This article aims to investigate under which circumstances policy representation can exist in terms of agreement in voters' perceptions of parties' left–right positions. The focal point in the study is on how voters' perceptions are affected not only by individual characteristics but also by various contextual factors related to the political parties and the political systems. With data from the CSES on individual voters and various system characteristics from election surveys in 32 countries, this article shows that what in earlier findings have appeared as national context effects rather are party effects when being decomposed. System related variables have only a small impact on voters' perceptions while the party- followed by the individually related variables exerted the greatest impact.

The third Eurozone economy and one of the six founders of the EEC (the direct ancestor of the European Union) in 1957, Italy is experiencing in recent years a season of political instability and uncertainty, especially after the crisis of Silvio Berlusconi’s leadership in the centre-right camp. A situation which has not improved after the results of the general election held in February 2013, whose overall outcome can be described as a dangerous stalemate. A new, anti-establishment party (the 5-Star Movement led by comedian Beppe Grillo) becoming the largest party with 25,6% of votes; the absence of any cohesive political majority in the Senate (whose vote of confidence is required); the installation of a government based on an oversized, hardly manageable political majority, led by Enrico Letta. How did all this happen? What are the political and the institutional factors that produced this outcome? What is the size and scope of the success of Beppe Grillo? Where are his votes coming from? Who paid the “cost of government” for the previous legislature? What are the likely scenarios for the future? First answers to such questions are presented in this book, which collects revised versions of short research notes published in Italian on the CISE website between February and April 2013, along with additional material published in Italian and English by CISE scholars on the Italian and international media. The goal of this book is to provide – in a timely fashion – a set of fresh, short analyses, able to provide a non-technical audience (including journalists, practitioners of politics, and everyone interested in Italian politics) with information and data about Italian electoral politics. Even electoral scholars will find interesting information, able to stimulate the construction of more structured research hypotheses to be tested in more depth. Too often international commentators portray Italian politics in a superficial fashion, without the support of fresh data and a proper understanding of the deeper processes involved. With this book, in spite of its limited scope, we hope to contribute to filling this gap.

Wlezien, C. (2013). Russell J. Dalton and Christopher Anderson (eds), Citizens, context, and choice: How context shapes citizens’ electoral choices, reviewed by Christopher Wlezien. Party Politics, 19(4), 684–686. http://doi.org/10.1177/13540688134...

A large body of research has claimed that budget making by multiparty governments constitutes a “common pool resource” (CPR) problem that leads them to engage in higher levels of spending than single-party governments and, further, that this upwards fiscal pressure increases with the number of parties in the coalition. We offer a significant modification of the conventional wisdom. Drawing on recent developments in the literature on coalition governance, as well as research on fiscal institutions, we argue that budgetary rules can mitigate the CPR logic provided that they (1) reduce the influence of individual parties in the budget process and (2) generate endogenous incentives to resist spending demands by coalition partners. Our empirical evaluation, based on spending patterns in 15 European democracies over nearly 40 years, provides clear support for this contention. Restrictive budgetary procedures can eliminate the expansionary fiscal pressures associated with growing coalition size. Our conclusions suggest that there is room for addressing contemporary concerns over the size of the public sector in multiparty democracies through appropriate reforms to fiscal institutions, and they also have implications for debates about the merits of “proportional” and “majoritarian” models of democracy that are, at least in part, characterized by the difference between coalition and single-party governance.

CHIARAMONTE, A. C. A., & D’Alimonte, R. (2013). The Twilight of the Berlusconi Era: Local Elections and National Referendums in Italy, May and June 2011. In A. Bosco & S. Verney (Eds.), Elections in Hard Times: Southern Europe 2010-11 (pp. 13...