Come cambiano gli italiani: Valori e atteggiamenti dagli anni Ottanta a oggi Ferruccio Biolcati, Giancarlo Rovati and Paolo Segatti (eds.), Bologna: Il Mulino, 2020. 352p. €32 (paperback)

Abstract

In an age characterized by radical electoral change, often leading to disruptive political developments, the whole area of political science that deals with the chain of representation – the one that connects citizens to parties (and governments) through elections – has been seriously challenged. Cleavage theories and ideological understandings that had served us well for decades have been proving less and less useful in recent years, as testified by the proliferation of new frameworks (from ‘populism’ to new cleavages, to issue competition). It is in this difficult and challenging context for our discipline that Come cambiano gli italiani comes with perfect timing, providing a wealth of information (and some potentially controversial interpretations: see below) about the values and attitudes of Italian citizens. Fitting well within the contemporary perspective of political science, that has fully incorporated survey research as one of its most powerful research tools, the book leverages: (1) a pooled dataset of Italian respondents to five waves of European Values Study (EVS)/World Values Survey (WVS) surveys, between 1981 and 2018; (2) an impressive team of contributors, including both senior and junior scholars from various Italian and international universities; (3) leadership by three scholars that – besides being national EVS and WVS coordinators – have led through the years projects such as the Italian National Election Studies and the True European Voter. The book starts (p. 8) by clarifying how all chapters share two essential goals: the first (well captured by the book title) is to provide an effective description of change (across time) of key cultural orientations of Italian respondents; the second (less evident in the title) is to trace a sort of deeper change, i.e. change in the relationships that connect these cultural orientations to other personal characteristics and values. This latter question is just as interesting, such as in the example of how, among younger generations, education is losing is classic role in predicting differences in political interest, so that – against the predictions of cognitive mobilization theory – overall increases in education rates do not lead to overall increases in political interest (Chapter 10). These two goals are systematically pursued across 17 chapters, that give this book unique breadth and reveal its importance for our understanding of contemporary political developments. After a first chapter on structural and demographic change, chapters follow dedicated to attitudes towards: life priorities; work; family; religion; libertarianism and civic attitudes; post-materialism; environment; science; social and political participation; military service; institutions; political leadership; state vs. market; corruption; immigration; social distance and interpersonal trust. All chapters present results in easily accessible form, often using simple tables and charts that compare descriptives or summary indices by time and/or by key individual variables; multivariate regression analyses – when used – are presented through simple effect plots.