Nicola Maggini

Populist Success in a Hung Parliament: The 2018 General Election in Italy

ABSTRACT The 2018 Italian general elections were a crucial test to assess the resilience of mainstream parties vis-à-vis the challenge provided by populist forces and the stabilisation of the tripolar party system emerged in 2013. The article analyses the outcome of the election, whose most remarkable result was the unprecedented success of two populist parties, the M5S and the Lega, by focusing on key aspects such as the new electoral system, the coalition-building process, the electoral campaign, the evolution of the Italian party system, and the analysis of vote shifts between parties.

The Social and Political Dimensions of Solidarity in Italy

This chapter explores the social and political dimensions of solidarity in Italy, providing new data and analyses on solidarity practices with respect to three target groups (the disabled, the unemployed, and the refugees) and explaining them with reference to social traits of the respondents, their beliefs, and their political preferences. Findings show that the most important factors fostering solidarity practices in Italy are social capital, religiosity, cognitive political involvement, and perceptions of deservingness. There are also group-related predictors of solidarity: political factors play a more important role for support towards the unemployed and above all refugees compared to support for the disabled; solidarity towards refugees is bounded by political orientations and at the same time is an unconditioned and universalistic form of solidarity.

Young People, Politics and Vote Between Continuity and Change

This chapter provides a general picture of the young European voters under study. In particular, the chapter outlines the profile of young people in a longitudinal perspective taking into account some basic socio-demographic characteristics, attitudes and behaviours related to religion, value and ideological orientations and attitudes towards politics, pointing out comparisons with adults, whenever necessary. The chapter also explores the voting choices of young people, separately for each country. In doing so, the chapter shows that young people display a secular profile and are detached and disenchanted from politics and political activism. In addition, concerning party choices, far-left parties and environmentalist parties or, in some countries, right-wing parties and ethno-regionalist parties collect an above average support among young people.

Age, Generations and Voting Behaviour

This chapter provides a detailed overview of theories related to the relationship between age and politics (in particular, the voting choice), along with some historical and empirical examples. Furthermore, it introduces the reader to the so-called life-cycle, generation and period effects in order to outline the proper analytical framework for empirical analysis. In this regard, the author discusses the strategy for empirical analysis, presenting research questions, analytical framework, data and method. First, the author presents the conceptual features and the empirical success of the voting behaviour models and a specific comparative research design aimed at achieving a potential for generalization. Finally, the author translates the conceptual features of voting choice models into empirical variables which are testable through survey and party-related data.

The Explanatory Model: The Determinants of Youth Voting Choices

This chapter examines the empirical relationship between age and voting behaviour and outlines the results of a multivariate and multi-level statistical analysis. In particular, it presents a general explanatory model taking into account ‘age effect’ and ‘cohort effect’ and outlines specific empirical models in order to answer the research question on the possible differences, if any, between youth and adults concerning the determinants of voting choices. Furthermore, the chapter examines the relationship between some independent variables and the youth voting for specific parties. In terms of overall results, the chapter finds that to understand voting choices the fact of being young is not important, but to have been young and therefore have been socialized to politics in a given historical period.