Conflicting messages of electoral protest: The role of systemic and elite discontent in the Italian 2016 constitutional referendum

Abstract

The vote NO (a defeat for the proponents) of the 2016 Italian referendum has been broadly attributed to a wave of protest politics sweeping Western democracies. Given that the government of Matteo Renzi proposed and supported the referendum, the resulting vote against government interests raises a crucial theoretical question: to what extent does the referendum vote reflect the characteristics of a protest vote? To disentangle the meaning and impact of protest, we distinguish two dimensions: the ‘system discontent’ and the ‘elite discontent’, referring to both general and focalized images: general sentiments towards the representational aspects of political institutions as compared to focused sentiments towards government performances. The circumstances surrounding the referendum provide a crucial test for whether these two forms of protest can be at odds with one another. We expect and find that elite discontented voters tend to reject this referendum. Vice versa, system discontent increased support for the referendum, as it would reform political institutions to which voters had negative sentiments. Findings suggest that analyses of political psychology and behaviour identify the conceptual foundations for protest and ask whether forms of protest work in parallel or at odds. Protest attitudes and their effects should be thought of as multidimensional.

Decades of Party Distrust. Persistence through Reform in Italy

“…While electoral reform had little impact, the partisan emergence of the Five Star movement has provided a party for those with anti-party sentiments to vote for. Our conclusions provide support for the notion that discontent can be separated into a political dimension associated with current governance and one of a more systemic nature (Bergman and Passarelli 2021;Passarelli and Tuorto 2018).…”

“…This later movement has provided a political outlet for anti-party sentiment, as it was the only party whose adherents felt statistically different about the trustworthiness of political parties 11 . In toto, party discontent appears to be able to be split into a political dimension associated with current governance and parties and one of a more systemic nature focus on political institutions themselves (Bergman and Passarelli 2021;Passarelli and Tuorto 2018).…”

“…One common feature of the Italian political space over the past half century has been the distrust of political elites and presence of anti-system parties on both the left and the right. This elite discontent and frustration with political system has taken many forms, including referendums altering the electoral system (Bergman and Passarelli 2021). Both the character of the main parties and the rules by which they are elected have been reformed four times since the 1980s.…”

“…Both the character of the main parties and the rules by which they are elected have been reformed four times since the 1980s. However, with the continuing success of "antiparty" parties (Mudde 1996) the elections of 2013 and 2018 and the referendum of 2016 demonstrate (Bergman and Passarelli 2021), Italians still have a high amount of resentment towards party elites and the operation of the system. Using data from Italian National Election Studies, this paper examines correlates with this resentment over a period of time ranging from 1968 to 2018 with a focus on three main questions: (1) How has resentment towards party representativeness changed with electoral and party reforms?…”

Protest against the politicians: Vote switching in the Italian 2016-2020 constitutional referenda

“…The reduction of the size of the Parliament was one of the proposed changes included in a previous referendum held in 2016, which voters rejected. The 2016 proposal was advanced by then Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of the centre-left Partito Democratico, which saw a joint reaction of all other parties against its proponent as Renzi pledged to resign if the measure failed, scholarship has identified a strong current of a protest vote against an unpopular incumbent as an explanation for its failure (Bergman and Passarelli, 2021;Ceccarini and Bordignon, 2017). While advanced by the governing parties, no party or politician explicitly staked their career on the outcome.…”