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Since the Golden Age of the Welfare State ended, the male-breadwinner family model traditionally supported by conservative parties has been put under pressure. Familialism appears to be no longer attractive to a changing, more volatile constituency. By comparing four different European countries – namely, Denmark, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom – this work investigates the evolution of the conservative parties’ family policy positions in the post-Fordist era (1990s–2010s). The article has two goals. First, relying on a multidimensional theoretical framework where both social consumption and social investment policy instruments are at stake, it probes whether conservatives have switched their positions by backing de-familialism and thus the dual-earner family model. Second, it explains policy position change or stability over time and cross-country differences through a multicausal analytical framework. The content analysis of party manifestos shows that, in the post-Fordist era, the conservative parties have supported ‘optional familialism’, thus upholding both familializing and de-familializing measures. However, such positions are not static. In the 1990s, support for familialism was higher while, since the 2000s, there has been a constant, increasing backing of de-familialism. While the shift is evident for all the parties, cross-country differences remain. The comparative historical analysis has pointed out that the specific ‘optional familialism’ positions taken by the conservative parties over time result from the interaction of constituency-oriented, institutional, contextual and political factors.

Are governing parties able to shape social and labor market policies according to their ideological positions or are they overwhelmed by socio-economic and institutional constraints? The paper answers this crucial question by developing a comparative study on 19 OECD countries from 1985 to 2011. It investigates whether the location of governments on a continuous left–right scale affects four measures of welfare state generosity: namely, public spending in social policies, in active and passive labor market policies and the level of unemployment insurance replacement rate. The results obtained through an error correction model show that governing parties are unable to affect social and labor market policies in the short-run, when economic dynamics prevail. However, in the long-run, partisanship gains relevance: when the government coalition moves to the right, there is a negative impact on all the measures of welfare state generosity.

Digital technologies have deeply affected the way people think and act politically, as it has happened in many other aspects of individual and social life. This has led many scholars to update and reconsider some consolidated visions on political participation, starting from the definition of political participation itself. In this article I review the main findings of research on e-participation with respect to different types of activism, from individual acts to activities taking place in collective settings, like those of social movements and political parties. Finally, I reflect on the consequences of new digitally-driven forms of participation for the health of democracy, considering three specific aspects: participation inequality, the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of digital activism, polarization. As we will see, each of these fields shows a lively ongoing debate among observers.

What explains far-right mobilisation in the protest arena? After decades of growing electoral support and policy influence, the far right is experiencing an increase in grassroots mobilisation. Scholars of social movements and political parties have devoted little attention to the determinants of far-right protest mobilisation in Europe. In this article, we bridge previous research on the far right and social movements to advance hypotheses on the drivers of far-right protest mobilisation based on grievances, opportunities and resource mobilisation models. We use an original dataset combining novel data on 4,845 far-right protest events in 11 East and West European countries (2008–2018), with existing measures accounting for the (political, economic and cultural) context of mobilisation. We find that classical approaches to collective action can be fruitfully applied to the study of the far right. Cultural grievances, notably concerns about immigration, as well as the availability of institutional access points in contexts characterised by divided government increase far-right protest mobilisation. But far-right protest mobilisation also rests on the organisational resources available to nativist collective actors, that is, the network in which they are embedded, their visibility in the media and elected officials. These findings have important implications to understand far-right success in advanced democracies. They show that far-right mobilisation in the protest arena not only rests on favourable circumstances, but also on whether far-right actors can profit from them. More broadly, the study links party politics and social movement research to grasp the far right's modes of political contestation, locating research on this phenomenon at the intersection of political sociology and comparative politics. What explains far-right mobilisation in the protest arena? After decades of growing electoral support and policy influence, the far right is experiencing an increase in grassroots mobilisation. Scholars of social movements and political parties have devoted little attention to the determinants of far-right protest mobilisation in Europe. In this article, we bridge previous research on the far right and social movements to advance hypotheses on the drivers of far-right protest mobilisation based on grievances, opportunities and resource mobilisation models. We use an original dataset combining novel data on 4,845 far-right protest events in 11 East and West European countries (2008–2018), with existing measures accounting for the (political, economic and cultural) context of mobilisation. We find that classical approaches to collective action can be fruitfully applied to the study of the far right. Cultural grievances, notably concerns about immigration, as well as the availability of institutional access points in contexts characterised by divided government increase far-right protest mobilisation. But far-right protest mobilisation also rests on the organisational resources available to nativist collective actors, that is, the network in which they are embedded, their visibility in the media and elected officials. These findings have important implications to understand far-right success in advanced democracies. They show that far-right mobilisation in the protest arena not only rests on favourable circumstances, but also on whether far-right actors can profit from them. More broadly, the study links party politics and social movement research to grasp the far right's modes of political contestation, locating research on this phenomenon at the intersection of political sociology and comparative politics.

How do parties that have long been confined to opposition behave once they take the decision to support government? This article analyses the case of the three Portuguese radical left parties that took such a move in the wake of the post-bailout 2015 election. Leveraging the concept of contract parliamentarism and the analysis of different data sources through different methods, we show that the three parties adopted a similar strategy after agreeing deals with the centre-left socialists. Specifically, while keeping close scrutiny on the executive action, the parties have voted consensually on most of the legislation proposed by the government. In exchange, the majority of policy pledges agreed with the socialists were implemented by the beginning of the legislature. Based on these findings, the article underlines the importance for supporting parties of conducting a thorough negotiation of policy goals and the timing of their implementation before joining the government, and of pursuing an autonomous discursive agenda.

Within the context of the economic downturn in southern Eurozone countries and the imposition of new constraints on national policy-making, this article examines the congruence between party issue prioritization, during and after the electoral phase. This is done through a longitudinal analysis of four countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) and use of party manifesto and parliamentary question data. We found that between the electoral and parliamentary arenas, parties tend to emphasize different issues. However, this occurs in different ways across time, countries, and parties. We propose a measurement of issue congruence in agenda framing between the pre- and post-electoral phases to assess to what extent elections provide a guide for public policies. Moreover, we propose arguments to explain different results in the analyzed countries and across parties. We show that the crisis magnified the capacity of the opposition to maintain programmatic coherence – a helping hand for opposition parties (including the radical ones) that succeeded in boosting the relevance of their signature issues.

RiassuntoLa punizione inflitta, nel 211 a. C., ai Campani,municipes sine suffragio, per la loro defezione ad Annibale, era stata assunta da una parte del senato a paradigma anche per i soci Tarentini, nel 208 a. C., rei allo stesso modo. Tale valutazione politica poggiava sull’assunto che la pena dovesse essere commisurata alla colpa, indipendentemente dal differente statuto giuridico dei defezionisti. Questa è espressione della linea rigorista perseguita contro i traditori, tra alti, da Q. Fulvius Flaccus (conquistatore di Capua), all’opposto di quella moderata e pragmatica sostenuta da Q. Fabius Maximus (conquistatore di Tarentum).

This article stresses the importance of learning in the transformation of an incumbent Islamist party within the context of polity re-configuration. Borrowing from the literature on diffusion and learning, it offers a case study of how Tunisia’s Ennahda Movement responded to the interplay of multi-level challenges. Main argument is that Ennahda has significantly re-tailored its positioning since the critical juncture of 2013, not only by taking the route of moderation once again, but also by exercising self-restraint under the impulse of external counter-examples. Based on process-tracing readings, the analysis contained herein demonstrates how key regional and domestic events have helped reshape the party’s political discourse and practices, designed to maximise the likelihood of its survival and progressive empowerment in a more markedly hostile environment. The paper thus empirically identifies three main strategies implemented by the party and reflecting learning on its part: readiness to negotiate, a reassuring attitude, and self-containment.

The article analyses the political personalization and disintermediation in two regional contexts of Southern Italy, Calabria and Sicily. These contexts - historically affected by forms of «particularistic personalization» and with a weak presence of the mass party - are also characterized by the pervasiveness of the catch-all party and patronage. The essay assumes as hypothesis the diffusion of political personalization and disintermediation also at the regional level. Investigating these transformations in the political systems, the analysis underlines the influence of path dependence dynamics on current changes, stressing also similarities and differences between Calabria and Sicily. The qualitative research focuses on the political paths of the councillors elected in the regional assemblies. The areas investigated concern the political socialization, the access to political representation, the construction of consensus, the political communication and the electoral campaigns. Starting from heterogeneous political paths, with more or less intense party ties, emerges a common tendency towards disintermediation and personalization, in new forms, through new communication styles, and new tools such as technological ones. In the analysed contexts, the article underlines the diffusion of an instrumental disintermediation logic that accentuates the weakening of some functions performed by the parties and maintains others.

Policy agendas studies analyse the dynamics of attention to policy issues over time and across actors and institutions to obtain insights into the functioning of political systems. The articles in this special issue draw on this approach to investigate key aspects of the Italian political system, with a special emphasis on the period spanning from the political crisis of the early 1990s to the watershed elections of 2013. They analyse a broad range of institutional and policy venues, including public opinion, political parties, the executive, the Parliament, and the Constitutional Court. While single articles address different research questions and focus on different institutions, they all share a focus on the dynamics of issue attention over time. This introduction provides a summary overview of the theoretical and methodological tools employed in the volume, highlighting how the study of policy agendas can contribute to the understanding of political systems and their change over time. It then summarises the main findings of single articles which, taken together, shed new light on several classic questions that have been widely debated in the literature on the evolution of the Italian political system.

The literature on the far right is trying to connect with social movement studies. Scholars from different social scientific backgrounds are increasingly acknowledging that extra-parliamentary grassroots activism is part of the alliance and conflict structure of nativist collective actors. The recent rise in far-right street politics – or, precisely, its re-emergence with seemingly different clothes – should encourage the study of the inter-relations between party and non-party collective actors. As a case in point, the far right not only includes political parties geared towards elections and public office but also social movements or ‘networks of networks’ that aim to mobilise public support, and a conglomeration of subcultural groups and groupuscules. By putting forward a three-part metric to analyse mobilisation factors at the macro, meso, and micro levels, this piece and the Special Issue it introduces bring the (inter-)relations between far-right parties, movements, and subcultures frontstage, and elaborate on nativist collective action across different arenas of contention.

Multiple crises shook the European Union (EU) during the past decade. First, the economic and financial crises that unfolded since 2008 shook the foundations of the European project and its monetary union. Then, the inflow of migrants and asylum seekers into Europe in 2015 questioned the EU’s ability to jointly respond to common political issues. More recently, Brexit came across as the corollary of a prolonged legitimacy crisis. These crises have not only affected the course of European integration but also provided novel issues for political competition within the EU member states. At the party-political level, populist anti-establishment parties have traditionally listed among the principal interpreters and drivers of criticism towards ‘Europe’. In this article, we empirically address the changing Eurosceptic frames adopted by populist parties during these crises and speculate on the reverberation of these frames in respective party systems. For this purpose, we focus on two cases: Italy and the Netherlands. Both countries present instances of populist parties of different ideological persuasions within traditionally Europhile contexts. At the same time, both countries have been affected to very different extents by the recent crises, allowing us to examine how populist parties have responded to different political opportunities.

A lively debate among students of parliamentary democracy concerns how coalition governments build their policy proposals. Some scholars maintain that government declarations mirror the position of the median party in parliament; others argue that these proposals better agree with the weighted mean of the coalition parties’ electoral promises. This article sheds light on this puzzle by investigating the role played by several political actors in shaping government declarations on two dimensions: the ideological left–right scale and a genuinely policy-based welfare scale. The results reveal that the agenda setters on the two dimensions do not coincide. On the left–right scale, the prime minister’s party plays a leading role. On the welfare scale, government declarations are affected by the party of the median legislator in parliament and by the parties of the labour and social affairs ministers. Furthermore, government declarations on the welfare dimension tend to drift rightwards with adverse economic conditions.

The 2013 general election saw the fall of both the mainstream parties which had alternated in government until then – the Democratic Party (PD – Partito Democratico) and Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PDL – Popolo delle Libertà) – and the emergence of a new strong third political force, namely the Five Star Movement (M5S). This result challenged the new bipolar structure that Italy had acquired and, because of the absence of a majority in the Senate, generated a major political crisis which eventually led to the creation of a grand coalition composed of two former political competitors from the centre left and the centre right. The tripolar structure of party competition that came unexpectedly1 out from the 2013 election was confi rmed by the 2018 election together with an even stronger success of the Five Star Movement, which obtained alone more than 32 percent of votes in both chambers. These political events are not dissimilar from what happened in many other European democracies in recent times – crisis of the governing parties, success of new political actors, restructuring of the party system – and brought about a crucial question that we intend to address in the present chapter: can we speak of the launch of a third new phase in the Italian party system following the 2013 and, more recently, the 2018 elections? And what are the main causes of such changes?

By focusing on the Facebook activities of eighty-three political leaders from twenty-six Western and Latin American countries, we analyze their reliance on elements of populist communication for their competitive strategies. By integrating both a communication-centered and an actor-centered approach to the study of populism, we tackle four major research questions: Do populist and non-populist leaders adopt similar communication strategies on Facebook? Is there any evidence of the so-called populist zeitgeist in such arena? What different combinations between the so-called three “elements of populist communication” characterize the communication strategies of political leaders on Facebook? Are there major differences between Western and Latin American leaders? The results of our analysis provide an important contribution to the existing literature on populism and political communication in different respects. First, the populist zeitgeist “thesis” does not apply to the communication strategies of political leaders on Facebook. Second, the spread of elements of populist communication in Latin America is considerably lower in comparison with Western countries, irrespective of party ideological background. Finally, this paper identifies all the logical combinations that can occur between the interplay of the different elements of populist communication, thus enabling the classification of the communication strategies employed by political leaders on Facebook.

Unlike the constitutional experience of the United Kingdom, on the European continent the presence of a weak and fragmented party system has been - and still is - the main cause of the fragility of institutions parliamentarians. Moreover, the presence of anti-constitutional political forces worsened the unstable situation. However, only part of the Italian and French doctrine, mostly influenced by the experience of British and American political parties, in the nineteenth century highlighted the centrality of this problem for the proper functioning of the parliamentary system. This led to the propose of legal recognition for political parties.

El ensayo abarca el tema de los partidos políticos desde la perspectiva del Derecho constitucional comparado. Delimitado el campo propio de los constitucionalistas comparatistas y el de los politólogos, se detiene sobre los perfiles históricos, la disciplina jurídica y su constitucionalización (con especial referencia a la naturaleza jurídica, los límites internos, la financiación), clasificando los sistemas de partidos, para las finalidades heurísticas de los constitucionalistas, sobre todo en las clases de partidos “presentes” y partidos “intermitentes” y de partidos de sistema y anti-sistema. Después un parágrafo dedicado a la crisis de los partidos y los partidos anti-política, un releve peculiar lo da a los partidos políticos en el marco de la democracia militante, y finalmente a las relaciones entre partidos y formas de Estado (profundizando la naturaleza del partido único) y entre modelos de partidos y formas de gobierno.

The previous chapters described how opposition parties operate in the specifc contexts of 11 selected European countries.1 The introduction outlined what was expected to affect the opposition parties’ behaviour and questioned whether we were witnessing the development of general patterns or new trends, or rather extreme variation was still the main characteristic of opposition in European democracies in terms of conflict or consensus, but also of general strategies adopted in parliament. In fact, while opposition parties in parliament may vote for or against the government’s legislative proposals, they can also propose their own legislation and/or focus on the government’s scrutiny. In doing so, they can adopt behaviour that is more or less consensual and decide to be particularly active or quite inactive, respectively. These strategic choices will be influenced by both their goals, i.e. votes, offce, policy and several concomitant factors that are related, internally, to the party context and the institutional setting and, externally, the onset of the economic crisis and the consequent increasing intervention of the EU in the national legislative process. The conclusions will make a detailed reassessment of these expectations.

This article analyses the differences in voting behaviour of the selectorate and electorate of the Italian Partito Democratico (PD) in 2013, particularly focussing on the role played by leadership, ideology, and media in affecting voting decisions. We study the different motivations underlying the decision to vote for the PD in the 2013 Italian general election or for each one of the three candidates to party leadership in the 2013 PD leadership selection race. The empirical analysis uses 2013 Italian National Election Study and 2013 Candidate & Leader Selection data. Results of the analysis show that leadership evaluation has a stronger influence on the selectorate than on the electorate and that the perceived distance between voters and the party on the left-right continuum has a stronger impact on the electorate than on the selectorate. Moreover, the analysis underlines that media are substantially not a relevant factor explaining voting behaviour of PD’s electorate and selectorate. These findings confirm the relevancy of leadership evaluation in intra-party competitions and open a new perspective to study leader selection races.

Digital media are often blamed for accelerating the decline of political parties as channels for citizen participation. By contrast, we show that political engagement on social media may revitalize party activities because these platforms are means for both party members and ordinary citizens to discuss politics and engage with and around political parties. Using online surveys conducted in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, we find that party members engage in a wider variety of party-related activities than average respondents, but the same can also be said of nonparty members who informally discuss politics on social media. Moreover, the strength of the relationship between party membership and engagement decreases as the intensity of political discussion on social media increases. This suggests that political discussions on social media can narrow the divide in party-related engagement between members and nonmembers, and to some extent flatten rather than reinforce existing political hierarchies. Finally, we find that the correlation between party membership and engagement is stronger in Germany, where party organizations are more robust, than in Italy and the United Kingdom, highlighting the role of party organizational legacies in the digital age.

Este artículo aborda el fenómeno de la pobreza en Venezuela desde un punto de vista multimétodo. Para ello, se presenta una discusión de algunas reflexiones concernientes al tema en el contexto de la sociedad venezolana; se analizan las políticas para disminuir la pobreza implementadas por los distintos gobiernos de Venezuela a partir de 1958 y se estudia la percepción que tienen algunos organismos internacionales en el país en base a sus metodologías de medición propuestas. La discusión generada en este trabajo, refleja que a pesar de los basamentos filosóficos de las diversas tendencias políticas surgidas a lo largo del tiempo, los gobiernos han percibido como percutores fundamentales de la pobreza a la educación y a la salud. Por otro lado, algunos organismos internacionales enmarcan a Venezuela como un país exitoso en términos de arar con el paso de los años hacia una sociedad menos desigual, menos pobre y más culta. Finalmente, es imperante que las políticas públicas tienen que estar sustentadas en el desarrollo humano para mantener su impacto positivo y al menos disminuir la pobreza. This article discusses the phenomenon of poverty in Venezuela from a multi-method approach. We show a discussion of some reflections concerning the issue in the context of Venezuelan society; an analysis of the public policies to reduce poverty implemented by the governments of Venezuela from 1958 and the perception of some international organizations about the poverty in Venezuela based on their proposed measures and methodologies. The discussion, in this work, supports the idea that even the different philosophical thoughts of political parties, all governments have perceived as fundamental triggers of poverty the education and health. On the other hand, some international agencies see Venezuela as a successful country with less unequal, less poor and more educated society. Finally, it is required that public policies must be erected in a human development thought to maintain its positive impact and at least reduce poverty. 49-65 rafalac165@hotmail.com, rafaelacevedorueda@yahoo.es, rafael.acevedo@ucla.edu.ve migarciaperez@stcloudstate.edu pedro.harmath@ucla.edu.ve opena@ucla.edu.ve

Local mobilizations against infrastructures perceived as harmful to population and territory are, in Italy, one of the forms of collective action which in recent years have grown more. The contrast to party system and the tension between representation and participation are central elements of collective identity in these protests. They have also built innovative experiences in local politics, which have been directly involved in electoral competitions. For all these reasons, local mobilizations are an interesting case to analyze the evolution of the relationship between collective protest and political systems, and to test the most widely used apparatus in the study of this relationship: the theory of political opportunities structure (POS). In this article, the POS model is confronted with a major Italian local mobilization in recent years, the protest in Vicenza against the realization of the Dal Molin military base, and other major Italian local mobilizations. In the Conclusions, three main findings are pinpointed: 1) Unlike what the POS thesis states, a closure of the political opportunity structures incentivizes collective protest; 2) The crisis of mass party and the redefinition of the classic parameters of statehood, necessitate a theoretical re-discussion of the relationship between popular protest and institutional politics; 3) the relationship between social movements and parties is redefining on the base of a new hybridization between the party-form and the movement-form, and through the direct assumption of electoral tasks by social movements.

We study incumbency effects for individual legislators from two political parties (Christian Democracy and the Italian Socialist Party) in Italy’s lower house of representatives over ten legislatures (1948–1992) elected using open-list proportional representation. Our analysis finds no reelection advantage for the average incumbent legislator. Only a tiny elite in each party successfully creates an incumbency advantage. We find incumbents advantaged for reselection by their political party. We interpret reselection advantage as a party loyalty premium. Our study depicts a political environment monopolized by party leaders who reward party loyalty but hamper legislators in appealing directly to voters.

The interpretation by Italian scholars of the institutions of the French Fifth Republic was directly linked not only to the new French constitution and to the evolving practice of power in France, but also to the scholars' own judgement on the Italian constitution and on their changing perception of the role of the political parties within Italian republican institutions. Three main phases in the development of the interpretation of the Fifth Republic by Italian jurists and political scientists can be identified. During the first – extending from 1958 to the late 1970s – it was strongly criticized by most as anti-democratic. The second phase – from the late 1970s to the early 1990s – was marked by the end of anti-democratic suspicions; but only during the 1990s – the third phase – were the Fifth Republic's institutions proposed by some scholars as a model to be imported in to Italy.