If citizens have a voice, who’s listening?

This is the paper for the class of "EU Politics", Monday, 9 nov. 200

The failure of mainstream parties and the impact of new challenger parties in France, Italy and Spain

Political parties share a very bad reputation in most European countries. This paper provides an interpretation of this sentiment, reconstructing the downfall of the esteem in which parties were held and their fall since the post-war years up to present In particular the paper focuses on the abandonment of the parties’ founding ‘logic of appropriateness’ based, on the one hand, on the ethics for collective engagement in collective environments for collective aims and, on the other hand, on the full commitment of party officials. The abandonment of these two aspects has led to a crisis of legitimacy that mainstream parties have tried to counteract in ways that have proven ineffective, as membership still declines and confidence still languishes. Finally, the paper investigates whether the new challenger parties in France, Italy and Spain have introduced organizational and behavioural changes that could eventually reverse disaffection with the political party per se

The end of cornucopia. Party financing after the great recession

This article investigates the dimension and evolution of the financing of political parties. It focuses on 28 parties in the five major European countries (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain), analysing the parties’ budgets from 2002 to 2016. The article's assessment shows that the availability of funds increased until the beginning of the Great Recession (2008), and then decreased, mainly due to a decline in public support for parties. Diminished state generosity has led parties to look for different sources of financing: the article shows the proportion of self-funding resources in terms of membership fees and private donations that has sustained the parties’ finances. Finally the article presents a model that helps to explain the shrinking of parties’ income by including parties’ ideological alignment, electoral outcome, presence in government and share of public financing, and countries’ public spending and GDP level, to investigate the plausible causes of the reduction of parties’ income

Pauline Picco, Liaisons dangereuses. Les extrêmes droites en France et en Italie (1960-1984)

Dans l’ouvrage Liaisons dangereuses. Les extrêmes droites en France et en Italie (1960-1984), Pauline Picco confesse de manière improvisée, aux pages 143 et 144, à quel point l’étude des méandres obscurs des années de plomb s’avère désorientant. Les informations sont en effet dispersées, d’une ampleur démesurée, les sources souvent contradictoires : entre affabulations, négligences, témoignages réticents, opacité et diversions des institutions publiques. Nombreuses sont les embûches que l’ana..

Giovanni Sartori e la democrazia della Seconda Repubblica

Il saggio ripercorre e analizza criticamente tutti i passaggi istituzionali della cosiddetta Seconda Repubblica, ossia della peculiare democrazia maggioritaria che si imposta in Italia a partire dal 1994. Tali passaggi sono visti all'interno del pensiero di Giovanni Sartori e in particolare della sua teoria della democrazia. Tale pensiero si è manifestato sia attraverso opere scientifiche sia attraverso una continua attività pubblicistica, in particolare dalle colonne, come editorialista, del Corriere della Sera. Dall'esame di questo pensiero emerge una serrata e continua critica dei caratteri istituzionali della peculiare democrazia maggioritaria all'italiana.The essay traces and critically analyzes all the institutional steps of the so-called Italian Second Republic, that is the peculiar majoritarian democracy that is set in Italy since 1994. These steps are seen within the thoughts of Giovanni Sartori and in particular of his theory of democracy . Such thinking has manifested both through scientific works both through continuous publications, in particular from the columns, as a columnist, of the Corriere della Sera. From an examination of this thinking emerges a close and continuous criticism of the institutional character of the distinctive Italian style majoritarian democracy

Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe

The extreme right has consolidated its presence across Western Europe. This book presents a compilation of studies on the ideological meanings and political/partisan expressions of the extreme right, their post-war evolution, and the reasons behind the success and failure of various parties. It highlights the rise of a new type of parties that are anti-system rather than neo-fascist

Italy

Analysis of the main political events of the year 200

The Re-emergence of Extreme Right-Wing Parties in Europe

Abstract: This paper focuses on the re-emergence of the extreme right. This recent event is analyzed in the context of the party system change all over Europe. After having identified the parties which belong to the extreme right political family through the adoption of a threefold criteria, some hypotheses about their recent sudden rise are offered. In particular, their re-emergence is mainly attributable to some basic changes, either at the cultural and mass opinion level, and at the societallevel. At the cultural level, the neoconservative mood has legitimized a series of themes which were previously almost banned from political debate. At the societal level, the decline of the party as such, the growing dissatisfaction vis-a-vis the political system and the decline of confidence in its efficacy to respond to new demands such as immigration control and law and order enforcement have facoured a mounting sense of doom and alienation. The extreme right parties have highly profited ofthis widespread "crisis of legitimacy."