A vast literature suggests that voters in new democracies ‘sell’ their vote to patrons providing private or small-scale club goods, or, alternatively, that such goods are distributed along ethnic lines to reinforce ethnic voting. In either case the outcome is undermining democratic accountability. This study finds that citizens in one new democracy – Ghana – expect (and get) the patronage but at the same time engage in economic voting. Eighty-five percent of citizens first and foremost expect their legislators to supply private or small-scale ‘club’ goods. This acts as a strong incentive for politicians to actually supply such goods, which is confirmed by participants’ observational data and more than 250 interviews conducted by the author. Despite this, citizens do not vote based on how well or how poorly incumbent MPs provide clientelistic goods. A multivariate analysis reveals that voting for the opposition or the incumbent is determined by evaluations of the state of the national economy and of the government’s policies. What the literature has portrayed as an ‘either-or’ is ‘both’, and this is perfectly rational: Extract as much as one can in terms of private and small club goods but vote based on economic factors. The literature suggests that clientelism dominates elections in newer democracies and thus undermines democracy. The findings from this study suggest that while distribution of clientelistic goods is common, this does not necessarily undermine the mechanism of democratic accountability in elections.

The economic crisis, the fall of the Berlusconi government and the birth of the technocratic government led by Mario Monti have produced several changes in the Italian political system. Certainly, one of the most important innovations in the context of Italian politics has been the emergence of the Five Star Movement. Such a new party has achieved spectacular overnight success in several elections at sub-national level, and now it is the most voted party in the 2013 national elections. The Five Star Movement combines antiestablishment rhetoric with demands for political reform. The article analyses the electoral growth of the Five Star Movement using both aggregate data and individual data from “Osservatorio Politico CISE” (i.e. cross-section and panel surveys conducted from November 2011 to March 2013). In particular, the author investigates whether the profile of the supporters of the Five Star Movement has changed over time, both from a political and a social standpoint. Finally, the author analyses what factors influence the electoral choice for the Five Star Movement, also from a longitudinal perspective.

Segnalazione bibliografica. American Political Science Review 01 August 2011 105: 530-551 Autori: Boris Shor; Nolan McCarty Abstract The development and elaboration of the spatial theory of voting has contributed greatly to the study of legislative decision making and elections. Statistical models that estimate the spatial locations of individual decision-makers have made a key contribution to this success. Spatial models have been estimated for the U.S. Congress, the Supreme Court, U.S. presidents, a large number of non-U.S. legislatures, and supranational organizations. Yet one potentially fruitful laboratory for testing spatial theories, the individual U.S. states, has remained relatively unexploited, for two reasons. First, state legislative...