Brexit and Italian politics: parallels, warnings and impacts by A. Giovannini and J. Newell

hqdefaultItalian elites’ traditional esterofilia – the tendency to compare Italy unfavourably with other polities and to look to foreign models for solutions to the country’s political problems – looks very interesting in the aftermath of Brexit. Always held up as a model of political stability, home to a civic culture of which Italians could supposedly only dream, British politics must look very different now, in light of the referendum outcome – as must the quality of British and Italian democracy in relative terms. It seems ironic, considering what has happened, that Anglo-Saxon authors could once write books and articles with such snobbish titles as ‘Republic without government’, ‘Sick man of Europe’, to name just a few, and that these titles could be largely accepted by Italian elites as embodying appropriate judgments of the relative quality of Italy as a democracy. For what the referendum outcome has shown is that British democracy shares all of the problems traditionally seen as supposedly distinguishing features of the Italian case, if anything to a far greater degree. Thereby, it has revealed a number of stark warnings for Italy’s political elites, as well as having had several unwelcome impacts. Continue reading “Brexit and Italian politics: parallels, warnings and impacts by A. Giovannini and J. Newell”

Italian democracy the day after the local elections

As the results of the second round of municipal elections in some amongst Italy’s main cities are known, Professors James Newell and Maurizio Carbone share with CONGRIPS their thoughts on what these results mean for Italy’s democracy (editorial piece for the forthcoming issue of Contemporary Italian Politics)

The day before we began writing this editorial, the results of the second round of the local elections were announced. Although they involved only around one quarter of the Italian electorate and were of the second-order variety, their outcome was widely framed in the media as a significant defeat for Matteo Renzi and therefore to a significant extent were so: in politics, perhaps more than in any other sphere, a situation defined as real is real in its consequences.

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Analysis of electoral flows in the recent local elections

The Istituto Cattaneo has just published a brief  analysis of electoral flows in seven Italian cities, examining the flows of votes from the first to second round of the municipal elections of Torino, Bologna, Napoli, Novara, Varese, Grosseto and Brindisi (data for the two main cities, Rome and Milan, is not yet available). The analysis – by Rinaldo Vignati, Pasquale Colloca, Domenico Fruncillo, Michelangelo Gentilini, Mario Marino and Marco Valbruzzi – can be accessed from this link: http://www.cattaneo.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Analisi-Istituto-Cattaneo-Ballottaggi-Comunali-2016-Flussi-elettorali-20.06.16.pdf (in Italian).

CONGRIPS Panel at 2016 APSA Annual Conference announced: Italian Politics under Renzi and beyond

PhiladelphiaItalian politics under Renzi and beyond: transformation or stagnation? is the topic of the CONGRIPS Panel at the 2016 APSA Annual Conference that will take place in Philadelphia on Thursday 1 September, 8:00 to 9:30 (room tbc).

 

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