Ricerc@Sapienza

The vote NO (a defeat for the proponents) of the 2016 Italian referendum has been broadly attributed to a wave of protest politics sweeping Western democracies. Given that the government of Matteo Renzi proposed and supported the referendum, the resulting vote against government interests raises a crucial theoretical question: to what extent does the referendum vote reflect the characteristics of a protest vote?

In the sociological and political science literature, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria and Marche shape "the Red Zone" (Trigilia 1981; Baccetti Messina 2009; Caciagli 2017). The Red Zone is a wide area in the center of Italy, where the values of the leftist political culture are so widespread among the people as to inhibit a real electoral competition between left and right parties’ candidates.