Building on the tools provided by issue yield theory (De Sio and Weber 2014), this analysis looks at the data collected by CISE through a CAWI survey launched a few weeks before the British general election. Similarly to what we have recently done before the Dutch parliamentary election last March and the French Presidential election last April, we rely on an innovative measurement of positional issues, which provides a common issue yield index for this type of issues. Positional issues are in general, defined by reference to two rival goals (e.g. progressive vs. traditional morality): the issue yield measure assesses the...

On the 15th of October 2017, Austrian voters are called to the polls to elect a new parliament (Nationalrat). The snap elections were called immediately after Sebastian Kurz, the 31-year-old minister of foreign affairs succeeded Reinhold Mitterlehner as leader of the Christian democratic People’ s Party (ÖVP) in May 2017. Kurz’s leadership and a new party brand (“The new People’s party”) lead to an enormous ascent in the polls for the party. As of today, less than a week before the election, Kurz’s way to the Austrian chancellorship appears to be rather sure. Sebastian Kurz was successful in establishing himself...

A multidisciplinary seminar series for empirical research on democratic representation The CISE (Italian Center for Electoral Studies) has set up a new series of weekly seminars. After the first, experimental series of seminars held in Autumn 2018, the new series will run from February to June 2019. The CISE seminars were born from: the need and interest of the CISE to establish a practice of open discussion for the work in progress of its researchers; the aim to establish and consolidate a network of scientific interaction relating the CISE within the LUISS research community (both in the Department of Political Science and in...

The long-awaited first round of French presidential election is now history. Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will be on the second-round ballot, as recent surveys had predicted. In a two-week time, French electors will be again called to the polls to choose between the two the resident in the Élysée Palace for the next five years. How is this going to end? The French case is the paradigm of two-round systems, where the crucial determinant lies in the second preferences of those who at the first round voted for someone not admitted to the second round. In this specific case, the decisive...

Chiaramonte, A. and Emanuele, V. (2015), 'Party System Volatility, Regeneration and De-Institutionalization in Western Europe (1945-2015)', Party Politics, Online First, DOI:10.1177/1354068815601330. Vincenzo Emanuele, interviewed by Gianmarco Botti (English translation by Elisabetta Mannoni) Vincenzo Emanuele, what is your paper about? Why is it innovative? This article, published on Party Politics in 2015, was written together with Alessandro Chiaramonte, professor at the University of Florence; and it mainly deals with the topic of institutionalization of party systems, which has a very long history, but has not been so much debated so far, for Western European countries. By institutionalization of party systems we mean stability and...