Emanuele, V. (2015). Vote (de-) nationalisation and party system change in Italy (1948–2013). Contemporary Italian Politics, (ahead-of-print), 1-22. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23248823.2015.1076617#.VeYOsfbtmko Abstract The nationalisation of politics is a major political phenomenon deriving from the historical trend towards the formation of national electorates and party systems brought about by the progressive reduction in the significance of territorial cleavages. During the last 50 years, though the issue of vote nationalisation has been addressed by a large volume of literature, serious analysis of the Italian case has never made much progress, having been limited to the reflections of a few isolated authors. Over the past 20 years, a period...

This study addresses the dynamics of the issue space in multiparty systems by examining to what extent, and under what conditions, parties respond to the issue ownership of other parties on the green issue. To understand why some issues become part and parcel of the political agenda in multiparty systems, it is crucial not only to examine the strategies of issue entrepreneurs, but also the responses of other parties. It is argued that the extent to which other parties respond to, rather than ignore, the issue mobilisation of green parties depends on two factors: how much of an electoral threat the green party poses to a specific party; and the extent to which the political and economic context makes the green issue a potential vote winner. To analyse the evolution of the green issue, a time-series cross-section analysis is conducted using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project for 19 West European countries from 1980–2010. The findings have important implications for understanding issue evolution in multiparty systems and how and why the dynamics of party competition on the green issue vary across time and space.

Segnalazione bibliografica. Autore: Richard S. Katz Party Politics January 2012 18: 3-6, Full Text: http://ppq.sagepub.com/content/18/1/3.full.pdf+html?rss=1

Segnalazione bibliografica. European Journal of Political Research, 08/07/11 Autore: Will Jennings Abstract This article develops the reward-punishment issue model of voting using a newly collated aggregate measure of issue competence in Britain between 1971 and 1997, revealing systematic differences between governing and opposition parties in the way citizens' evaluations of party competence are related to vote intention. Using monthly Gallup ‘best party to handle the most important problem’ and vote intention data, time series Granger-causation tests give support to a classic issue reward-punishment model for incumbents. However, for opposition parties this reward-punishment model does not hold: macro-issue competence evaluations are Granger-caused by...