Polarisation in Southern Europe: Elites, Party Conflicts and Negative Partisanship

Abstract

The article complements our collection of studies of politics in polarised Southern Europe by offering a cross-regional comparison. Following a brief excursion into how polarisation in Southern Europe has been addressed in the existing literature, the focus zooms in on three country case studies. After showing the differential evolution of polarisation in Italy, Greece and Spain over recent decades, the story is brought up to date with an examination of the specific ways in which polarisation played out in the 2019 election cycle. marked by the Catalan conflict in Spain, the Macedonian name question in Greece and the polarising role of Matteo Salvini in Italy. The article concludes with comparative insights into the current polarisation drives in the three countries.

Cognitive–motivational mechanisms of political polarization in social-communicative contexts

“…Anti-immigration attitudes were shaped by social-communicative processes, including elite rhetoric and partisan cue-taking 337 . All of this parallels polarization trends in other regions, including Europe 338 , the Middle East 11 , and Latin America 11 .…”

Did COVID-19 change the political communication of polarizing leaders? The case of Salvini's campaigning before and after the pandemic

“…In this study, we chose to focus on the Italian context, which in 2020 saw two different rounds of regional elections, one before the first wave of the pandemic (January 2020), and one immediately after (September 2020), thus representing a convenient case study to test the role of COVID-19 in producing specific changes in terms of political communication. Furthermore, we chose to focus in particular on the political communication of Matteo Salvini, leader of the right-wing party Lega, for three reasons: (1) after the results of the political elections of 2018, Salvini had become the leader of the center-right coalition, so that in 2020 he had the highest strategic interest in “winning” the regional elections to politically “harm” the center-left government of the time (Conte II, mainly supported by the Five-Star Movement and by the Democratic Party); (2) he represents the most highly polarizing political leader in Italy, strongly relying on partisanship, divisive issues, and attack-oriented campaigning ( Bordignon, 2020 ; Bosco and Verney, 2020 ; Mariotti et al, 2021 ; Rega and Marchetti, 2021 ; Tronconi and Valbruzzi, 2020 ); (3) in terms of political communication, he proved to be one of the most effective and tech-savviest campaigners, among the most active and successful political leaders not only in Italy but throughout Europe (looking at his activities online, numbers of followers, levels of engagement, etc.).…”