Ricerc@Sapienza

Parties and party system alike are facing many deep changes in different countries, both in Europe and in the rest of the world. The stability of the party systems, both in their bipolar or multipolar assets, has been challenged since the Seventies at the least.

Moreover, in the last decade this process of increasing fragmentation has been accentuated by the rising of new populist and radical, anti-system political parties. Therefore, the so called established democracies are facing harsh time in terms of political stability, institutional performances, and citizens/voters mistrust.

The economic and financial crisis has had not only very important economic consequences but also constitutional and political effects.

The research project aims to provide a comparative study of five main European countries in which those changes have been very important. The proponents intend to shed light on the main factors affecting the main political changes, as well as the great stability in constitutional terms. In fact, together with a party system trouble, the constitutions have been facing a great deal of stability. Therefore, it is important whether there is a relation between the two phenomena and if any constitutional reform could reverse the political systems' changes.

The research focuses on the constitutional jurisprudences and it tests its influence on the parties and the other political institutions. In fact, something changed since the late XX century and the new Court's activism on the electoral system can be defined either as a physiological or pathological.

The comparative research project on the European doctrine and jurisprudence as well as on the party and parties systems dynamics represents an attempt to outline the main trend in a bunch of countries, among the most representative Western democracies. The presence of scholars and Ph.D students alike is an important element and represents a key tool in leading the research activities.