Basta!: Anti-System Politics in Italy

2020 ◽  
pp. 216-247
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hopkin

This chapter examines the evolution of anti-system politics in Italy. The Italian case has all the familiar ingredients of an anti-system revolt: a severe economic crisis, high levels of inequality, and an unresponsive and discredited political system. However, the form anti-system politics took differed from the rest of the South in intriguing ways. Italy differed from Greece, Spain, and Portugal in lacking a strong anti-austerity movement that could have acted as a focal point for a left alternative. The other exception of the Italian case is the strength of the anti-system Right. Italy experienced a sharp rise in migration, as well as having to manage the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. Migration may have mobilized some voters, but the failings of the established parties to address a serious economic crisis offers a powerful explanation of the collapse of Italy’s party system, just as it did in the early 1990s.

1985 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Williams

Realignment theory is a recent but flourishing sub-branch of the study of American political parties. Over the last thirty years, the original suggestions of its inventor, V. O. Key, have been elaborated and refined in several directions and through several phases, gradually being modified to take variations in historical circumstances more carefully into account. Problems of the same kind often occur, and are likely to prove even less manageable, when efforts are made to apply the theory to another political system and culture as authors from both countries (and from neither) have in recent years tried, more or less explicitly, to use it to explain developments in the British party system. Some techniques travel quite well, and some useful insights can be obtained by looking afresh at familiar patterns in the light of similar experiences elsewhere. But the differences between the two nations and states preclude any rigorous attempt to apply a theory derived from the history of one country with a view to explaining the experiences of the other.


1967 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 526-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard F. Rutan

Almost thirty years ago Nicholas Mansergh concluded that the political parties in Northern Ireland did not fulfill the needs of the political system: that (to put his statement in more contemporary terms) the input functions, particularly that of political socialization, were enfeebled to the extent that one party constituted a permanent government while the other became an equally permanent opposition. What is more, underlying the party system and within the political society itself there existed no consensus on fundamentals: “There is no residue of political beliefs—as in Great Britain and the Free State—acceptable to both parties.”


Author(s):  
Anastasia Repetska

One of the main characteristics of any political regime is the power correlation between the legislative and executive branches of state power. In a democratic environment, it should reflect a certain balance of branches of power.The Constitution of Ukraine has defined the principle of separation of power into legislative, executive and judicial (art. 6), each of them is independent from the other one and acts within its competence. Theoretically fixed in the Constitution principles of power separation aim between legislative and executive branches. However in the conditions of social-economic crisis, in which the country has been acting since 1990s, between multi-vectored political forces and striving of executive power for widening of its authorities, that is fixed in the Constitution, the presidential-parliamentary form of administration very often has led not only to constitutional cooperation of powers but to the competition between the President and executive power on the one hand, and Verhovna Rada, on the other hand. So, today the need for reconsideration of both the correlation of authorities and cooperation between branches of power in Ukraine has become obvious. Keywords: legislative branch of government, executive branch of government, cooperation, political system.


2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 1389-1434 ◽  
Author(s):  
DIEGO MAIORANO

AbstractIn 1989 India's political system underwent a process of profound change which affected the entire institutional setup of the country. Power was radically redistributed—it began to flow from the central government to the states, and from the Prime Minister's Office to the other institutions of the state. By analysing the severe institutional crisis which occurred during Mrs Gandhi's final term in office, this paper seeks to show how state institutions worked on the eve of such a redrawing of India's institutional setup. In addition, an effort is made to link the working of India's institutions to the configuration of the party system, thus stressing the importance of political dynamics in the functioning of parliamentary democracies.


2008 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerardo Scherlis

AbstractThis article contends that intra-party dynamics based on particularistic exchanges constitute a double-edged sword for a political system. On the one hand, they provide party leaders with strategic flexibility, which can be essential for their party stability and for the governability of the political system. On the other hand, in permitting office holders to switch policies whenever they consider fit, these dynamics render governments unpredictable and unaccountable in partisan terms, thus debasing the quality of democratic representation. The hypothesis is illustrated by recent Argentine political development.


2018 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 256-265
Author(s):  
Konstantin V. Simonov ◽  
Stanislav P. Mitrakhovich

The article examines the possibility of transfer to bipartisan system in Russia. The authors assess the benefits of the two-party system that include first of all the ensuring of actual political competition and authority alternativeness with simultaneous separation of minute non-system forces that may contribute to the country destabilization. The authors analyze the accompanying risks and show that the concept of the two-party system as the catalyst of elite schism is mostly exaggerated. The authors pay separate attention to the experience of bipartisan system implementation in other countries, including the United States. They offer detailed analysis of the generated concept of the bipartisanship crisis and show that this point of view doesn’t quite agree with the current political practice. The authors also examine the foreign experience of the single-party system. They show that the success of the said system is mostly insubstantial, besides many of such systems have altered into more complex structures, while commentators very often use not the actual information but the established myths about this or that country. The authors also offer practical advice regarding the potential technologies of transition to the bipartisan system in Russia.


Author(s):  
Anatolii Petrovich Mykolaiets

It is noted that from the standpoint of sociology, “management — a function of organized systems of various nature — (technical, biological, social), which ensures the preservation of their structure, maintaining a certain state or transfer to another state, in accordance with the objective laws of the existence of this system, which implemented by a program or deliberately set aside”. Management is carried out through the influence of one subsystem-controlling, on the other-controlled, on the processes taking place in it with the help of information signals or administrative actions. It is proved that self-government allows all members of society or a separate association to fully express their will and interests, overcome alienation, effectively combat bureaucracy, and promote public self-realization of the individual. At the same time, wide direct participation in the management of insufficiently competent participants who are not responsible for their decisions, contradicts the social division of labor, reduces the effectiveness of management, complicates the rationalization of production. This can lead to the dominance of short-term interests over promising interests. Therefore, it is always important for society to find the optimal measure of a combination of self-management and professional management. It is determined that social representation acts, on the one hand, as the most important intermediary between the state and the population, the protection of social interests in a politically heterogeneous environment. On the other hand, it ensures the operation of a mechanism for correcting the political system, which makes it possible to correct previously adopted decisions in a legitimate way, without resorting to violence. It is proved that the system of social representation influences the most important political relations, promotes social integration, that is, the inclusion of various social groups and public associations in the political system. It is proposed to use the term “self-government” in relation to several levels of people’s association: the whole community — public self-government or self-government of the people, to individual regions or communities — local, to production management — production self-government. Traditionally, self-government is seen as an alternative to public administration. Ideology and practice of selfgovernment originate from the primitive, communal-tribal democracy. It is established that, in practice, centralization has become a “natural form of government”. In its pure form, centralization does not recognize the autonomy of places and even local life. It is characteristic of authoritarian regimes, but it is also widely used by democratic regimes, where they believe that political freedoms should be fixed only at the national level. It is determined that since the state has achieved certain sizes, it is impossible to abandon the admission of the existence of local authorities. Thus, deconcentration appears as one of the forms of centralization and as a cure for the excesses of the latter. Deconcentration assumes the presence of local bodies, which depend on the government functionally and in the order of subordination of their officials. The dependency of officials means that the leadership of local authorities is appointed by the central government and may be displaced.


2021 ◽  
pp. 019251212096737
Author(s):  
Gianfranco Baldini ◽  
Edoardo Bressanelli ◽  
Emanuele Massetti

This article investigates the impact of Brexit on the British political system. By critically engaging with the conceptualisation of the Westminster model proposed by Arend Lijphart, it analyses the strains of Brexit on three dimensions developed from from Lijphart’s framework: elections and the party system, executive– legislative dynamics and the relationship between central and devolved administrations. Supplementing quantitative indicators with an in-depth qualitative analysis, the article shows that the process of Brexit has ultimately reaffirmed, with some important caveats, key features of the Westminster model: the resilience of the two-party system, executive dominance over Parliament and the unitary character of the political system. Inheriting a context marked by the progressive weakening of key majoritarian features of the political system, the Brexit process has brought back some of the traditional executive power-hoarding dynamics. Yet, this prevailing trend has created strains and resistances that keep the political process open to different developments.


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