Divided, but not by much: The parties of the centre right between government and opposition

For the parties of the centre right, 2019 provided confirmation, at both the local and regional levels, that their alliance was solid. Although it is based entirely on strategic needs, it continues to bear fruit despite the fact that its internal distribution of power has completely changed. Matteo Salvini’s League has become the new dominant force within the coalition at national level and, in many cases, at regional level also. The extreme right Fratelli d’Italia is growing strongly. Forza Italia is declining ever more rapidly. In Parliament, changes have been decidedly more complex. At the beginning of the year, the three parties were divided between the government and the opposition. However, at the end of the year, the old allies found themselves once again united in opposition to the new government formed by the Democratic Party and the Five-star Movement. In this article, we re-examine the events that distinguished the year in question in order to understand to what extent and how the centre-right coalition changed over time. We also consider how the three parties reacted to the new political circumstances, which, until the end of the summer, meant that they were governing allies at the municipal and regional levels and on opposing sides at the national level.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The 2015 Portuguese Legislative Election: Widening the Coalitional Space and Bringing the Extreme Left in

This article provides an overview of the Portuguese legislative election held on 4 October 2015 by exploring the economic and political context in which the election took place, the opinion polls, party positions and campaign issues, the results and, finally, the process that led to the formation of the first Socialist minority government supported by far-left parties. Due to this outcome, despite the relative majority of the votes obtained by the incumbent centre-right coalition, we argue that this election result cannot be interpreted as a victory of austerity, but rather as the first step towards contract parliamentarism in Portugal.This work was supported by Portuguese National Funds through the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) within the project UID/CPO/04627/201

Still different? Reassessing Portuguese exceptionalism within southern Europe

Portugal is often cited as an exception to the trend of political upheaval and electoral instability that occurred across southern Europe following the financial crisis. Drawing on a new study, Elisabetta De Giorgi and José Santana-Pereira assess whether this perception holds across three key areas: government composition and stability, the country’s party system, and the political attitudes of citizens

Standing apart together? Analysing Lega (Nord) and Movimento 5 Stelle as new challenger parties in Parliament

Following the 2018 election and a long phase of negotiations, Lega and the Five Star Movement (FSM) appointed the first cabinet in Western Europe that does not include any mainstream party family. The "elective affinities" between the electorates of these two challenger parties had been quite evident for some time, but in the present work we argue that there are further traits that the two parties had shared well before 2018 that could help proving even more their proximity. We propose a new dimension of analysis that should be taken into consideration when studying (new) challenger parties: their relationship vis-\ue0-vis the other opposition parties. We expect them to enter the parliament for the first time with both goals that are usually related to the two different opposition status (temporary vs. permanent) in mind \u2013 leaving opposition and exploiting opposition \u2013, plus a further one: standing apart from the other parties, no matter whether the latter are in government or in opposition. That is, in fact, one of the main reasons of their electoral success and, in the end, their essence. We will test these expectations by employing Social Network Analysis methods and analysing and comparing the cooperation attitudes of the Lega and FSM with the other opposition parties, using as an indicator the amount of legislative co-sponsorship during their first term in parliament (respectively 1992-1994 and 2013-2018) and the one they passed together in opposition (2013-2018)

Participação e Representação Política na Europa em Crise, de André Freire, Marco Lisi e José Manuel Leite Viegas (orgs.)

UID/CPO/04627/2013publishersversionpublishe

Government failure, opposition success? Electoral performance in Portugal and Italy at the time of the crisis. Jean Monnet Occasional Paper 05/2014

The costs of the crisis in Southern European countries have not been only economic but political. Economic crises tend to lead to government instability and termination while political challengers are expected to exploit this contingent window of opportunity to gain an advantage over incumbents in national elections. The current crisis seems to make no exception, looking at the results of the general elections recently held in Southern Europe. However, this did not always lead to a clear victory of the main opposition parties. In most of the elections, in fact, the incumbent parties’ loss did not coincide with the official opposition’s gain. The extreme case is represented by Italy, where both the outgoing government coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi – setting aside for the moment the technocratic phase – and its main challenger, the centre left coalition, ended up losing millions of voters and a new political force, the Five Star Movement, obtained about 25 per cent of votes. On the opposite side there is Portugal. Only in Portugal did the vote increase for the centre right PSD, in fact, exceed the incumbent socialists’ loss. The present work aims at exploring the factors which might account for this significant divergence between the two cases

Disinformazione e fiducia nelle istituzioni tra i giovani elettori del Nord Est

Questo lavoro presenta un estratto dei risultati del progetto di ricerca Il ruolo della disinformazione nel comportamento dei giovani elettori in Friuli Venezia Giulia, finanziato dalla Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia e realizzato presso il Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali dell’Università di Trieste. Il progetto di ricerca intendeva verificare il grado di disinformazione tra i giovani cittadini del Friuli Venezia Giulia, inseriti poi nel più ampio contesto dei giovani elettori del Nord Est, cercando di individuarne, inoltre, possibili cause e conseguenze. In questo contributo, sintetizziamo, dunque, i risultati della nostra indagine sul tema, svolta in collaborazione con SWG. Nella prima sezione si esamina brevemente la letteratura riguardo alla diffusione dell’informazione e della disinformazione negli anni più recenti; nella seconda, si spiegano le tecniche di indagine utilizzate; e, nella terza e ultima sezione, la più consistente, mostriamo infine i risultati del nostro lavoro, focalizzandoci in particolare sull’uso dei mezzi di informazione, il livello di informazione/disinformazione riguardo alle principali istituzioni nazionali ed europee e il grado di fiducia nelle stesse, da parte dei giovani nel Nord Est

Government failure, opposition success? Electoral performance in Portugal and Italy at the time of the crisis

The costs of the crisis in Southern European countries have not been only economic but political. Economic crises tend to lead to government instability and termination while political challengers are expected to exploit this contingent window of opportunity to gain an advantage over incumbents in national elections. The current crisis seems to make no exception, looking at the results of the general elections recently held in Southern Europe. However, this did not always lead to a clear victory of the main opposition parties. In most of the elections, in fact, the incumbent parties’ loss did not coincide with the official opposition’s gain. The extreme case is represented by Italy, where both the outgoing government coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi – setting aside for the moment the technocratic phase – and its main challenger, the centre left coalition, ended up losing millions of voters and a new political force, the Five Star Movement, obtained about 25 per cent of votes. On the opposite side there is Portugal. Only in Portugal did the vote increase for the centre right PSD, in fact, exceed the incumbent socialists’ loss. The present work aims at exploring the factors which might account for this significant divergence between the two cases.peer-reviewe

A Fe2+-dependent self-inhibited state influences the druggability of human collagen lysyl hydroxylase (LH/PLOD) enzymes

Multifunctional human collagen lysyl hydroxylase (LH/PLOD) enzymes catalyze post-translational hydroxylation and subsequent glycosylation of collagens, enabling their maturation and supramolecular organization in the extracellular matrix (ECM). Recently, the overexpression of LH/PLODs in the tumor microenvironment results in abnormal accumulation of these collagen post-translational modifications, which has been correlated with increased metastatic progression of a wide variety of solid tumors. These observations make LH/PLODs excellent candidates for prospective treatment of aggressive cancers. The recent years have witnessed significant research efforts to facilitate drug discovery on LH/PLODs, including molecular structure characterizations and development of reliable high-throughput enzymatic assays. Using a combination of biochemistry and in silico studies, we characterized the dual role of Fe2+ as simultaneous cofactor and inhibitor of lysyl hydroxylase activity and studied the effect of a promiscuous Fe2+ chelating agent, 2,2'-bipyridil, broadly considered a lysyl hydroxylase inhibitor. We found that at low concentrations, 2,2'-bipyridil unexpectedly enhances the LH enzymatic activity by reducing the inhibitory effect of excess Fe2+. Together, our results show a fine balance between Fe2+-dependent enzymatic activity and Fe2+-induced self-inhibited states, highlighting exquisite differences between LH/PLODs and related Fe2+, 2-oxoglutarate dioxygenases and suggesting that conventional structure-based approaches may not be suited for successful inhibitor development. These insights address outstanding questions regarding druggability of LH/PLOD lysyl hydroxylase catalytic site and provide a solid ground for upcoming drug discovery and screening campaigns