For years right-wing populism was regarded as an irrelevant phenomenon in Spain. The recent success of Vox provides clear evidence that the transformation of Spanish politics is still under way. Today, both right-wing and left-wing populism -the latter represented by Podemos -coexist in an increasingly fragmented party system. This article shows that territorial mobilization has been an important factor in the emergence of these two competing forms of populism. In fact, their positioning on the so-called 'centre-periphery cleavage' at the moment of their initial success is their most notable element of differentiation. Right-wing populism in Spain is strongly anti-localist and anti-regionalist and this is clearly reflected in the territorial distribution of its support. On the other hand, left-wing populism had its electoral breakthrough particularly in those areas where demands for autonomy and even independence were stronger. This makes the Spanish case extremely interesting since most studies have not sufficiently considered the territorial dimension as a defining, and distinguishing, feature of right-wing and left-wing forms of populism.
In Western democracies political representation at the national level is still dominated by (old and new) political parties. This paper shows that, instead, the representative role of parties may have declined at the local level. In Italy, for instance, the average share of municipal seats held by non-partisan councillors has almost tripled in the last twenty years. By using an original dataset, this paper classifies different types of Italian local lists, assesses their relationship with traditional parties and explains territorial variation in their success. The results suggest that local lists have become substantially stronger in small municipalities, in regions characterised by weak or declining political subcultures and where regionalist parties are absent or irrelevant. Finally, contrary to the expectation that declining partisanship is linked to modernization processes and direct civic engagement, local lists have achieved their best results in the less developed areas of the country.
Abstract. In May 2015, voters in seven Italian regions went to the polls to elect new regional councils and governments. The final election result was apparently similar to that of 2010:centre-left coalitions won in five out of seven regions, like in the previous election, leaving the remaining two to the centre-right. Yet behind this picture of stability, dramatic changes have occurred in the internal composition of regional coalitions, cross-party equilibriums and levels of participation. Generally, regional party-based democracy seems to be experiencing increasing fragmentation and a crisis of representation and legitimacy.
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