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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The article presents a methodology for the research of cleavage structure in post-Soviet Russia on the regional level (municipalities as cases). This methodology is applied to the results both of the 2011 Duma election and elections to regional legislatures over the period 2012–14. The electoral cleavage map of today’s Russia is constructed on the basis of the 2011 election results. All Russian regions are divided into five groups by the degree of their political competitiveness: (1) the least competitive group of six North Caucasian republics; (2) the group of four regions with the single ‘authorities versus community’ electoral cleavage (Mordovia, Mari El, Tatarstan and Tyumen oblast); (3) the ‘under-competitive’ cluster of 19 regions (including Adygea, Bashkortostan, Kalmykia, Tuva, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kemerovo, Orel, Tambov and Ulyanovsk oblasts); (4) the ‘average’ cluster of 31 regions (including Moscow) and (5) the most competitive cluster of 20 regions (including Saint-Petersburg). It also concludes that the 2012 ‘party reform’ led to the ‘entropy’ of electoral preferences, an augmentation of political space dimensions and indirectly, a growth in the number of electoral cleavages in elections to regional legislatures (2012–14). It is recognized that in some regions the level of political competition has really increased, but the reason was not the appearance of new participants, but relaxation of administrative pressure on the strata depending on the state support. In these regions, especially in ethnic republics, not so much a liberalization of the electoral process but inter-clan conflicts took place.

The purpose of this article is to provide an analysis of the relationship between political parties and the Monti government, which was established during the most acute phase of the ongoing economic crisis. We identify the strategic calculations of political parties as being the crucial variable that explains both the advent of the emergency government’ and its workings. Indeed, the new technocratic government was largely considered as the best temporary solution by both the previous outgoing centre-right majority and by the centre-left opposition, although for different reasons. However, Monti’s arrival together with his team gave rise to what we might call ‘winners’, parties whose position appears to have been strengthened – the Democratic Party and the parties belonging to the Third Pole; and ‘losers’, parties that appeared to have become weaker – the People of Freedom and the Northern League. The main argument put forward in this paper is that the status of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ is not static. In fact, it can be subject to extensive change if parties progressively adapt their behaviour, over time, to change in the competitive environments in which they operate, especially by adopting a strategy that is coordinated with their electoral partners.

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.

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.