Party Competition in the 2013 Italian Elections: Evidence from an Expert Survey

Abstract

In this article, we examine the structure of party competition in Italy in the February 2013 elections. We rely on the spatial approach to party competition to analyse the most salient dimensions of the policy space in the Italian context. Our analysis is based on quantitative estimates from expert survey data. These data highlight the salience of the socioeconomic policy dimension and capture the change in the importance of the EU dimension. Finally, this study provides an analysis of potential coalition governments in the aftermath of the 2013 general election that is grounded on the spatial approach to coalition formation.

Party System Change in Italy: Politicising the EU and the Rise of Eccentric Parties

“…The policies adopted by the Monti government during 2012 created increasing tensions both between and within parties. This is because of the austerity measures demanded by the EU, which made pro-/anti-EU attitudes the most important dimension of competition between parties (Di Virgilio et al 2015a). With regard to the other domains, environment policy and the EU's military role are particularly interesting.…”

Show the money first! Recent public attitudes towards the EU in Italy

“…On the one hand, the general elections were quite recent at the time (they occurred in February of the same year) and the memory of the politicization of Europe during the electoral campaign (Di Virgilio et al, 2014) was still alive. On the other, the European elections of May 2014 were approaching and salience of EU-related issues was increasing in view of this event.…”

A problem with empirical studies of party policy shifts: Alternative measures of party shifts are uncorrelated

“…Another implication of our study is that scholars – in designing national surveys or expert surveys – may actually want to directly ask citizens and experts to estimate parties’ policy changes over time (see Di Virgilio et al. () based on Benoit & Laver's () approach). We thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.…”