The evolution of the Italian opposition in the last twenty years: has anything changed?

In order to understand the evolution of the Italian political system over the past two decades, we have to consider the changes undergone by one fundamental institutional actor, that is, the parliamentary opposition. Its transformation can in fact be used as a valid indicator of change in the whole political system and it will also help us to reflect on the possible transformation of the Italian model of democracy. The 20-year path that has brought Italy to the current political situation, with the emergence of three different poles of approximately equal strength; the rise of the Five Star Movement; and the creation of a grand coalition consisting of traditional political opponents will be reconstructed by re-examining the evolution of the political system from the perspective of the changing role and functions of the parliamentary opposition, thus contributing to a better understanding of the (new) political phase initiated by the outcome of the 2013 election

Power calculation for gravitational radiation: oversimplification and the importance of time scale

A simplified formula for gravitational-radiation power is examined. It is shown to give completely erroneous answers in three situations, making it useless even for rough estimates. It is emphasized that short timescales, as well as fast speeds, make classical approximations to relativistic calculations untenable.Comment: Three pages, no figures, accepted for publication in Astronomische Nachrichte

Droplet minimizers for the Gates-Lebowitz-Penrose free energy functional

We study the structure of the constrained minimizers of the Gates-Lebowitz-Penrose free-energy functional ${\mathcal F}_{\rm GLP}(m)$, non-local functional of a density field $m(x)$, $x\in {\mathcal T}_L$, a $d$-dimensional torus of side length $L$. At low temperatures, ${\mathcal F}_{\rm GLP}$ is not convex, and has two distinct global minimizers, corresponding to two equilibrium states. Here we constrain the average density L^{-d}\int_{{\cal T}_L}m(x)\dd x to be a fixed value $n$ between the densities in the two equilibrium states, but close to the low density equilibrium value. In this case, a "droplet" of the high density phase may or may not form in a background of the low density phase, depending on the values $n$ and $L$. We determine the critical density for droplet formation, and the nature of the droplet, as a function of $n$ and $L$. The relation between the free energy and the large deviations functional for a particle model with long-range Kac potentials, proven in some cases, and expected to be true in general, then provides information on the structure of typical microscopic configurations of the Gibbs measure when the range of the Kac potential is large enough

The Portuguese Radical Left Parties Supporting Government: From Policy-Takers to Policymakers?

How do parties that have long been confined to opposition behave once they take the decision to support government? This article analyses the case of the three Portuguese radical left parties that took such a move in the wake of the post-bailout 2015 election. Leveraging the concept of contract parliamentarism and the analysis of different data sources through different methods, we show that the three parties adopted a similar strategy after agreeing deals with the centre-left socialists. Specifically, while keeping close scrutiny on the executive action, the parties have voted consensually on most of the legislation proposed by the government. In exchange, the majority of policy pledges agreed with the socialists were implemented by the beginning of the legislature. Based on these findings, the article underlines the importance for supporting parties of conducting a thorough negotiation of policy goals and the timing of their implementation before joining the government, and of pursuing an autonomous discursive agenda

Introduction: Conflict and consensus in Parliament during the economic crisis

Since the onset of the economic crisis, parties in parliament (especially those in opposi-tion) have found themselves faced with a dilemma: choosing between the need to cooperatewith the government in order to overcome the crisis and the opportunity provided by aweakened government to stress their adversarial position so as to be more easily re-elected and possibly get into power. What have they decided to do? The present contri-bution introduces a collection of works exploring this dilemma in southern Europeancountries, by examining the opposition behaviour in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain;and in the European Parliament

Introduction. The Italian political system in the last twenty years: change, adaptation or unfinished transition?

The goal of this special issue is to analyse how the Italian political system has changed in the last 20 years and, depending on the outcome of this analysis, to (re)locate Italy in the context of contemporary democracies. How different is Italian democracy today compared to the democracy of the so-called First Republic? The answer may be different depending on the indicators considered. In order to choose the main dimensions to focus on, we believe Lijphart\u2019s multidimensional design may help. Therefore, we explore the main structural changes that have taken place in Italy over the last 20 years by examining, on the one hand, the transformations on the first Lijphartian dimension \u2013 transformations that tend towards the majoritarian pole \u2013 and, on the other, the evolution of some indicators belonging to the second dimension, ones that push Italy towards the consensus pole, though more ambiguously. More specifically, we analyse the never-ending attempts to reform the electoral system, the transformations in the party system and the evolution of the relationship between the government and parliamentary opposition. Furthermore, we explore the variation in the distribution of decision-making power among national, supranational and subnational (regional) bodies and the new role of the President of the Republic as an increasingly important counterbalancing power. In doing so, we attempt to understand how Italian democracy has changed in recent years and where Italy can be placed in the context of contemporary democracies

Conclusions: Great recession, great cooperation?

Contributions to this study clearly support our initial hypotheses. It is observed, as expected, that the economic crisis has considerably decreased consensual behaviour in parliament. However, the nature of parties constitutes a crucial variable in order to explain the conduct of the opposition in the legislative arena better: since the outbreak of the crisis, radical parties have turned even more adversarial than before; whereas mainstream parties \u2013 who want to appear as a credible alternative to the government in office \u2013 have drifted towards more cooperative behaviour. Given the growing influence of the European Union on the legislation approved in response to the crisis, it was also expected (and demonstrated) that the traditionally pro-European parties would be more likely to cooperate on socio-economic issues than Eurosceptic parties. Finally, it has also been shown that timing also plays an important role in the opposition's decision either to support or to oppose the government: with opposition parties more inclined to contest the government's proposals when their chances of getting into power are higher, and vice versa

Regularity of higher codimension area minimizing integral currents

This lecture notes are an expanded version of the course given at the ERC-School on Geometric Measure Theory and Real Analysis, held in Pisa, September 30th - October 30th 2013. The lectures aim to explain the main steps of a new proof of the partial regularity of area minimizing integer rectifiable currents in higher codimension, due originally to F. Almgren, which is contained in a series of papers in collaboration with C. De Lellis (University of Zurich).Comment: This text will appear in "Geometric Measure Theory and Real Analysis", pp. 131--192, Proceedings of the ERC school in Pisa (2013), L. Ambrosio Ed., Edizioni SNS (CRM Series

A JKO splitting scheme for Kantorovich-Fisher-Rao gradient flows

In this article we set up a splitting variant of the JKO scheme in order to handle gradient flows with respect to the Kantorovich-Fisher-Rao metric, recently introduced and defined on the space of positive Radon measure with varying masses. We perform successively a time step for the quadratic Wasserstein/Monge-Kantorovich distance, and then for the Hellinger/Fisher-Rao distance. Exploiting some inf-convolution structure of the metric we show convergence of the whole process for the standard class of energy functionals under suitable compactness assumptions, and investigate in details the case of internal energies. The interest is double: On the one hand we prove existence of weak solutions for a certain class of reaction-advection-diffusion equations, and on the other hand this process is constructive and well adapted to available numerical solvers.Comment: Final version, to appear in SIAM SIM

Incumbents, opposition and international lenders: governing Portugal in times of crisis

The Portuguese case provides a unique opportunity to study the opposition's behaviour in a variety of political conditions. It offers an insight into the impact of the financial crisis on the opposition's behaviour in both majority and minority political settings. It allows the comparison of the opposition's relationship with a minority government, during which non-collaboration could have dramatic consequences, and also with a majority government, when such a choice does not have major political or policy implications. Moreover, it enables us to study the effect of an additional veto player (the so-called troika composed of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund), which not only constrains both majority and opposition parties, but also gives political entrepreneurs a unique opportunity to push ahead with liberal measures \u2013 in this case, clearly in disagreement with the moderate and radical left programmes. Relying on quantitative data on the legislative behaviour of the parliamentary party groups in the period 1995\u20132012, and on qualitative process-tracking of the opposition's positions on key economic issues \u2013 such as the decision to vote against Prime Minister S\uf3crates' last austerity package after a series of approvals \u2013 this article aims to determine whether, and if yes how, the financial crisis has affected the behaviour of the Portuguese opposition parties in parliament, by examining and comparing their behaviour in hard and in normal times