Beyond the migration crisis, deep values. Where does hostility to immigrants come from?

3noopenImmigration has become a key issue in electoral competition in Italy. Several studies have demonstrated the weight of immigration on voting choices of Italian voters, as well as the importance that this issue has had for the electoral success of certain parties, namely the League. However, it is still unclear why voters are mobilized on this issue and, more generally, what are the underlying factors of individual attitudes towards migrants. In this paper we explore whether and to what extent these attitudes are the result of latent cultural factors, which find their roots in long-standing and deeper value predispositions. We do so, relying on an original survey carried out among Italian citizens and making use of the Schwartz conceptualization and measurement of values. A series of regression analyses demonstrate that, besides conditions of objective economic deprivation, proximity to migrants, and perception of threat and insecurity, values are the most relevant explanatory factors of attitudes towards immigration. This leads us to conclude that hostile attitudes towards immigration are not the result of a radical transformation of public opinion in Italy, but rather the expression of more general, structurally conservative value orientations.openAngelucci, Davide; De Sio, Lorenzo; Paparo, AldoAngelucci, Davide; De Sio, Lorenzo; Paparo, Ald

'Are we losing touch?' Mainstream parties' failure to represent their voters on immigration and its electoral consequences

In many advanced democracies, mainstream political parties have been disrupted either by the rise of new (populist) parties or by hostile takeovers. In this article we argue that immigration attitudes have had a powerful impact on the strategic environment of political parties and leaders. We show, based on evidence from a comparative study conducted by YouGov in spring of 2015, that immigration attitudes had, by that time, driven a wedge between mainstream parties - those that regularly play a role in government - and their partisans. This ‘immigration gap' opened up enormous space for new political movements to form, either inside existing parties or outside. Furthermore, we show that the representation gap on immigration issues is a relevant predictor of vote choice, so that parties are particularly likely to lose votes when they are more distant from their supporters on immigration

PTV gap as a new measure of partisanship: a panel-data, multi-measure validation showing surprising partisanship stability

Comparative studies of partisanship lack a comparable transatlantic measure. In the U.S. the traditional ANES measure is used, while in European multi-party systems a party-closeness measure is mostly used. A recent contribution proposed PTV (propensity-to-vote) gap as a potential solution to this issue, showing that the gap in PTV scores between the best- and the second best-placed party has desirable properties in the American case. In this article we test the same measure on the multi-party case of Italy, using panel data from the CISE 2012\u20132013 Electoral Panel.The case is particularly relevant, given the turbulence experienced by the Italian party system at the time, with the emergence of important new parties. This makes this period a crucial test for performing a validation of party identification measures. Comparing the new measure with the traditional party-closeness measure, we show that: a) both measures are more stable than vote choice, in line with party identification theory, and contrary to previous research on other European multi-party systems; b) the two measures are virtually equivalent in terms of over-time stability. As a second comparative validation, we investigate the mutual effects relating partisanship and vote over time. Results show superiority for the PTV-gap measure, which has similar predictive power on vote choice, but in turn is predicted by it to a statistically inferior extent. As a result, we conclude that our validation of the PTV-gap measure\u2013 already successfully tested in the U.S. context \u2013 qualifies it as a productive tool for comparative research on partisanship

Cosa succede in citt\ue0? Le elezioni comunali 2016

Il successo del Movimento 5 Stelle, con le vittorie storiche di Roma e Torino; le difficolt\ue0 del centrosinistra, con il PD di Renzi che subisce per la prima volta una pesante battuta d\u2019arresto; la tenuta del centrodestra che dimostra, quando \ue8 unito, di essere ancora un polo competitivo. Il tutto in un contesto di crescente astensionismo, volatilit\ue0 e frammentazione del quadro politico, con la stragrande maggioranza delle sfide decise solo al ballottaggio e la presenza di leader locali e candidati civici competitivi in diverse citt\ue0. Questi, in estrema sintesi, i risultati principali emersi dalla elezioni comunali del 2016. Una tornata elettorale che poteva apparire un appuntamento di secondaria importanza alla vigilia, ma che si \ue8 invece rivelato uno snodo cruciale per il futuro della politica italiana. \u2018Cosa succede in citt\ue0?\u2019 \ue8 la domanda a cui cerca di dare risposta questo ottavo Dossier CISE che raccoglie tutte le analisi sul tema pubblicate sul sito web CISE prima e dopo le elezioni: l\u2019analisi della situazione di partenza (dalle primarie al quadro dell\u2019offerta politica); i risultati del primo turno (con approfondimenti sulla partecipazione al voto, risultati di partiti e aree politiche, flussi elettorali, voto di preferenza e sull\u2019evoluzione del sistema partitico); i risultati dei ballottaggi, che delineano il quadro definitivo delle vittorie e delle sconfitte e mostrano con chiarezza quello che \ue8 forse il principale dato politico in chiave nazionale di queste elezioni locali: la capacit\ue0 del Movimento 5 Stelle di vincere sistematicamente i ballottaggi ottenendo le \u2018seconde preferenze\u2019 degli elettori dei candidati sconfitti al primo turno, confermando di essere una forza politica con un consenso trasversale, l\u2019unico vero \u2018partito della nazione\u2019. Le analisi di questo Dossier CISE, basate su dati aggregati e stime di flussi elettorali, forniscono una base empirica per la discussione e l\u2019interpretazione di questa tornata elettorale e offrono degli spunti di riflessione per ricerche future

The Italian General Election of 2013: a dangerous stalemate?

The third Eurozone economy and one of the six founders of the EEC (the direct ancestor of the European Union) in 1957, Italy is experiencing in recent years a season of political instability and uncertainty, especially after the crisis of Silvio Berlusconi\u2019s leadership in the centre-right camp. A situation which has not improved after the results of the general election held in February 2013, whose overall outcome can be described as a dangerous stalemate. A new, anti-establishment party (the 5-Star Movement led by comedian Beppe Grillo) becoming the largest party with 25,6% of votes; the absence of any cohesive political majority in the Senate (whose vote of confidence is required); the installation of a government based on an oversized, hardly manageable political majority, led by Enrico Letta. How did all this happen? What are the political and the institutional factors that produced this outcome? What is the size and scope of the success of Beppe Grillo? Where are his votes coming from? Who paid the \u201ccost of government\u201d for the previous legislature? What are the likely scenarios for the future? First answers to such questions are presented in this book, which collects revised versions of short research notes published in Italian on the CISE website between February and April 2013, along with additional material published in Italian and English by CISE scholars on the Italian and international media. The goal of this book is to provide \u2013 in a timely fashion \u2013 a set of fresh, short analyses, able to provide a non-technical audience (including journalists, practitioners of politics, and everyone interested in Italian politics) with information and data about Italian electoral politics. Even electoral scholars will find interesting information, able to stimulate the construction of more structured research hypotheses to be tested in more depth. Too often international commentators portray Italian politics in a superficial fashion, without the support of fresh data and a proper understanding of the deeper processes involved. With this book, in spite of its limited scope, we hope to contribute to filling this gap

Beyond the Migration Crisis, Deep Values. Where Does Hostility to Immigrants Come from?

Immigration has become a key issue in electoral competition in Italy. Several studies have demonstrated the weight of immigration on voting choices of Italian voters, as well as the importance that this issue has had for the electoral success of certain parties, namely the League. However, it is still unclear why voters are mobilized on this issue and, more generally, what are the underlying factors of individual attitudes towards migrants. In this paper we explore whether and to what extent these attitudes are the result of latent cultural factors, which find their roots in long-standing and deeper value predispositions. We do so, relying on an original survey car-ried out among Italian citizens and making use of the Schwartz conceptualization and measurement of values. A series of regression analyses demonstrate that, besides conditions of objective economic deprivation, prox-imity to migrants, and perception of threat and insecurity, values are the most relevant explanatory factors of attitudes towards immigration. This leads us to conclude that hostile attitudes towards immigration are not the result of a radical transformation of public opinion in Italy, but rather the expression of more general, structur-ally conservative value orientations