Giulia Sandri

Giulia Sandri
Université Libre de Bruxelles | ULB

PhD
Scientific Advisor , Université Libre de Bruxelles. Research Fellow, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz.

About

100
Publications
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Introduction
Giulia Sandri is Scientific Advisor for European and International Funding at the EU Liaison Office of the Université libre de Bruxelles. Between 2012 and 2024, she was Associate Professor in Political Science, Director of ESPOL-LAB Research Centre for European and International Politics and Co-Director of the Master in Digital Politics and Governance at the Catholic University of Lille. Moreover, she is member of the Executive Committee of the Technology, Internet, and Policy Specialist Group.

Publications

Publications (100)
Preprint
Full-text available
This chapter explores the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on digital democracy, focusing on four main areas: citizenship, participation, representation, and the public sphere. It traces the evolution from electronic to virtual and network democracy, underscoring how each stage has broadened democratic engagement through technology. Focusi...
Article
Full-text available
There is a growing body of literature on the use and selection of social media platforms for political activism. However, less attention has been given to identifying citizens who are politically disconnected—those registered on social media platforms but not engaging in political activities. Additionally, whether patterns of non-use of social medi...
Article
Full-text available
Since the early 2000s, internet voting has developed considerably. However, limited research still examines citizens' expectations regarding its use in the electoral process, particu-larly in countries that have not yet introduced internet voting. This article addresses this gap by studying citizens' opinions about internet voting. We challenge exi...
Article
Full-text available
The article argues that AI can enhance the measurement and implementation of democratic processes within political parties, known as Intra-Party Democracy (IPD). It identifies the limitations of traditional methods for measuring IPD, which often rely on formal parameters, self-reported data, and tools like surveys. Such limitations lead to partial...
Preprint
Full-text available
This chapter explores the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on digital democracy, focusing on four main areas: citizenship, participation, representation, and the public sphere. It traces the evolution from electronic to virtual and network democracy, underscoring how each stage has broadened democratic engagement through technology. Focusi...
Article
Cet article mobilise une méthode particulière d’analyse des choix électoraux : une enquête à la sortie des urnes à vocation représentative menée lors de l’élection présidentielle de 2022 dans la ville de Roubaix, un territoire à la fois populaire et inégalitaire. Notre enquête a porté sur 35 des 45 bureaux de vote de la ville (4 266 questionnaires)...
Preprint
Full-text available
The article argues that AI can enhance the measurement and implementation of democratic processes within political parties, known as Intra-Party Democracy (IPD). It identifies the limitations of traditional methods for measuring IPD, which often rely on formal parameters, self-reported data, and tools like surveys. Such limitations lead to the coll...
Article
Si l’utilisation des médias sociaux en période électorale a déjà fait l’objet de nombreuses études, il apparaît pertinent de prolonger ces recherches en raison notamment de l’émergence de nouvelles plateformes. À ce titre, nous proposons d’analyser, à partir d’une enquête post-électorale spécifique, les profils des citoyens qui utilisent les différ...
Article
Full-text available
The article argues that AI can enhance the measurement and implementation of democratic processes within political parties, known as Intra-Party Democracy (IPD). It identifies the limitations of traditional methods for measuring IPD, which often rely on formal parameters, self-reported data, and tools like surveys. Such limitations lead to the coll...
Article
Full-text available
This chapter explores the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on digital democracy, focusing on four main areas: citizenship, participation, representation, and the public sphere. It traces the evolution from electronic to virtual and network democracy, underscoring how each stage has broadened democratic engagement through technology. Focusi...
Article
Full-text available
The presence and influence of peripheral elites in national political institutions is frequently handled by the press. But, oddly enough, the lack of a comprehensive vision of this issue tends to feed flashy titles alerting about the influence of some territorial groups in central institutions such as the “Scottish Raj,” the “Tartan mafia,” or the...
Article
Full-text available
Open government (OG) is an increasingly used management model among the public administrations of European countries and of the European Union, which is currently working on The Path to the Digital Decade. This supposes the application of measures to promote proximity and citizenship's prominence in many public policies, leading to improved quality...
Article
Full-text available
The year 2022 was (again) a year of intense political change in Italy. The President of the Republic was (re)elected in January, Prime Minister Mario Draghi resigned in July, and new elections were held in September, amidst energy and economic crises, growing inflation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The electoral victory of the centre‐right c...
Article
La manière dont les technologies numériques façonnent l’organisation des partis reste une zone grise pour la recherche. Cet article développe un cadre commun pour cartographier la digitalisation partisane à travers différents aspects. L'objectif est de mesurer les variations dans les modèles de numérisation des partis européens, en particulier conc...
Article
In search of citizens mobilized online during the 2020 municipal elections This article examines the effects of the Covid 19 crisis on voters’ online mobilization during the 2020 municipal elections in France. It draws on data from the PELMEL survey (Participation électorale dans la métropole lilloise, Electoral participation in the Lille metropoli...
Article
In Italy, 2021 has been a year marking a turning point in the struggle against the COVID‐19 pandemic, and a time of economic, political and social transition. The country has reaped several important successes, policy‐wise, both with regard to the efficacy of its vaccination campaign and to the drafting of its National Recovery and Resilience Plan...
Article
Full-text available
The effects on political participation of the consumption of political information from traditional and digital media are widely addressed in the literature. However, what happens in times of pandemic when people have other pressing concerns that are likely to receive significant media coverage? Does the consumption of political information—which i...
Article
Full-text available
Les usages électoraux d’Internet et des réseaux sociaux ont été particulièrement scrutés lors de la campagne d’avant premier tour. De nouvelles plates-formes, telles que TikTok ou Twitch, ont été fortement investies afin de toucher les plus jeunes, et certains candidats semblent y avoir été plus performants que d’autres – notamment Jean-Luc Mélench...
Article
2021 has been a year marking a turning point in the struggle against the pandemic and a time of economic and social transition in European Member States (MS). Italy has fared quite well in comparison to other MS, both with regard to the efficacy of its vaccination campaign and with regard to the drafting of its National Recovery and Resilience Plan...
Article
Full-text available
En este artículo investigamos el caso del Partido Demócrata en Italia (Partito Democratico - PD). Observamos cómo los miembros y simpatizantes se integran dentro del partido y su papel respectivo en la selección del líder. El PD aplica un procedimiento de dos pasos para seleccionar a los líderes. Primero, los afiliados seleccionan a los candidatos...
Article
Full-text available
In Italy, 2020 was marked by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which affected the country earlier and harder than the rest of the world. The Cabinet in office was the second Cabinet formed under the leadership of Giuseppe Conte (Conte II). This government had been in charge since September 2019, after the League/Lega (Lega) had toppled the previ...
Chapter
Over the past decades, digital technologies have developed into tools of political deliberation and decision-making by the state and parties alike (Chadwick, 2007, 2012; Koc-Michalska & Lilleker, 2016). However, while some states developed strict rules on how to regulate and govern the use of internet devices in electoral affairs, online voting or...
Chapter
This chapter is a first explorative attempt to study how and to what extent states have regulated i-voting in common law and in general elections so far, in order to strike a balance between adherence to democratic norms and management of the challenges imposed by technical aspects. The chapter first discusses the legal definition and framework of...
Chapter
This chapter outlines the main findings of the edited book. Through the study of a wide range of political parties from Europe and beyond, this book has explored the different degrees of digitalisation that political parties present, and, at the same time, discussed the main technological, democratic issues and trade-offs that political parties hav...
Chapter
This chapter outlines the main dimensions of analysis for assessing how mainstream and new parties are building their digital platforms and transitioning from traditional (offline) organisations into the digital world. So far, most of the academic attention has been focused on the impact of the use of digital technologies on party competition and c...
Article
This article contributes to the ongoing research effort assessing the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on turnout in the municipal elections held in France in March and June 2020. Holding the election in pandemic times caused turnout to drop significantly, but unevenly so across the electorate. We use both aggregate electoral results at the polling s...
Article
Full-text available
Over the past decade, many parties have created new possibilities for affiliating and involving citizens, often rivalling the classic conception of party membership. So far, the existing literature has mainly focused on classifying these new and different types of affiliates. However, little attention has been paid to what these “non-full-membershi...
Book
This book analyzes how mainstream and new parties are building their digital platforms and transitioning from traditional (offline) organizations into the digital world. The authors present an innovative empirical exploration of the democratic consequences and technical challenges of the digitalization of party organizations from a comparative per...
Article
In this article, we discuss the features and consequences of intra-party democracy (IPD) in Italian parties in the last two decades. We start by mapping the democratic innovations in Italy, both in terms of rules and practices. We focus on the use and consequences of open and closed primaries for selecting both party leaders and candidates for legi...
Chapter
The Italian second republicItalian second republic—inaugurated with the 1994 parliamentary electionelection, parliamentary—has been characterised by an alternation of two separate and mixed electoral systemselectoral system, mixed, personalised parties united in pre-electoral coalitionspre-electoral coalition, exceptionally high electoral volatilit...
Article
Drawing upon both the “party democratization” and “decline in party membership” literature, this paper explores how party members perceive the introduction of primary elections as procedures for selecting candidates and/or party leaders. Using Italy as an illustration, the analysis of survey data on party members from three major parties (Partito D...
Article
Full-text available
The report analyses the democratic delegation of power from voters to national and European leaders through the analysis of the contemporary functioning of electoral linkage chains in the European Union (EU) multi-level system. The first section of the present report investigates trends in electoral participation at the aggregate level both for nat...
Book
This volume focuses on the issue of change in democratic politics in terms of experimental or actual innovations introduced either within political parties or outside the party system, involving citizen participation and mobilization. Including a wide and diverse range of alternatives in the organization of groups, campaigning, conducting initiati...
Article
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Several scholars of populism have pointed out that populist parties rely very oft en on so-called charismatic leadership (Canovan, 1981; McDonnell, 2015). While the rise of populist parties in Europe in the last decade is quite evident and well-studied, what remains understudied is how this phenomenon interacts with other transformations that are c...
Chapter
This chapter examines candidate selection procedures as institutions that could affect politics. We bridge two intraparty phenomena, i.e. how candidates are selected and how candidates compete against each other within the party before the elections. With the aim of studying whether the type of selectorates may affect the competitiveness of the sel...
Article
The year 2017 represents a key moment in the political life of the PD. The party celebrated 10 years of existence and did so by electing a new leader via open primaries, following the same symbolic process of its founding moment in 2007. However, the party has radically changed in the last decade and in the last year in particular. Not only has a d...
Chapter
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This chapter develops specific methodological and analytical instruments for evaluating how democratic regions have developed different institutional structures and how these variations can impact on their public policy capabilities. It applies Arend Lijphart's analytical approach to regional political systems of federal and decentralized countries...
Chapter
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The chapter outlines the cost and funding possibilities for party primaries. It especially focuses on how states might facilitate or hinder the use of party primary elections through either direct or indirect funding regulations. The chapter first outlines the different costs of primaries and how they can vary depending on the type of contest and t...
Article
Full-text available
La sélection des candidats par les partis politiques est un moment clé du processus politique dans tout régime démocratique. Elle constitue une des fonctions centrales des partis politiques, fonction qui opère comme un filtre entre les citoyens-électeurs, d’un côté, et le personnel politique exécutif ou législatif, de l’autre. La fonction de sélect...
Article
Full-text available
In this article, we explore the impact of intra-party democratization processes on party membership. We analyze the opinions and attitudes of enrolled members on intra-party democracy instruments and on the use of open primaries. We investigate, with original data sets on Italy, the relationship between primaries and party members. How do enrolled...
Article
In this article, we analyse the mayoral open primaries held from 2004 to 2015. We empirically assess their functioning and their effectiveness, especially in terms of competitiveness and turnout. We also explore the dynamics of diffusion of this instrument of intra-party democracy over time, across parties and across geographical areas. Moreover, w...
Research
Full-text available
Papier presenté au 13ème Congrès de l’Association française de science politique (AFSP) 22-24 juin 2015 . Abstract: Le degré d’inclusivité des modes de sélection des candidats aux élections (présidentielles, locales, législatives) et des modes de désignation du leader du parti est en train d’augmenter non seulement aux Etats-Unis, mais aussi dans p...
Book
Full-text available
Primary elections for choosing party leaders and candidates are now becoming commonplace in Europe, Asia and America but questions as to how much they hinder a party’s organizational strength and cohesion or affect electoral performance have largely been ignored outside of the USA. Party Primaries in Comparative Perspective gives a much-needed con...
Chapter
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Article
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We consider the effect of primary elections on party membership and electoral behaviour. Direct democracy instruments trigger significant changes in the role and behaviour of grassroots members. The case of the Italian centre - left parties, and particularly the Democratic Party, is in this sense relevant, as for over a decade these parties have be...
Article
Full-text available
Facing a crucial legitimacy crisis, many Western European political parties have recently undergone various forms of organizational changes by adopting procedures for increasing intra-democracy: internal ballots, internal referenda, primary elections and so on. Direct democracy is now used in a wide range of decision-making procedures such as candi...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Sono molti i partiti europei che fanno ricorso alle elezioni primarie per selezionare i propri leaders o candidati. In Italia, è stato certamente il Partito Democratico ad aver legato in maniera indissolubile il proprio nome a queste particolari procedure inclusive. Al di là della funzione di selezione, queste elezioni hanno avuto un impatto rileva...
Article
Italy is a predominantly Catholic country that developed historically on the basis of a strong, dominant religion and weak state institutions. Yet, openly clerical parties, direct advocates of the interests of the Catholic Church, have nowadays virtually disappeared and the relevance of the religious cleavage is decreasing, in favour of a more indi...
Article
In 2013, Italian voters were called to the ballot boxes not only to renew Parliament but also to elect about 600 local councils. In several cases, serious political scandals had led to early elections. An analysis of electoral supply, campaigns, and results suggests the emergence of an ambivalent pattern: on the one hand, regional and local electio...
Article
This study examines the pillarised and partitocratic nature of Belgian political parties via an empirical overview of their party on the ground. Two main research questions guide the study: To what extent can party membership figures in Belgium be considered as ideal-typical of pillarised or partitocratic parties? And how does the social and politi...
Article
Full-text available
Italy's economy and polity are considered to be continuously in turmoil. The recent multiplication of corruption affairs, the spreading of clientelistic practices, the internal economic crisis and the decline in the country's role on the European and international stages suggest that Italy is at a political and historical turning point. For the abo...
Article
Few studies have directly addressed constituent conceptions of the representative relationship. The assumption is that constituents have different preferences for elected representatives to be ‘good constituency members’ and that these preferences are plausibly related to their ‘empowerment’, their organizational capacity and parties’ behaviour. Co...
Book
Full-text available
De 1945 à l’aube des années quatre-vingt-dix, l’Italie a fait figure de démocratie exceptionnelle en Europe et dans le monde : l’alternance politique n’y était pas de mise, le puissant parti communiste italien était en dehors du pouvoir et la démocratie chrétienne, perpétuellement aux affaires. Ce schéma s’est érodé au fil du temps avant d’exploser...
Chapter
Since the early 1990s the Italian political system has undergone substantive change. Politically, there has been the collapse of traditional political parties and the slow rebuilding of a new party system centered on bipolar competition and on an augmented salience of territorial politics. Institutionally, a number of reforms have changed local, re...
Article
The French-speaking minority within the Italian part of the Alpine region has been politically mobilized since the beginning of the twentieth century. The party politics of the Aosta Valley region have been traditionally shaped on the ethno-linguistic, rural–urban and centre–periphery cleavages. The main minority nationalist party claiming to repre...
Article
In their book Challenges to Consensual Politics: Democracy, Identity, and Populist Protest in the Alpine Region, Daniele Caramani and Yves Mény argue that the Alpine region displays a political culture characterized, among other things, by marked conservatism, nativism and Euroscepticism. Such transnational political culture manifests itself throug...
Thesis
Most recent literature that analyzes parties from an organizational perspective focuses often on the concepts of intra-party democracy and party organizational democratization (Scarrow, 1999a; Scarrow and Kittilson, 2003; LeDuc, Niemi and Norris, 2002; Bosco and Morlino, 2007). Le Duc (2001) and Rahat and Hazan (2007) underline that the most used i...
Chapter
Full-text available
The Union Valdôtaine (UV) was founded in 1945. Rooted in resistance anti-fascist autonomist movements, the UV was created as a regionalist trans-party association and only become a fully-fledged political party in 1949. The association initially focused on a single basic goal: to negotiate a Statute of Autonomy for the Aosta Valley with the central...
Article
The cartel party model has triggered a burgeoning literature on its theoretical implications, and has been largely tested empirically. Nevertheless, the dimension of the model that concern the relationship between members and elites has been rather neglected, even though the membership role variables are the sole features of the cartel party that t...
Article
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The Südtiroler Volkspartei in South Tyrol, the Union Valdôtaine in the Aosta Valley and the Partito Sardo d’Azione in Sardinia are the main examples of historical ethno-regionalist parties in Italy. These political actors have played a central role mainly within regional party and political systems, but they all have also obtained representation in...
Article
Als die Mitglieder der Europäischen Kommission am 14. Januar 2004 den EURichtlinienentwurf über Dienstleistungen annahmen, rechnete niemand in Brüssel oder den europäischen Hauptstädten mit dem politischen Sturm, der die Technokraten in Brüssel im darauf folgenden Jahr erwartet – und noch weniger mit der anhaltenden, existentiellen Krise, in die di...
Article
Full-text available
Partiti e programmi elettorali I temi dei programmi elettorali dei partiti etno-regionalisti La dimensione dell'autogoverno regionale La seconda dimensione: destra-sinistra L'europeismo dei partiti etno-regionalisti Un prudente riepilogo
Article
Full-text available
Several scholars underline that the most used instrument for enhancing intra-party democracy is the improvement of the inclusiveness of party leadership selection methods (Le Duc, 2001; Scarrow and Kittilson, 2003; Rahat and Hazan, 2007). Therefore, the study of the political consequences of most inclusive (in terms of selectorate) of those methods...

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