Ricerc@Sapienza

One common feature of the Italian political space over the past half century has been the presence of distrust in political parties and the presence of anti-system parties on both the left and the right. Discontent with existing elites and the political system has taken many forms, including referendums altering the electoral system. Both the character of the main parties and the rules by which they are elected have been reformed 4 times since the 1980s.

This book examines the process of presidentialisation of political parties in the Western Balkans. The Western Balkan countries deserve to be analysed in a comparative perspective due to their distinctive features in terms of processes of democratization, forms of government and institutional assets, the presence of social cleavages (religious, linguistic, ethnic), and, of course, the nature of political parties which differs from other European cases, especially in terms of origins, organization and structure.

Why are some institutions capable of enhancing democracy, while others struggle under pressure? Shugart and Carey wrote their seminal book Presidents and Assemblies (1992) at a crucial time in modern history in an effort to answer these fundamental questions. Because of bold claims and huge theoretical and conceptual contributions, their timely publication became the starting point for a new way to think about institutional specifications and types of political systems.

This chapter aims to disentagle the ‘presidentialization’ and ‘prime ministerialization’ concepts and to clarify them. The first section begins by noting when the terms first came into common academic usage. It will also discuss the relationship between the concept of prime ministerialization and the more familiar concept of prime ministerial government as it has been used in the work on the core executive. The chapter will then focus on the most important research questions at stake in this area, noting the methods that are traditionally used to study this topic.

This book, published with research funds from the University of Rome La Sapienza, aims at disseminating knowledge about the Italian system of political parties and political foundations among non-Italian scholars, in the light of the recent legislative reforms in this field. Due to their nature as free associations of citizens under art. 49 Cost., political parties are supposed to enjoy a full autonomy in determining their own purposes, internal organisation and financial management.

This article is focused on case-studies of the Front National in France and the Lega Nord in Italy. It shows analogies and differences between the two parties and then analyzes their attitudes towards Euroscepticism. The idea is that both in France and in Italy, Eurosceptic feelings are economically-driven and the two parties have been able to capitalize on this sentiment.

This article investigates the phenomenon of ‘unholy alliances’: grand coalitions and ideologically-incoherent coalitions in the EU. In the last decade, these types of government majorities have proliferated, even in countries that have not previously experienced them. This substantial increase happened during the years of the so-called Great Recession, together with the electoral growth of populist movements and new political parties. This article investigates the potential correlation between these ‘unholy alliances’ and the economic situation of countries.