CHIARAMONTE, A. C. A. (2011). Recensione del volume: P. Bellucci e P. Segatti (a cura di), Votare in Italia: 1968-2008. Dall’appartenenza alla scelta, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2010. RASSEGNA ITALIANA DI SOCIOLOGIA, 51, 703–704.

The left/right semantic is used widely to describe the patterns of party competition in democratic countries. This article examines the patterns of party policy in Anglo-American and Western European countries on three dimensions of left/right disagreement: wealth redistribution, social morality and immigration. The central questions are whether, and why, parties with left-wing or right-wing positions on the economy systematically adopt left-wing or right-wing positions on immigration and social morality. The central argument is that left/right disagreement is asymmetrical: leftists and rightists derive from different sources, and thus structure in different ways, their opinions about policy. Drawing on evidence from Benoit and Laver’s (2006) survey of experts about the policy positions of political parties, the results of the empirical analysis indicate that party policy on the economic, social and immigration dimensions are bound together by parties on the left, but not by parties on the right. The article concludes with an outline of the potential implications of left/right asymmetry for unified theories of party competition.

D’ALIMONTE, R. D. R. (2001). Mixed Electoral Rules, Partisan Realignment, and Party System. In S. M.S. & W. M.P. (Eds.), Mixed-Member Electoral Systems. The Best of Both World (pp. 323–350). OXFORD: Oxford University Press.

In theory, flexible list systems are a compromise between closed-list and open-list proportional representation. A party's list of candidates can be reordered by voters if the number of votes cast for an individual candidate exceeds some quota. Because these barriers to reordering are rarely overcome, these systems are often characterized as basically closed-list systems. Paradoxically, in many cases, candidates are increasingly earning individual-level preference votes. Using data from Slovakia, we show that incumbents cultivate personal reputations because parties reward preference vote earning candidates with better pre-election list positions in the future. Ironically, the party's vote-earning strategy comes at a price, as incumbents use voting against the party on the chamber floor to generate the reputations that garner preference votes.