Paolo Segatti

Platforms, media and voters

The paper presents data on party platforms, political communication and public opinion in the 1996 Italian election campaign. It is shown that the electoral platforms of the two major coalitions were largely overlapping, except for some economic and social issues. The centre-right coalition seemed more inclined to adopt pro-market policies, while the platform of the Ulivo coalition was more oriented toward a social partnership approach. In the month before the elections, policy issues were discussed on television more extensively than political issues. Public and private networks covered the 1996 election campaign at the same level as in 1994 and to some extent with the same bias. Voting intentions seem to have remained stable prior to and during the electoral campaign.

Intermittent abstentionism and multi-level mobilisation in Italy

This article is focused on one of the most relevant novelties in the Italian electoral market of the past decade: the emerging phenomenon of intermittent abstentionism. Rather than an increase in overall abstentionism rates, aggregate and survey data show a clear increase in the number of floating voters who swing between voting and non-voting. After a description of the characteristics of intermittent abstensionists, the article discusses the relationship between different electoral systems at different levels of government and territorial differentiation as far as voting participation is concerned. It then discusses the impact of intermittent abstentionism on the results of the 2006 general election where the parties’ electoral campaigns appear to have been aimed at mobilising intermittent abstensionists. The article concludes with some considerations of the Italian electoral cycle, particularly in relation to the changes generated by the run-up to the 2008 elections.

Renzi's Honeymoon Effect: The 2014 European Election in Italy

The 2014 European Parliament election in Italy took place 15 months after the electoral earthquake of the 2013 national election and almost three months after a non-electoral change of government that saw the newly elected Secretary of the centre-left Democratic Party, Matteo Renzi, become prime minister. While some second-order election (SOE) model expectations, such as lower turnout and electoral gain by minor parties are fulfilled, some other expectations seem to be challenged by the exceptional electoral victory of the pro-European incumbent party. In this article we show that in Italy the 2014 European election can still mainly be considered a second-order one because the broken SOE expectations are related to exceptional national dynamics that began with the 2013 general election.

Availability or Disengagement? How Italian Citizens Reacted to the Two-Faced Parliamentary Grand Coalition Supporting the Monti Government

Times may come in which democracies have to suspend electoral competition for the sake of the general interest. Wars, divisive memories of past conflicts, a prolonged economic crisis, but also electoral outcomes without a clear and politically viable governing majority are the challenges that may oblige ideologically distant parties to join forces in a grand coalition government. In 2011, Italian parties found themselves in such a situation. Starting in the summer, the Italian financial situation worsened to the point that, between October and November 2011, the risk of a sovereign default was tangible. The common wisdom within as well as outside the country was clear. Italy needed urgent structural reforms capable of restoring confidence among its Eu partners and financial investors. The expectation was that only a grand coalition between the main parties would have been able to overcome the several veto points that over the years have led Italy to the edge of the cliff. Although such a decision might have been seen as necessary, this is a difficult move for any party in any country, since it may alter the conditions under which voters usually make their voting choices at the following election. When the contraposition between government and opposition is suspended, voters might find it hard to take into account what has been done and who is responsible for what. Moreover, when this comes together with the discovery of a vast web of political scandals, citizens’ political disengagement is likely to further increase. Nonetheless, the way Italian parties decided to respond to the challenge was highly peculiar in four aspects, at least in comparison with the

The Italian Election of February 2013: A Temporary Shock or a Harbinger of a New Party System?

The February 2013 elections were the most volatile in Italian entire democratic history. All post 1994 parties lost millions of votes. Who benefitted were two new actors, Scelta Civica leaded by Mario Monti and the 5 Stars Movement leaded by the former comedian Beppe Grillo, which received one out of four valid votes. The earthquake altered the post-94 bipolar pattern of competition, for three poles of almost equal size emerged instead of two. Moreover, the election results were chaotic since the 2005 electoral law made impossible a coherent parliamentary majority in both chambers, provoking a political paralysis and finally paving the way to a new grand coalition between the Pd and Pdl, plus Scelta Civica. Does the February 2013 elections are a harbinger of a political system different from the previous (1994 to 2008) one, or they are a temporary shock? This chapter will analyse the 2013 results in comparison to elections prior to 2013. It will assess the extent to which the Italian voters have changed their political and ideological predispositions along with their electoral behaviour. This chapter concludes that while many voters changed their vote in February 2013, voters did not change their ideological positions. It is too early to tell whether and to what extent Italy’s electorate has have changed its ideological outlook after the February 2013 elections. One could expect that if the 2013 earthquake is a harbinger of a new political system, this will depend on the consolidation of the political forces which emerged in February 2013 and on the restructuring of the others.

When responsibility is blurred: Italian national elections in times of economic crisis, technocratic government, and ever-growing populism

In the decades after the Second World War, electoral competition in Italy was constantly organized along the lines of left-right ideological divisions (see Bellucci and Segatti 2011). However, the parliamentary election of 2013 seems to have broken this tradition. The greatest symptom of the left-right parties’ failure to provide citizens with guidance for their voting decisions is the significant and largely unexpected success of a new political subject that has deliberately positioned itself outside of the traditional ideological dialectics: the Five Star Movement (M5s). Founded in 2009 by the comedian Beppe Grillo, the M5s is the political derivative of a grassroots movement mainly based on the web, which emphasizes in its program issues such as free access to the internet and on-line deliberation as an alternative to representative democracy (Biorcio and Natale 2013; Corbetta and Gualmini 2013). Since its foundation, the M5s has been claiming to be «neither left nor right», a position justified by the assumption that the ideological labels are just tools employed by the political parties to fool the electorate. In fact, this position comes in conjunction with a straightforward accusation that the main parties are colluding with each other against the people’s will, which has increasingly strengthened the movement’s reputation as an «anti-politics» party. Previous local elections had signaled the growing electoral success of the M5s. In March 2010, at the regional elections in Piedmont, the party was accused of taking votes away from the left-wing, after the right-wing candidate won against the incumbent governor with a margin of 0.4% of the votes. On that occasion the M5s obtained 4% of the votes. In 2011 and early 2012 the party

Public opinion on the Eurozone fiscal union: evidence from survey experiments in Italy

ABSTRACT We investigate public attitudes toward the fiscal union: a policy advocated in official European Union documents and designed to address asynchronous economic fluctuations in the eurozone. We employ survey questions and conjoint analyses embedded in population-based panel surveys in Italy, and draw expectations from theories of tax-and-transfer schemes, public insurance, ideology, diffuse support, identity and trust. High-income right-wing individuals with weak European identity and negative assessment of EU membership are more likely to oppose the measure. However, high-income respondents display greater willingness to pay, especially in order to keep the euro, whereas lower-income participants are readier to ditch the currency if the monetary union does not deliver good economic performance. The political feasibility of this policy seems therefore to rest on the willingness to contribute by the core constituency supporting the euro. We also investigate the preferences for the institutional design of the policy.

Jugend und Gewerkschaften in Italien

Die 80er Jahre waren fur die italienischen Gewerkschaftsverbande (CGIL-CISL-UIL) schwierig. Sie begannen mit der Niederlage der Gewerkschaften im sogenannten „Fiatstreik“ und am Ende dieses Jahrzehnts schien die Prognose einer Krise des gewerkschaftlichen Interessenvertretungsmonopols mehr als bloses Gerede zu sein. Ein deutlicher Ausdruck der Probleme, mit denen sich die italienischen Gewerkschaften in dieser Zeitspanne konfrontiert sahen, waren die geringen Organisationserfolge unter den jungen Arbeitnehmern bzw. ihre geringe Bereitschaft, sich gewerkschaftlich zu engagieren. Gerade im Ruckblick auf die insgesamt hohe Mobilisierungsbereitschaft der Belegschaften in den 70er Jahren und die in diesem Jahrzehnt erreichte Starke der italienischen Gewerkschaften mus die heute konstatierbare Distanz ihres Klienteis den Gewerkschaften als ein krasser Bruch erscheinen.