Selbstbestimmung und Parteien in Südtirol: Territoriale und europäische Parteistrategien zwischen Autonomie und Sezession = Self-determination and parties in South Tyrol: Territorial and European party strategies between autonomy and secession. EDAP 3/2016

Since the final conflict settlement between Italy and Austria in 1992, ethnic politics in South Tyrol experienced insightful transformations. The consociational political system, which was implemented to tame centrifugal tendencies, has been losing its balance over the last decade, with proautonomy stances ceding ground to secessionist pressure in the Germanspeaking intra-ethnic arena. Adopting a contextual and strategic perspective on self-determination, this article traces the evolution of ethno-regionalist party strategies on the territorial and European dimension of party competition through a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of their electoral manifestos in the period between 1993 and 2013. In line with newest research on party strategies, the article empirically shows the strategic capacity of ethnic minority parties to challenge each other not only by shifting their positions on the different issue dimensions but also by the reframing of issues. While the increasing competition on the center-periphery axis leads to a new territorial frame, the rise of secessionism is accompagned by an end to the pro-European elite consensus

The 2013 South Tyrolean Election: The End of SVP Hegemony

The results of the 2013 South Tyrolean elections, held on 27 of October, caused major changes in the political system of the autonomy. For the first time since the Second World War the South Tyrolean People’s Party (SVP) lost its absolute majority. While the German secessionist parties increased their electoral support, the Italian parties suffered heavy electoral losses, thus leading to an underrepresentation of Italian-speakers in the political institutions. The election report shows how the electoral results affect the South Tyrolean system of ethnic proportional representation, which is characterised by an increasing asymmetry

Voto dual y efectos de segundo orden en las elecciones autonómicas y generales cuasi simultáneas de 2019 en España

Las elecciones autonómicas de 2019 en España se celebraron en un contexto de inestabilidad política y polarización en el país y apenas veintiocho días después de las elecciones generales. Aprovechando este escenario electoral cuasi simultáneo y sin precedentes, este artículo analiza el cambio de voto entre elecciones autonómicas y generales, tanto a nivel agregado como individual. Específicamente, el artículo explora si las elecciones regionales de 2019 cumplen con las expectativas del modelo de elecciones de segundo orden. Los resultados muestran que la cuasi simultaneidad entre las elecciones autonómicas y generales no implicó un mayor nivel de congruencia electoral. Además, si bien la mayoría de las predicciones del modelo de elecciones de segundo orden respecto a los resultados electorales agregados son válidas para las elecciones autonómicas de 2019, nuestros hallazgos sugieren que el voto dual a nivel individual no responde a la lógica del modelo de elecciones de segundo orden, sino más bien a consideraciones políticas regionales.The 2019 regional elections in Spain were held in a context of political instability and polarization in the country and just 28 days after the national elections. Taking advantage of this unprecedented quasi-simultaneous electoral setting, this article analyzes vote-switching between regional and national elections, both at the aggregate and individual levels. Specifically, it explores whether the 2019 regional elections match the expectations of the second-order election model. The results show that quasi-simultaneity between regional and national elections did not entail a higher level of election congruence. In addition, while most of the predictions of the second-order election model regarding aggregate election results hold for the 2019 regional elections, our findings suggest that dual voting at the individual level does not respond to the logic of the second-order election model but rather to regional political considerations

The 2018 South Tyrolean Election and the Consociational System of Democracy: Stability Amidst Change?

This article explores the impact of the 2018 South Tyrolean election on the autonomous province’s consociational system of democracy. Implemented to tame centrifugal tendencies between the territory’s language groups (German, Italian and Ladin), this system has since the 1990s been losing its inclusive capacity. While the Italian-speaking electorate has increasingly been underrepresented in the main decision-making processes, the German-speaking intra-ethnic electoral arena experienced the rise of secessionist parties. The article shows that, despite major changes affecting party politics in South Tyrol, the outcome of the 2018 election contributed to restore stability to the consociational system

Partiti e autodeterminazione in Südtirol/Alto Adige: competizione etnica e strategie dei partiti tra autonomia e secessione

Dalla chiusura della vertenza sulla «questione sudtirolese» nel 1992, la politica etnica in Alto Adige/Südtirol ha subìto profondi cambiamenti. Il sistema consociativo, implementato per attenuare tendenze centrifughe, da allora ha iniziato a perdere il proprio equilibrio a causa delle pressioni secessioniste provenienti dall’arena intra-etnica tedesca. Adottando una prospettiva strategica verso l’autodeterminazione, il presente contributo analizza l’evoluzione delle strategie dei partiti etnoregionalisti sudtirolesi sulla dimensione territoriale ed europea della competizione elettorale. In linea con le nuove ricerche sulle strategie dei partiti viene dimostrato che i partiti etnici non solo possiedono le capacità strategiche di assumere posizioni riguardo a diverse dimensioni della competizione, ma anche di riformularle in chiave nuova. Mentre la saliente competizione etnica in Sudtirolo ha portato ad un nuovo frame territoriale, il consenso proeuropeo ha assunto le sembianze di un conflitto posizionale. Since the settlement of the controversy on the «South Tyrol question» in 1992, ethnic politics in Alto Adige/Südtirol has deeply changed. Since then, the compromise system implemented to soften the centrifugal tendencies has begun to lose its balance, due to the pressures for secession coming from the German intra-ethnic arena. Adopting a strategic perspective towards self-determination, the present study analyzes the evolution of the strategies of South Tyrol ethno-regionalist parties with regard to the territorial and European dimension of the electoral competition. In line with the new researches on party strategies, it is shown that ethnic parties not only do possess the strategic ability to take up a position on various aspects of the competition, but they are also able to reformulate them in new terms. While the salient ethnic competition in South Tyrol has led to a new territorial frame, the pro-EU consensus has taken the form of a positional conflict

The 'Alpine Region' and Political Change:Lessons from Bavaria and South Tyrol (1946-2018)

Bavaria and South Tyrol belong to the so-called ‘Alpine (Macro-)Region’, a transnational area located in the heart of Europe, where geopolitical, cultural and socio-economic peculiarities have resulted in distinctive democratic dynamics. The key question that this article aims to answer is whether these two regions can still be regarded as exceptional cases of political stability. It is shown that, since 2008, their political systems have experienced significant change. While transformations have also occurred at the national level in Germany and Italy, they seem even more dramatic in Bavaria and South Tyrol, particularly after decades of political continuity. It is argued that this unprecedented shift is due to the combined effect of regional and state-wide challengers and is linked to the multi-level character of party competition at the regional level. Generally, these two cases add a territorial dimension to the study of political stability and change in Western Europe

Introduzione: costruire la nazione escludente

Not availabl

The costs and benefits of governing in a multi-level system

In recent years the ‘cost of governing’ has significantly increased for some mainstream political parties. In a context of financial uncertainty, multiple crises and growing constraints exerted by global forces, being a ‘natural’ party of government is no longer regarded as an electoral advantage. This is particularly true for parties that have moved from a position of clear dominance within ruling coalitions to a more subordinate role. In this article, focusing on the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and using an original dataset, we aim to provide a more nuanced assessment of the effects of incumbency by examining regional electoral performance since 1990. It appears that sub-national incumbency can be beneficial in regional elections, especially when a party faces significant costs of governing at the national level. However, this advantage is only applicable if the party holds a leading position in the regional executive. On the contrary, being a junior coalition partner at both national and regional levels may further exacerbate electoral decline for the party

Democratic regeneration in European peripheral regions: new politics for the territory?

Scholarly research on the emergence of a new politics agenda of democratic regeneration, driven by the electoral growth of challenger parties, has focused the analysis primarily at the national and supranational levels, leaving the subnational level underexplored. This article contributes to filling this gap through a comparative analysis of party competition in peripheral regions of Italy, Spain and Great Britain during the European Great Recession. Using Regional Manifestos Project data, it shows that the regionalisation of the state and the presence of a centre‒periphery cleavage represent no obstacle when it comes to responding to a change of preferences among the electorate. The transformation of political spaces in the aftermath of the Great Recession is happening as much at the regional as at the national level. At the same time, the political relevance of challenger parties and the diversity of regional responses contradict the alleged secondary nature of regional dynamics