The Issue Yield model predicts that parties will choose specific issues to emphasise, based on the joint assessment of electoral risks (how divisive is an issue within the party support base) and electoral opportunities (how widely supported is the same issue outside the party). According to this model, issues with high yield are those that combine a high affinity with the existing party base, together with a high potential to reach new voters. In previous work, the model showed a remarkable ability to explain aggregate issue importance as reported by party supporters, as well as issue emphasis in party manifestos. This paper tests the implications at the individual level by comparing a conventional model where issue salience is determined from manifesto data with a revised model where issue salience is determined by issue yield. The empirical findings show that issue yield is a more effective criterion than manifesto emphasis for identifying the issues most closely associated with party support in the minds of voters.

CHIARAMONTE, A. C. A. (2012). Recensione del volume: D. Giannetti & B. Grofman (eds), A natural experiment on electoral law reform. Evaluating the long-run consequences of 1990’s electoral reform in Italy and in Japan, New York, Springer, 2011. R...

This article has the purpose to assess if and how party system nationalization affects individual voting behaviour. Previous studies on party system nationalization have focused on systemic processes, exclusively dealing with aggregate data. The authors address this topic from a new empirical perspective, arguing that party system nationalization could act as a context dimension interacting with the vote choice function. How does this specific context dimension moderate the explanatory power of individual level characteristics? On which determinants of vote choice does party system nationalization have a greater impact? To answer these questions, the authors focus on 23 European countries through the use of the 2009 European Election Study. The empirical analysis shows that in nationalized contexts the impact of the left-right dimension on party support is higher than in territorialized contexts, while that of class as well as of culture-related variables is lower. The authors also discuss the implications of these findings.

Questo articolo si prefigge di indagare il rapporto fra giovani e democrazia in quattro paesi dell’Europa meridionale (Grecia, Italia, Portogallo, Spagna) nel periodo 1985-2001, utilizzando i dati dell’Eurobarometro. Gli atteggiamenti verso il funzionamento della democrazia sono il tema centrale dell’analisi. This article aims to analyze the relationship between young people and democracy in four countries of southern Europe (Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain) in the 1985-2001 period, using data from Eurobarometer. Attitudes towards the functioning of democracy are the focal theme of the analysis.

De Sio, L. (2008). Il secondo motore del cambiamento: i flussi di voto. In Itanes (Ed.), Il ritorno di Berlusconi. Le elezioni politiche 2008 (pp. 57–70). Bologna: Il Mulino.