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

Author (Person) ,
Series Title
Series Details Vol.27, No.4, September 2017, p483-505
Publication Date September 2017
ISSN 1359-7566
Content Type

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.

Source Link http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2017.1343718
Related Links
ESO: Background information: Italian regional elections, 2015 http://www.europeansources.info/record/italian-regional-elections-2015/

Countries / Regions