Contemporary Italian Politics最新文献

{"title":"COVID-19 risk perception and political actors: how confidence in the government or opposition affected risk perception during the Italian lockdown","authors":"Andrea Marchesi, Nicola De Luigi","doi":"10.1080/23248823.2023.2278349","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2023.2278349","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the connections between the socio-demographic patterns of COVID-19 risk perception and the influence of confidence in the government or opposition during the first Italian lockdown. Confidence in political actors is used as a proxy for the adoption of the interpretative frames they provide. Socio-demographic characteristics are crucial in understanding the perception of risks ascribed to a specific event. However, the politicization of such events and the subsequent production of interpretative frames by political actors gives rise to further crucial factors when the event is characterized by ‘uncertainty’. This empirical analysis is based on primary data from a survey conducted in Italy during the last three weeks of closures (26 April−17 May 2020, N = 1,704) and clearly shows that the most worried respondents were women, elderly people, those living in the north of Italy, those with an upper-secondary school level of education or those with a job in the socio-cultural professions. Accounting for confidence in the government or opposition shows that respondents who have a higher degree of confidence in the opposition were less worried than those with a higher degree of confidence in the government. As politicization of the pandemic primarily divided those in favour and those opposed to the strict measures to limit infections at the expense of the health of the economy and personal freedom, the positions of respondents on these two trade-offs (economy/lockdown and freedom/lockdown) are accounted for. The analysis shows that position on these two dimensions completely reflects the association between confidence in political actors and risk perceptions – apart from the elderly, those resident in the north of Italy and socio-cultural professionals. These results provide insights into the literature assessing the socio-demographic patterns of COVID-19 risk perception and the politicization of the pandemic.KEYWORDS: COVID-19risk perceptionpolitical attitudessocio-demographic characteristics Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. The associations between socio-demographic characteristics and risk perception are introduced in the first section.2. The government and opposition were the main political entities with decision-making and legislative powers during lockdown.3. Such frames define the risks associated with a disease and actual victims in different ways. Furthermore, victims can be ascribed to both the disease and the measures enacted (Staniland and Smith Citation2013).4. These governments opted for a ‘moralizing’ discursive strategy, feeding concerns about the virus with the aim of achieving compliance in order to minimize the number of infected people (Monaghan Citation2020). As seen in previous epidemics, such a frame competed with another focused on the minimization of the health aftermath of the disease to avoid social and economic strains.5. Mass media comm","PeriodicalId":37572,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Italian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136352133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Participating and non-participating in Italy. The COVID-19 as a cleavage?","authors":"Luigi Ceccarini, Fabio Turato","doi":"10.1080/23248823.2023.2267243","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2023.2267243","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37572,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Italian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136357458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Meloni government one year on","authors":"James L. Newell","doi":"10.1080/23248823.2023.2272360","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2023.2272360","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37572,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Italian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135949024","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"You want me, but I no longer want you. The punishment-reward mechanism and institutional quality in Italian regions","authors":"Marzia Ippolito, Salvatore Ercolano, Lorenzo Cicatiello","doi":"10.1080/23248823.2023.2258470","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2023.2258470","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTFollowing the principal theory concerning the foundations of voting behaviour it is possible to assert that citizens hold politicians and their parties accountable through their votes. From this perspective, if citizens perceive the quality of local institutions to be a result of the policies enacted by local authorities they may punish or reward the incumbent parties. By means of a quantitative approach, our results, based on the analysis of 15 different election rounds, show that various dimensions of institutional quality impact voting behaviour in Italian provinces. The punishment-reward mechanism suggests that political preferences change because local institutions lack quality.KEYWORDS: Punishment-reward mechanismquality of institutionsvoting behaviourItalian provinces Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Compliance with ethical standardsThe authors have no conflicts of interest to declare. All co-authors have seen and agree with the contents of the manuscript and there is no financial interest to report. We certify that the submission is original work and is not under review for any other publication.Additional informationNotes on contributorsMarzia IppolitoMarzia Ippolito is a research fellow at the University of Basilicata - Department of Mathematics, Computer Science and Economics. Her research focuses on public economy; data analysis and quantitative methods; economic inequality, and political and economic trends in the European Union.Salvatore ErcolanoSalvatore Ercolano is Associate Professor of political economy at the University of Basilicata. His research focuses on political economy; public economics; environmental economics; cultural economics, and the evaluation of public policies.Lorenzo CicatielloLorenzo Cicatiello is Assistant Professor of economics in the Department of Human and Social Sciences, University of Naples L’Orientale. His research focuses on transparency, institutions and political participation.","PeriodicalId":37572,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Italian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135925802","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An obituary for Silvio Berlusconi","authors":"James L. Newell","doi":"10.1080/23248823.2023.2233192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2023.2233192","url":null,"abstract":"The publication of this special issue, devoted to the role of the President of the Republic, coincides with the end of an era in Italian politics, marked by the death of Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi contributed to the developing political role of the head of state in a number of ways. The first came with the so-called ‘ribaltone’ in 1994/95, when the collapse of the entrepreneur’s first government led to its replacement by a technocratic government supported by the Lega Nord (Northern League, NL) and the parties of the centre left. Then, Berlusconi had complained bitterly at the President’s decision to appoint the new government rather than to dissolve Parliament. Berlusconi argued that as Prime Minister, he had received a direct popular mandate, that his government had collapsed thanks to the treachery of one of its components (the NL) and that therefore there should be fresh elections for the conferral of a new mandate. That President Oscar Luigi Scafaro was able to resist this line of reasoning – in any case incorrect: in parliamentary democracies, voters elect legislatures, not governments, whose legitimacy in turn derives from their enjoying the confidence of the legislature – did much to strengthen the presidential role in the new context of party-system bi-polarity that had been ushered in with the election of 1994. It was arguably due to this ‘spat’ between Berlusconi and Scalfaro that the entrepreneur’s 2005 constitutional reform project included proposals limiting the two most significant presidential powers: the power to dissolve Parliament (article 88, Cost.) and the power to appoint ‘the President of the Council of Ministers and, on their proposal, the Ministers’ (article 92, Cost.). The project failed to achieve the necessary ratification in the constitutional referendum held the following year. However, had the project gone ahead; then, the resignation of a prime minister would have prevented the legislature from forming a majority different from the one resulting from the election and – in the absence of a willingness of the latter majority to carry on under a different prime minister – obliged the President to dissolve. Presidents would have lost all discretion in the appointment of prime ministers – whose appointments would have been expressly tied to ‘the results of the elections for the Chamber of Deputies’ – and their power to appoint ministers would have been transferred to the Prime Minister. The events surrounding Berlusconi’s resignation in 2011, in the wake of the Eurozone crisis, suggested to many that by then Italy had acquired a de facto semi-presidential system of government. As Berlusconi’s authority began to decline significantly during the summer of that year, President Napolitano was able to play an active role in getting anticrisis budget measures passed in record time. By the autumn, Berlusconi was facing the threat of a vote of no confidence in the face of which he made a last-ditch attempt to save his positi","PeriodicalId":37572,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Italian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46300339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Political news diets and political attitudes in the 2019 EU elections in Italy","authors":"S. Bentivegna, R. Rega","doi":"10.1080/23248823.2023.2227522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2023.2227522","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37572,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Italian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45330307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The presidential ‘accordion’ plays for us all","authors":"F. Musella, M. Valbruzzi","doi":"10.1080/23248823.2023.2225263","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2023.2225263","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT More than any other president of a contemporary parliamentary democracy, the Italian head of state has played a significant political role. Indeed, since the transformation of the Italian party system in 1992–3 and especially in times of economic crisis or political turmoil, Italian presidents have actively intervened in a significant way to safeguard the Constitution and improve the working of the Italian political system. In this context, the ‘extended presidency’ of Sergio Mattarella, originally elected in 2015 and then re-elected for a second, exceptional term in 2022, is no exception to the rule. As a matter of fact, the re-election of Mattarella (after the – at the time unprecedented – re-election of Giorgio Napolitano in 2013) has not only strengthened the role of the head of state vis-à-vis other political institutions and even more so the political parties, but it has even raised a number of questions concerning the very nature of Italy’s parliamentary regime. Against this backdrop, this article analyses, from different analytical perspectives, the evolving role of the president of the Republic within the changing Italian political system by taking into consideration presidents’ relationships – not always smooth – with the political parties, their atypical style of political communication (both online and offline), their exercise of executive power and, finally, their peculiar contribution to that process of more or less covert presidentialisation that has characterized Italian politics since the early 1990s.","PeriodicalId":37572,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Italian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48800785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Prime Ministers in Europe. Changing career experiences and profiles","authors":"F. Musella","doi":"10.1080/23248823.2023.2225974","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2023.2225974","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37572,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Italian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48793034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Between love and hate: party members and the new forms of participation","authors":"Stefano Rombi, F. Serricchio","doi":"10.1080/23248823.2023.2222454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2023.2222454","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37572,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Italian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42420520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Italy in the Council of the European Union: votes and statements","authors":"M. Giuliani","doi":"10.1080/23248823.2023.2220187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2023.2220187","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37572,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Italian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48154895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}