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 [...]
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.
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 [...]
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 [...]
In previous posts I’ve tried to explain why some traditional methods for identifying legislators’ ideal points, such as optimal classification, don’t work in the Italian parliament. (A legislator’s ideal point is the point in some political space, such as the one-dimensional left-right political space, which they would prefer to any other point in that space). [...]
It’s called the Bulletin of Italian Politics. See here – [Bulletin of Italian Politics flier.doc].
Via opendemocracy, this interesting piece on defamation costs worldwide: Comparatively with other jurisdictions, England and Wales did not fare well in a recent Oxford University report called A Comparative Study of Costs in Defamation Proceedings Across Europe. The report was commissioned by the Daily Mail and found that CFAs are making defamation in England and [...]
If you read Italian newspapers, you’ll have seen lists of the wealthiest parliamentarians, based on their tax records for 2007. I wondered where this information was coming from, so I checked on the Senate web site. Apparently, disclosure like this has been required since 1982 — legge del 5 luglio 1982, n. 441, if you’re [...]
My friend Andrea has the online cover story in the Tribune at the moment — go check it out.
I’ve recently been investigating whethether high rates of abstentions and missing data cause problems for roll-call analysis of the Italian parliament. Here are some figures for the 14th Camera. Of the 1,141,673 possible votes (1657 rollcalls with 689 individuals): 23.5% were votes in favour 51.6% were votes against 1.8% were registered abstentions 23.1% were absent [...]