Why has Spain elections in 2019? This is the third time since 2015 that Spaniards have voted in a general election. In the first one, the levels of electoral volatility where unprecedented (more than 35 per cent of the voters switched parties between 2011 and 2015) and the number of electoral parties increased in a notable way, from 3.3 to 5.0 (Rama Caamaño 2016). The instability of the party system was profound. In 2015, the high degree of parliamentary fragmentation made it impossible to secure support from a majority of Deputies and constitute a Government (Simon 2016), so Spaniards had to...

Few days before the general election in Spain, some surprising evidence emerges from the ICCP (Issue Competition Comparative Project) pre-electoral survey: what we could call a return of ideological polarization; and along classic lines of conflict that have characterized the Spanish party system in past decades. In a nutshell, this is due to the relevance of relatively new parties such as Podemos and Vox, whose constituencies appear ideologically consistent in terms of left-wing or right-wing stances across multiple issues. This sets these Spanish parties apart from other recent challenger parties in other European countries, which mix and match both...

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...

During a break of the Inside American Politics Conference at NYU Florence, Professor Tucker talked with us about the recent elections. A transcript in Italian is available here. Joshua A.Tucker is Professor of Politics, an affiliated Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, and an affiliated Professor of Data Science at New York University. He is the Director of NYU’s Jordan Center for Advanced Study of Russia, a co-director of the NYU Social Media and Political Participation (SMaPP) lab, and a co-Author of the award winning politics and policy blog The Monkey Cage at The Washington Post. Since 2013, he has...

A multidisciplinary seminar series for empirical research on democratic representation The CISE (Italian Center for Electoral Studies) organizes a seminar series articulated on a weekly basis. The first series of seminars will run, on an experimental weekly basis, in November and December 2018. It was 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 other departments) and with...