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This article focuses on the two main contributions to the contemporary academic debate about the term 'presidentialisation', namely the books by Samuels and Shugart and Poguntke and Webb. The aim is not to rehearse critiques that have already been made about this term or to add another to the list. Instead, the aim is to distinguish between two different ways in which the same term has been applied in the two studies. Both sets of authors are concerned with the same term, but each operationalises it in a different way. Acknowledging these differences allows us to focus on a specific aspect of Poguntke and Webb's account that is absent from Samuels and Shugart's, namely the construction of a grand historical narrative.

The vote NO (a defeat for the proponents) of the 2016 Italian referendum has been broadly attributed to a wave of protest politics sweeping Western democracies. Given that the government of Matteo Renzi proposed and supported the referendum, the resulting vote against government interests raises a crucial theoretical question: to what extent does the referendum vote reflect the characteristics of a protest vote? To disentangle the meaning and impact of protest, we distinguish two dimensions: the ‘system discontent’ and the ‘elite discontent’, referring to both general and focalized images: general sentiments towards the representational aspects of political institutions as compared to focused sentiments towards government performances. The circumstances surrounding the referendum provide a crucial test for whether these two forms of protest can be at odds with one another. We expect and find that elite discontented voters tend to reject this referendum. Vice versa, system discontent increased support for the referendum, as it would reform political institutions to which voters had negative sentiments. Findings suggest that analyses of political psychology and behaviour identify the conceptual foundations for protest and ask whether forms of protest work in parallel or at odds. Protest attitudes and their effects should be thought of as multidimensional.

This article deals with voter turnout and the economic crisis, and focuses on the results of the 2013 parliamentary elections in Italy. A consolidated tradition of studies has attested to the impact of a negative economic cycle, unemployment and various issues related to the economy, on the decision whether or not to vote, although the results remain controversial. Some scholars have asserted that, during a period of crisis, voters 10 react positively, using their collective voice to demand more attention to their interests. Others argue that negative circumstances distance citizens from the electoral arena bringing a higher rate of abstention as a consequence. The peculiarity of the political situation in the period leading up to the 2013 election in Italy (the unexpected end of Berlusconi’s government in 2011, the period of transition under Monti’s technocratic 15 government and the rise of the Five Star Movement [MoVimento Cinque Stelle, M5S] as a new competitor) strongly influenced voters’ evaluations of how political parties were going to compete and whether, or for whom, they would vote. Survey results show that discontented voters largely used abstention as a strategy to express their resentment, but that the most politically engaged preferred to choose a radical party 20 (M5S), rather than refusing to vote

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