Filippo Tronconi

From Protest to Power : Autonomist parties in government

In many Western European states, an increasing number of autonomist parties are taking part in government at state and regional levels. To date, however, scholars have paid little attention to the repercussions of government incumbency for these actors. This article aims to take a first step towards redressing this oversight. Based on an extensive literature examining political parties in government, we formulate hypotheses about how autonomist parties will approach, behave within and be affected by government office. We test these hypotheses by examining the participation of autonomist parties in regional and state governments in Western Europe since 1945. The findings demonstrate that the difficult decisions autonomist parties must make when entering government, the subsequent dilemmas and challenges that must be resolved once the threshold of government has been crossed, and the consequences of government incumbency, are similar to those faced by any political party in government. However, the fact that autonomist parties operate within a multi-level political context can render these challenges more complex than is the case for political parties operating (mainly or exclusively) at a single territorial level, usually that of the state. The article concludes by identifying key factors that affect the success of autonomist parties in government.

The political systems of Italian regions between state-wide logics and increasing differentiation1

The aim of this article is to describe the evolution of the Italian regional party systems 25 years after the establishment of 15 Ordinary Statute regions and five years after the implementation of a major Constitutional reform increasing the powers of the regions and the visibility of regional political actors. The theoretical point of departure of the article is the second order election model originally applied to European elections to highlight their dependence on the national political level. The article begins by showing that this model has been applicable for regional elections only since the mid-1990s, a finding that goes against the conventional wisdom. The article then explains the structure of regional political competition through the analysis of two phenomena, fragmentation and differentiation, and the way they are correlated, stressing the changing pattern of competition before and after the breakdown of the First Republic.

Bye-Bye Bipolarism: The 2015 Regional Elections and the New Shape of Regional Party Systems in Italy

In May 2015, 19 million Italians were called to renew the legislative assemblies and presidencies of seven regions, thus concluding an electoral cycle begun in February 2013 that involved all the 15 ordinary statute regions. Beyond their immediate relevance – of the 15 incumbent presidents only three were confirmed in office – these elections represented a turning point for regional party systems, paralleling the earthquake of the 2013 general elections. The ‘fragmented bipolarism’ characterising elections in Italy at the two levels since the mid-1990s, has been replaced by a multipolar competition, as a consequence of the consolidating presence of the Movimento 5 Stelle and the internal divisions of the centre-right coalition. At the same time, fragmentation of regional councils has remained high. The evolution of regional party systems and patterns of competition are analysed in this paper, taking into account the electoral offer, turnout and results in the majoritarian and proportional arenas of the 15 ordinary statute regions.

The Italian Five Star Movement during the Crisis: Towards Normalisation?

Abstract The Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) represents the most significant occurrence in Italian party politics during the economic crisis that commenced in 2008. Founded in 2005, the party caused a major upset at the 2013 national elections, with a subsequent major impact on the Italian party system, which is analysed along four dimensions: amount of change; number of relevant competitors; alteration of the political space; and degree of nationalisation. The sudden electoral success, in turn, presented the party with a number of challenges that forced it to adapt its organisational nature. Moreover, the anti-establishment nature of the M5S is questioned by its activities in the legislative arena. As with other outsider parties, this poses the dilemma of being part of the establishment while criticising it. The M5S has thus been forced to redefine its main goals and style of communication in order to adapt to the new institutional environment without losing the palingenetic aspiration of its original message.

Electoral Reform in Italy and Japan: Unanticipated Outcomes?

During the 1980s and into the 1990s, citizens in Italy and Japan grew fed up with the politics of their country. The elite politician class of both countries faced problems of accountability and corruption. Finally, news of scandals in both countries in the early 1990s provided the impetus for substantial institutional change. By 1994, both Italy and Japan reformed the rules they used to elect politicians, with both countries instituting mixed-member electoral systems that provided simultaneously for a candidate-based single member district (SMD) tier and a larger seat magnitude proportional representation (PR) tier.

The Italian Regional Elections of March 2010. Continuity and a Few Surprises

On 28–29 March 2010, about 40 million Italian voters were called to renew the presidents and legislative assemblies of thirteen Ordinary Statute Regions. In this article those regional elections are analysed. After a summary description of the main institutional features and recent evolution of the electoral rules, the following aspects are covered: the debate during the electoral campaign; the process of coalition building and management, and the selection of candidates to the presidency; the electoral results in the presidential run and in the legislative assemblies. In the conclusions, the consequences of the regional elections and possible scenarios for national political equilibrium are evaluated.

Sub-national Political Elites

The diffusion of multi-level political arrangements in formerly unitary states has recently led to numerous studies being conducted of sub-national political elites, in addition to those devoted to traditional federal states. Most of these studies have focused on the formation of regional political classes distinct from national ones, and on the emergence of alternative career paths to the traditional, unidirectional bottom-up pattern. More recently, the influence of different career paths on the attitudes and behavior of legislators has also been hypothesized. However, while political science has made significant progress in analyzing and describing multi-level career patterns, much remains to be done in regard to the explanations for such patterns and their consequences.

Introduction: Parties and voters in a multi-level electoral setting

In this article the main contents of this special issue are introduced. In particular, some of the main problems related to multi-level electoral competition in Italy are presented and how this work intends to analyse them. It will be shown that both parties and voters have strategically adapted and responded to the challenges of multi-level electoral competition to an extent that was probably unexpected in a system undergoing transformation and whose inefficiencies are a conventional wisdom.