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Questo lavoro presenta un estratto dei risultati del progetto di ricerca Il ruolo della disinformazione nel comportamento dei giovani elettori in Friuli Venezia Giulia, finanziato dalla Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia e realizzato presso il Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali dell’Università di Trieste. Il progetto di ricerca intendeva verificare il grado di disinformazione tra i giovani cittadini del Friuli Venezia Giulia, inseriti poi nel più ampio contesto dei giovani elettori del Nord Est, cercando di individuarne, inoltre, possibili cause e conseguenze. In questo contributo, sintetizziamo, dunque, i risultati della nostra indagine sul tema, svolta in collaborazione con SWG. Nella prima sezione si esamina brevemente la letteratura riguardo alla diffusione dell’informazione e della disinformazione negli anni più recenti; nella seconda, si spiegano le tecniche di indagine utilizzate; e, nella terza e ultima sezione, la più consistente, mostriamo infine i risultati del nostro lavoro, focalizzandoci in particolare sull’uso dei mezzi di informazione, il livello di informazione/disinformazione riguardo alle principali istituzioni nazionali ed europee e il grado di fiducia nelle stesse, da parte dei giovani nel Nord Est.

Our work intends to examine the causes and consequences of misinformation among the young citizens of North-Eastern Italy (Triveneto), in particular with reference to (national and European) institutions, immigration, and opinions about the management of the health crisis generated by Coronavirus, the measures adopted by public authorities and the validity of the anti-Covid vaccines. This study will be done through the analysis of the data collected through a survey that we administered, with the collaboration of the research company SWG, to a sample of young people (18-35 years) living in the Triveneto area in November 2021, a period in which this area - and the region Friuli Venezia Giulia in particular - were at the heart of the public debate and the demonstrations related to vaccines and to the mandatory vaccination certificate. Il nostro lavoro intende esaminare cause e conseguenze della disinformazione tra i giovani cittadini del Triveneto, in particolare con riferimento alle istituzioni (nazionali ed europee), all’immigrazione e all’opinione che si sono fatti riguardo alla gestione della crisi sanitaria generata dal Coronavirus, alle misure adottate e alla validità dei vaccini anti-Covid. Questo studio sarà fatto attraverso l’analisi dei dati raccolti grazie ad una indagine da noi amministrata, con la collaborazione della società di ricerca SWG, ad un campione di giovani (18-35 anni) residenti del Triveneto nel mese di novembre 2021, periodo nel quale quest’area – e la regione Friuli Venezia Giulia in particolare - sono stati al centro del dibattito e delle manifestazioni legate ai vaccini e all’obbligo del green pass.

The public’s distrust of the Italian parliament has spread like a pandemic over the past few years. According to the Eurobarometer data, in the last fifteen years the portion of the Italian population declaring a measure of trust in the country’s highest representative institution has never exceeded one third. Apparently, the Italian political system has proven unable to tackle citizens’ distrust, as the gap between those who tend not to trust the Italian parliament and those who tend to trust it still amounts to more than 20 percentage points, also after the start of Legislature XVIII in March 2018. This is perhaps surprising, as the Italian elections held in 2018 brought about a number of novelties in the party system and in the institutional framework. At the same time, however, some political dynamics in the Italian parliament did not change after the 2018 elections, and this has probably helped to preserve the image of the Italian parliament as a ‘delegitimised’ institution. It is especially on these patterns of continuity and discontinuity with the past that could be observed at the start of Legislature XVIII that the present Special Issue focuses.

Se a livello regionale l’alleanza di centro destra in Italia si è mantenuta stabile – perché strategicamente la scelta è rimasta quella di presentarsi uniti per vincere –, a livello nazionale, fino al mese di agosto 2020, i tre alleati occupavano posti decisamente diversi, con la Lega al governo e Forza Italia e Fratelli d’Italia all’opposizione. Ma che tipo di opposizione hanno portato avanti questi ultimi nei confronti del governo giallo-verde? I gruppi parlamentari si sono adattati al loro nuovo ruolo e a questa nuova divisione o hanno, in qualche modo, continuato a collaborare tra loro, data la comunanza di intenti a livello locale e regionale, la passata alleanza a livello nazionale e, tutto sommato, anche una certa prossimità in termini di preferenze politiche? Queste sono le domande alle quali cercheremo di dare una risposta in questo lavoro. I dati che abbiamo utilizzato nella nostra analisi sono stati raccolti da due fonti principali: i dati relativi all’attività parlamentare dal sito della Camera dei Deputati ; i dati sulle elezioni e su giunte e consigli regionali sul sito del Ministero dell’Interno . Il pezzo è, dunque, suddiviso in tre sezioni: una prima di ricognizione dei principali fatti politici che hanno visto come protagonisti i partiti di centro destra negli anni recenti, per arrivare al 2019; una seconda concentrata sulla loro alleanza in ambito regionale e i relativi successi a livello elettorale nell’anno che si stiamo analizzando; e una terza e ultima sul loro rapporto nell’arena parlamentare, prima e dopo la chiusura dell’esperienza del governo Conte I.

Análise Social, Vol. 53 N.º 227 (2018)

The aim of this work is to expand the knowledge of opposition in European legislatures through the study of the Portuguese case.1 We will do that along two main dimensions: the transformation of the party context and the outbreak of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The Portuguese case represents a unique opportunity to explore the possible changes in the opposition parties’ behaviour, given the presence of a variety of political and economic conditions. First, the presence of two major parties alternating in offce and three radical parties that had neither been part of any government majority nor supported any executive until 2015 allows us to test the difference in the behaviour of temporary and permanent opposition. In addition, Portugal offers an insight into the impact of the economic crisis on the opposition’s behaviour. As a result, it is the perfect laboratory to test the effect of both dimensions.

L’anno del centro-destra può essere ben racchiuso tra questi due estremi: da un lato la Lega che cerca di completare la ridefinizione della propria identità, dimenticando l’indipendentismo padano e posizionandosi all’estrema destra, enfatizzando le posizioni anti-immigrati e anti-euro, con l’ambizione di espandere il proprio elettorato anche al centro-sud [Vampa 2017]; dall’altro Berlusconi che costruisce per sé e per il proprio partito un’immagine di forza politica moderata e affidabile, inevitabile cerniera di qualunque alleanza post-elettorale. In mezzo, Fratelli d’Italia (FdI), il piccolo partito di Giorgia Meloni, che raccoglie i voti dei nostalgici del Movimento sociale italiano (Msi). Come vedremo, alla destra di questi partiti «istituzionali», sono riemerse frange neo-fasciste, rappresentate da due gruppi extraparlamentari – Forza Nuova e CasaPound – che hanno conquistato una sorprendente e preoccupante centralità mediatica nella seconda parte del 2017.

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.

UID/CPO/04627/2013 How do parties that have long been confined to opposition behave once they take the decision to support government? This paper analyses the case of the three Portuguese radical left parties that took such a move in the wake of the post-bailout 2015 elections. Leveraging on the concept of contract parliamentarism and on the analysis of different data sources through different methods, we show that the three parties adopted a similar strategy after closing agreement deals with the centre-left socialists. Specifically, while keeping a close scrutiny of 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 paper underlines the importance of conducting a thorough negotiation of policy goals and their timing of implementation before joining the government and pursuing an autonomous discursive agenda. authorsversion published

The authors examine the development of opposition party behaviour in the Dutch Tweede Kamer between 1998 and 2015. They look at the effect of three major events on opposition party behaviour: the entry of a major radical right-wing populist party (in 2002), the global financial crisis (in 2008) and the advent of minority governments (in 2012). The authors find that consensus democracy is alive. During the economic crisis, the established rules of the game were reinvented to allow for productive cooperation between effectively a minority government and ‘constructive’ opposition parties. Since the crisis, opposition parties with earlier government experience have been increasingly active.

UID/CPO/04627/2013 IF/00926/2015. The severe financial and debt crisis that hit the Eurozone from 2008 had a destabilising impact on the political systems of Southern Europe. Governments were ousted from power, critical elections questioned the bipolar structure of many party systems, and new political actors challenged the traditional political game. While these events have been addressed in several works, less attention has been devoted to the experience of former incumbent parties turned opposition during the economic blizzard. In Southern Europe, the 2011-2015 period was characterised by economic recession, popular protest against the austerity policies imposed by the EU (and by the Troika in bailed-out member states), and steady erosion of support for the government parties (Bosco and Verney, 2016). We might think that such a situation, by discrediting the incumbents, would have been favourable to the opposition parties, helping them to increase their voting intentions and facilitating their triumphal return to government at the successive elections. But this was not the case of the socialists neither in Spain nor in Portugal, although the elections held in 2015 opened very different political scenarios for the two parties. preprint published

UID/CPO/04627/2013 IF/00926/2015, IF/00382/2014. The Five-Star Movement (5SM) is a fitting example of the "new opposition" anticipated by Mair (2011) arising in the context of the crisis of mainstream parties and, more generally, of representative institutions. It is an anti-establishment opposition that presents itself as an alternative to all the political forces and does not identify with traditional cleavages, especially the socio-economic distinction between left and right. Finally, it is strongly opposed to mainstream party elites, considering them the first responsible for the country's poor economic performance and moral conditions (De Giorgi 2016). At the same time, unlike Mair's theorised actor, it is, or better aims to be only temporarily in opposition. publishersversion published

UID/CPO/04627/2013, SFRH/BPD/78955/2011. This paper reviews the logic of attempts to automate the processes involved in computer-assisted text analysis in the social sciences. Bayesian estimation methods in spatial analysis of variations in positions of political parties over time and Latent Dirichlet Allocation from the developing field of latent topic analysis are compared with the analysis of structures of word co-occurrences in the tradition of content analysis, using Procrustean individual differences scaling. Each depends in practice on concentrating attention on a limited number of word tokens regarded as meaningful while most are disregarded as inessential. By applying apparently competing strategies to the same set of party contributions to the 1997 budget debate in the Italian parliament, they can beshown to be complementary in character and should be applied as such in comparing material of this kind. publishersversion published

Una definizione di opposizione in Italia, il suo contesto, la sua storia e la sua evoluzione tra prima e seconda repubblica.