As witnessed by the emphasis and the media coverage of pundits and journalists from all over Europe, the French Presidential election (first round on April 23rd) can potentially be crossroad in European history. Indeed, in an increasingly unpredictable international context, France’s right-wing and left-wing anti-establishment and Eurosceptic forces are rising at the expense of traditional mainstream parties. Opinion polls have not only put Marine Le Pen in the first position of the first round since the beginning of the campaign, for the first time the leader of the Front National seems to be competitive in the second round. Moreover,...

di Roberto D'Alimonte Articolo pubblicato sul Financial Times il 14 febbraio 2013 Can Silvio Berlusconi do it? A few weeks ago the prospect that  Italy's  former prime minister  would stage a comeback was laughable.  Now, with less than two weeks to go before polling day, it may be the media magnate  and playboy former premier  who has the last  laugh.  The last  opinion polls published  before an official blackout period point to a closer race than many expected: the gap between Pier Luigi Bersani's  left-of-centre coalition  and Mr Berlusconi's  right­ of-centre alliance  has  narrowed  to 5-6 percentage  points. In most western...

A new, short series of five online seminars by CISE researchers, running in May and June 2021. See program below! The CISE Seminar Series (since 2018, the first regular seminar series in the Luiss Department of Political Science - DiSP) was originally born with the aim to: 1) establish a practice of open discussion for the work in progress of CISE researchers; 2) consolidate a network of in-person scientific interaction among the CISE, the broader LUISS research community, and other universities in the Rome area. Later on, a Luiss DiSP Department...

(English translation by Elisabetta Mannoni) So Macron and Le Pen get to the second round. An historical result that - as almost all commentators highlighted - excludes both socialists and the neo-Gaullist right, who had dominated the French political life for decades. However, what are the reasons and voting motivations behind this result? Where does Macron’s success come from? What about his cross-cutting appeal? What about Mélenchon’s exploit? Does it come from his controversial positions? Or is it a identification vote by the French left, disappointed with the Hamon candidacy? We can’t answer to these questions only by looking at the...