Italian Candidates under the Rosato Law

Candidates for public office are part of the politically \u2018active minority\u2019 that serve as a fundamental link between voters and the ruling class. The selection of candidates can also define the traits of political personnel in the major political institutions and, more in general, the very nature of democratic representation. The study of candidates is particularly interesting in the case of the 2018 Italian elections as it allows us to understand the extent to which Italian citizens are willing to run for office despite a negative climate towards politics, and despite parties\u2019 choices under the new mixed electoral system \u2013 the so-called \u2018Rosato law\u2019. This article investigates a number of key characteristics of the Italian candidates running for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies in 2018 and compares them with those who stood for office in the past elections from 1976 onwards. In particular, we focus on the following aspects: the overall number of candidacies and party lists, the use of multiple candidacies by different parties, and some relevant traits of candidates such as their age, gender and past experience as candidates. Results highlight the impact of the new electoral institutions, as in 2018 the overall number of Italian candidates and lists has decreased if compared to the 2013 elections. However, the new rules have not substantially reduced the number of those who run for office without any reasonable possibility of obtaining a parliamentary seat. In addition, the population of Italian would-be deputies has become more balanced in terms of gender \u2013 though not any younger \u2013 and the turnover rate among Italian candidates seems to be somewhat lower than in 2013. Furthermore, moving from 2013 to 2018, the leaders of Italian parties have made more moderate use of multiple candidacies as a tool for controlling party members. In the last elections, multiple candidacies were employed mostly for safeguarding the election of some prominent politicians

Finite-dimensional global and exponential attractors for the reaction-diffusion problem with an obstacle potential

A reaction-diffusion problem with an obstacle potential is considered in a bounded domain of $\R^N$. Under the assumption that the obstacle \K is a closed convex and bounded subset of $\mathbb{R}^n$ with smooth boundary or it is a closed $n$-dimensional simplex, we prove that the long-time behavior of the solution semigroup associated with this problem can be described in terms of an exponential attractor. In particular, the latter means that the fractal dimension of the associated global attractor is also finite

Nonsmooth analysis of doubly nonlinear evolution equations

In this paper we analyze a broad class of abstract doubly nonlinear evolution equations in Banach spaces, driven by nonsmooth and nonconvex energies. We provide some general sufficient conditions, on the dissipation potential and the energy functional,for existence of solutions to the related Cauchy problem. We prove our main existence result by passing to the limit in a time-discretization scheme with variational techniques. Finally, we discuss an application to a material model in finite-strain elasticity.Comment: 45 page

A variational approach to gradient flows in metric spaces,

In this note we report on a new variational principle for Gradient Flows in metric spaces. This new variational formulation consists in a functional defined on entire trajectories whose minimizers converge, in the case in which the energy is geodesically convex, to curves of maximal slope. The key point in the proof is a reformulation of the problem in terms of a dynamic programming principle combined with suitable a priori estimates on the minimizers. The abstract result is applicable to a large class of evolution PDEs, including Fokker Plack equation, drift diffusion and Heat flows in metric-measure spaces

Analysis of a solid-solid phase transition model coupling hyperbolic momentum balance and diffusive phase dynamics

This work deals with a nonlinear system modelling solid-solid phase transitions and mechanical deformations in shape memory alloys. The model is studied in the non-stationary case and accounts for local microscopic interactions between the different phases introducing the gradients of the phase parameters as state variables. By using an approximation—a priori estimates—passage to the limit procedure we prove the existence and uniqueness of a weak solution to the corresponding initial-boundary value problem and give some regularity results. Moreover, continuous dependence on the data of solutions is proved under stronger regularity assumptions on the data

Global attractors for the quasistationary phase field model: a gradient flow approach.

In this note we summarize some results of a forthcoming paper (see [15]), where we examine, in particular, the long time behavior of the so-called quasistationary phase field model by using a gradient flow approach. Our strategy in fact, is inspired by recent existence results which show that gradient flows of suitable non-convex functionals yield solutions to the related quasistationary phase field systems. Thus, we firstly present the long-time behavior of solutions to an abstract non-convex gradient flow equation, by carefully exploiting the notion of generalized semiflows by J.M. Ball and we provide some sufficient conditions for the existence of the global attractor for the solution semiflow. Then, the existence of the global attractor for a proper subset of all the solutions to the quasistationary phase field model is obtained as a byproduct of our abstract results