My article with Alan Renwick and David Hine is out now in Electoral Studies’ “in press” section. Abstract:
In December 2005, Italy’s mixed-member electoral system was replaced with a system of bonus-adjusted proportional representation. The reform conformed with rational-choice models in that it was imposed by the ruling coalition, which sought to bolster its own power [...]
[Of parochial interest only]
I’m using the EUI’s Citrix farm for some high-demand computing. Instead of emailing the data files back and forth, I finally mapped my G: drive. Here’s how I did it:
sudo apt-get install smbfs
sudo mkdir /media/euishare
sudo mount -t cifs //RESSRV1/username$ /media/euishare -o username=username,password=******,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777
Replace username with your username, and the asterisks with your own [...]
The campaign for the European parliament elections continues to lack lustre. There’s been no noticeable decline in the electoral fortunes of the PdL, despite Silvio Berlusconi’s unclear relationship with an 18-year old Neapolitan girl, although the PD continues its (very slight) uptick.
Budget is 30% down on last year. They say they can keep going until September.
Last year I aggregated the polling data for the general election.
That was fun.
This year, I’m aggregating the polling data for the European Parliament election — the Italian part, anyway.
This is less fun.
As everyone knows, European Parliament elections are second-order elections. Voters use them not to vote on the issues — they don’t know about the [...]
The Freedom House rankings for press freedom for 2009 are now out [h/t Michele].
Italy drops to 73rd place, loses ‘Free’ status. The headline for the press release says that this is the first time Italy has lost ‘Free’ status. Not so This is the second time Italy has suffered this fate– it was also judged [...]