Critical election and a new party system: Italy after the 2015 regional election

Abstract

Although party system change has been widely explored, it is less so for the regional level. The article provides the first systematic attempt to discuss party system change at the regional level in Italy. Through a comprehensive overview of the five 1995–2015 regional elections, indicators of party system change, based on an original database, are explored. It will be showed that in the 2013–15 election cycle while party system fragmentation, volatility and recomposition reached their maximum high – parallel to what happened in 1995 – the level of bipolarism, one of the main features of Italian party system since the mid-1990s, dramatically dropped replaced by a three-pole configuration. These results, and their consistency with the relevant junctures at the national level in 1994 and 2013, may allow to state that a party system change at the regional level occurred and thus to consider 2013–15 elections as critical

Economic voting goes local: evidence from the Italian regions

“…At the party-system level, a third factor that contributes to a clearer assignment of responsibilities with respect to government decisions pertains to the mechanics of inter-party competition and the existence of alternative coalitions willing (and available) to alternate in power. To empirically understand this phenomenon, we use the ‘bipolarism index’ (Bolgherini and Grimaldi, 2017: 495) measured in the regional arena. The index is calculated by adding up the electoral support (as a percentage of the total vote) of the two largest coalitions.…”

The 2020 regional elections in Italy: sub-national politics in the year of the pandemic

“…This regular pattern of interactions between national ruling and opposition parties, which may be linked to the 'second order' nature of regional elections (Schakel and Jeffery 2013), no longer seemed to hold in 2015. This turned out to be the culmination of a 'critical' election cycle (Bolgherini and Grimaldi 2017) in which regional party systems had become more fragmented and volatile than in the past (Vampa 2015). To be sure, this was partly due to the fact that regional political competition had become more 'region-centred' (Bolgherini and Grimaldi 2017, 487), less dominated by national parties and leaders and more subject to region-specific factors than in the 1990s and early 2000s.…”

Translating votes into seats and offices: changing representation and government in the Italian Regions (2018-2020)

“…Yet other factors, such as the multiplication of political actors, the disintegration of traditional parties and a more mobile electorate, may contribute to this. The 2013-2015 electoral cycle already marked a critical point in the history of Italian regional democracy, with the effective number of parties (ENP) reaching a record point (Bolgherini and Grimaldi 2017;Vampa 2015). By using the Laakso and Taagepera (1979) index, it is possible to calculate the ENP in the electoral arena (ENP V ), which considers how vote shares are distributed.…”

“…The shift in political equilibria at the regional level accelerated in the electoral cycle of 2013-2015, which followed the 'earthquake' 2013 general election (Chiaramonte and De Sio 2014). As highlighted by various studies, regional party politics became more fragmented and volatile (Vampa 2015;Bolgherini and Grimaldi 2017).…”