Dario Tuorto

• University of Bologna

You can never really get tired of Italian politics. Over the last 30 years, we have seen many turning points, the most memorable of which was undoubtedly Silvio Berlusconi's unexpected ‘descent into the field’ in 1994. Nor have we been deprived of colourful characters, such as Matteo Renzi or Matteo Salvini, who, as their careers took off, ended up...

Recent political upheavals, such as Brexit, Trump's election, the rise of challenger parties in Europe, and Italy's first "populist" government in 2018, challenge traditional theories of voting behaviour and party competition. Conventional explanations often point to populism and voter irrationality. However, recent research highlights that challen...

The inclusive nature of the electoral moment (for all adults) is one of the fundamental criteria of the modern democratic process based on universal suffrage (Dahl 2000, 37-8). However, there is always a more or less significant difference between the number of individuals theoretically entitled to vote based on age (VAP, voting-age population) and...

One of the key viewpoints from which to observe the question of electoral participation in western democracies is that of the historical, social and political conditions that have rendered voting an inclusive or exclusive experience. This chapter shall provide an overview of the changes during the twentieth century that led first of all to universa...

This chapter examines the current debate on the political changes leading to the emergence of new “challenger parties” in many Western democracies. The interest in this field derives from the desire to place the question of participatory inequalities within a broader interpretative framework: this framework considers not only the institutional and...

This chapter deals with the macro institutional and contextual factors that may encourage underprivileged groups to vote or discourage them from doing so. The focus in the present chapter is on those aspects that go beyond the individual resources or social status of those concerned. The institutional determinants of participation (or non-participa...

The final chapter of the book reflects upon the well-known democratic dilemma of how to make elections more inclusive. This argument appears particularly crucial in the current years when multiple processes have deprived the traditional political institutions of their functions, reducing their ability to provide solutions to social and economic pro...

The article illustrates the penetration strategies of Salvini’s League in Southern Italy, particularly after the 2018 general elections. The League’s strategies are closely observed in three territorial contexts: Calabria, Campania and Sicily. For each of these three regions, the article presents the choices made by the League and the ways of build...

The article aims to retrace the transformations of the Lega Nord under the leadership of Matteo Salvini by focusing on the analysis of key dimensions such as: the ideology and issue positions, the territorial distribution of vote, and the party internal organization. The actual Lega of Salvini is undoubtedly different from the party of the origin....

In recent years, academic literature has stressed the declining importance of social class and religion as determinants of vote. In particular, many scholars have found that the working-class vote is no longer mostly addressed to socialist parties, whereas religious people still massively support confessional and conservative parties. This article...

This chapter develops a detailed analysis of the differences in turnout rates determined by the individual characteristics of voters, and in particular by their socio-economic conditions. After introducing the strands of literature and the methodological debate over the Resource Model, I shall be discussing the role played by income, social class a...

The transformation of politics in contemporary democracies has led to the emergence of a new ideological conflict, alongside the traditional left-right scheme, described as liberal–authoritarian or cosmopolitan–nationalist cleavage (Norris and Inglehart 2018; Kriesi 2008; 2012; Hooge and Marks 2009; 2018). This brought to a redefinition of the link...

Il volume considera il modo in cui i giovani si posizionano all’interno delle diverse sfere sociali – dal genere alle relazioni intergenerazionali, dal lavoro ai consumi, dalla partecipazione nella sfera pubblica al rapporto con le istituzioni – e indaga i cambiamenti che hanno ridisegnato, negli ultimi decenni, le caratteristiche e i confini della...

For many years after World War Two, the mass party model dominated Italian politics. High rates of membership and activism were considered to be essential for optimising electoral performance, for optimising organisational resources, and for the legitimacy of the party itself. However, since the 1970s, and in particular since 1989, party-membership...

The paper takes an innovative approach to the study of political participation by combining it with a gender studies perspective, investigating the role of structural and situational constraints in the highly gendered context of Italy. Such constraints channel women's time away from politics, but neither do they account for the whole difference, wh...

The success of the Italian party Five Star Movement (M5S) has been broadly attributed to its ability to occupy the space of radical protest against “old politics”. Due to the party’s criticism, its charismatic leadership, and its aggressive electoral campaigns, the M5S has been labeled as a populist. The unexpected result of 2013 election raises cr...

Our article aims to study the evolution of turnout in Italy during the transition to adulthood. Previous studies in other countries (Bhatti and Hansen 2012) have attested an unexpected phase after the first vote, when turnout declines instead of following a progressive increase. We hypothesize that this trend also exists in Italy and is influenced...

This article deals with voter turnout and the economic crisis, and focuses on the results of the 2013 parliamentary elections in Italy. A consolidated tradition of studies has attested to the impact of a negative economic cycle, unemployment and various issues related to the economy, on the decision whether or not to vote, although the results rema...

Uno degli aspetti più interessanti delle recenti migrazioni interne è l'elevato livello di capitale umano dei migranti. La mobilitŕ per motivi di studio puň rappresentare un canale decisivo di mobilitŕ sociale per persone che desiderano incrementare le loro competenze e acquisizioni, ma non dispongono di risorse familiari e reti sociali tali da pot...

Una delle problematiche meno indagate nell’ambito degli studi sulla partecipazione politica, ma allo stesso tempo più carica di conseguenze, è quella dell’intermittenza elettorale. L’aumento quasi ininterrotto del non voto negli ultimi due decenni in Italia ha interessato tutte le consultazioni, sia quelle politiche sia, soprattutto, quelle regiona...