had an impact on the link between regional and national elections. Before the 1992–1994 political turmoil, Italian regional politics was argued to be a minor replication of national themes and trends (De Mucci, 1987; Tronconi and Roux, 2009). The patterns of voting behavior and the format of party competition in regional elections were considered to be completely dependent on national dynamics, the only differences being a lower level of turnout and slightly higher vote swings between elections. In contrast, regional elections appear to have started to follow a generalized pattern of ‘second-order’ electoral behavior precisely during the last two decades (Chiaramonte and Di Virgilio, 2000; Loughlin and Bolgherini, 2006; Tronconi and Roux, 2009). We aim to investigate to what extent regional politics has become independent from national dynamics in the sense of observed diversification of voting behavior between national and regional levels, and amongst regions.

Inexperienced, leftists, and grassroots democrats: a profile of the Five Star Movement’s MPs

The aim of this article is to present original empirical data on the profile of the Five Star Movement’s parliamentary group at the outset of current legislature. Who are the Movement’s parliamentary representatives, what are their ideological orientations, and how do they perceive their role vis-à-vis the other components of the party (party members and the extra-parliamentary leadership)? We think that providing answers to these questions can help us to understand both the performance of the party in Parliament and its relationships with the Movement’s leaders. In this article, we present the results of a survey we conducted with the Movement’s parliamentarians. Our survey’s results show a parliamentary group which is primarily characterised by a lack of previous political experience, a clear leftist ideological orientation, and the rejection not only of an oligarchic but also of a ‘leaderistic’ conception of the party. These characteristics are particularly illuminating when it comes to understanding the issues that have arisen and the events that have occurred within the party in the last 2 years, as well as the prospects of party change/institutionalisation, especially in the form of emancipation from the founding leaders. This study can be of use for future research into the Movement’s performance in Parliament, as well as into its strategic and organisational adaptation to emerging trade-offs between vote maximisation, policy achievements, and office holding.

Turkey: Provincial Elections as a Barometer of National Politics

Turkey can be considered as a text-book example of a unitary and centralized state. Yet, an analysis of provincial elections provides interesting insights into the territorialization of the vote. The ethnic Turkish/Kurdish divide has produced, particularly in the last decade, a strong territorialization of the vote in provinces densely populated by ethnic Kurds. At the same time, the analysis confirms that provincial elections can be understood as ‘barometer elections’. Differently from classic ‘second-order elections’, provincial elections neither systematically show a lower level of turnout nor systematically reward new/opposition parties vis-a-vis government parties. Rather, they appear to show how people would vote in a national election. Provincial elections tend, therefore, to follow trends emerged in the previous national election and/or to anticipate trends that will manifest themselves in the following national election.

Regional elections in Italy (2012–15): Low turnout,tri-polar competition and Democratic Party’s(multi-level) dominance

ABSTRACT Between October 2012 and May 2015, all Italian regions went to the polls to renew their assemblies and executives. In contrast to previous election rounds, only seven out of fifteen ordinary regions held their elections in (horizontal) simultaneity. For the first time, some ordinary regions held their elections in (vertical) simultaneity with the national or European election. The election results were somehow exceptional in three ways. First, they were affected by an extremely low level of turnout vis-à-vis previous regional elections and, in line with the second-order election model, vis-a-vis the 2013 general election. Turnout was, however, comparatively higher in the special status regions governed by dominant ethno-regionalist parties (Aosta Valley and South Tyrol); and in the regions that voted in vertical simultaneity with the national and (to a lesser extent) European elections. Secondly, in contrast to previous regional elections, competition for regional executives was (at least) tri-polar, following the pattern that emerged in the 2013 general election. Thirdly, in contrast to the predictions of the second-order election model, this round of regional elections did not punish the national incumbent. Indeed, the Democratic Party won fifteen out of twenty-one regional presidencies, taking nine of them from the centre-right. Finally, it is worth stressing that the combination of low turnout and tri-polar competition, in conjunction with presidential executives and majoritarian voting systems, raises serious issues of democratic legitimacy, as most regional presidents are voted in office by between a fifth and a quarter of registered voters.