The Italian General Election of 13 May 2001: Democratic Alternation or False Step?

2001 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 519-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Fabbrini ◽  
Mark Gilbert

On 13 May 2001, Italy Elected To Power A Centre-Right Coalition headed by the media magnate Silvio Berlusconi. Forza Italia, the political party founded by Berlusconi in 1994 when he first decided to enter politics, became the most widely supported political force in the country with almost 30 per cent of the popular vote. Forza Italia's success was partly a result of its ability to ‘cannibalize’ the votes of two of its smaller coalition partners, the Biancofiore, an electoral coalition between the Christian Democratic Centre (CCD) and the United Christian Democrats (CDU), and the Northern League (Lega Nord), both of whom saw their share of the vote fall sharply. The other party in Berlusconi's ‘House of Freedoms’ coalition, the National Alliance (AN), the formerly neo-fascist party that now sees itself as a pillar of the democratic right, held steady in electoral terms but remains very much a junior partner in the coalition.

Modern Italy ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilvo Diamanti ◽  
Elisa Lello

SummaryThe Italian centre-right was ‘constructed’ by Silvio Berlusconi in the run-up to the 1994 general election, which marked the beginning of the Second Republic. It includes Forza Italia, the National Alliance, the Northern League and the Union of Christian Democrats (UDC), parties which are all very different in terms of their political identities, histories, geographies and social composition. The centre-right thus looks like a complex mosaic, whose pieces stay together only thanks to the role of the leader and his ‘personal party’, Forza Italia, and to the use of the media and political marketing to communicate with the electorate. These are the twin pillars of ‘the Berlusconi model’. This article contends that Berlusconi represents both a resource and a limit for the centre-right, as it is difficult for such a heterogeneous coalition to define a common identity and pursue coherent political projects and policies while relying so heavily on the role of the leader. This explains the cyclical alternation within the coalition of phases of integration and rapprochement with others of tension and open conflict. Since the coalition's election victory in 2001, it has found it difficult to meet the contrasting demands of its diverse electorate for neo-liberalism, devolution, major public works, infrastructure creation and tax cuts. This task has been made more problematic by the international instability and economic stagnation of recent years. This article puts forward the hypothesis that ‘the Berlusconi model’, which gave life to the centre-right, now appears to be worn out and will prove difficult to revive.


Author(s):  
Peter Ferdinand

This chapter deals with political parties: why they emerged, how they can be classified, what functions they perform, how they interact, and what challenges they are facing today. One of the paradoxes about democracies is that there is almost a unanimous consensus about the indispensability of political parties. On the other hand, the benefits of being a member of a political party are bound to be minuscule compared to the costs of membership. Thus it is irrational for people to join parties. They should only form (small) interest groups. The chapter first provides a historical background on the development of political parties before discussing their functions, such as legitimation of the political system, structuring the popular vote, and formulation of public policy. It then considers different types of political parties as well as the characteristics of party systems and concludes with an analysis of the problems facing political parties today.


2020 ◽  
pp. 266-286
Author(s):  
Peter Ferdinand

This chapter deals with political parties: why they emerged, how they can be classified, what functions they perform, how they interact, and what challenges they are facing today. One of the paradoxes about democracies is that there is almost a unanimous consensus about the indispensability of political parties. On the other hand, the benefits of being a member of a political party are bound to be minuscule compared to the costs of membership. Thus it is irrational for people to join parties. They should only form (small) interest groups. The chapter first provides a historical background on the development of political parties before discussing their functions, such as legitimation of the political system, structuring the popular vote, and formulation of public policy. It then considers different types of political parties as well as the characteristics of party systems and concludes with an analysis of the problems facing political parties today.


2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mutiah Amini

<p>Pesat was a local newspaper in Semarang published in the 1940s during the late colonial era. The establishment of Pesat could not be separated from the couple of I.M. Sajoeti and S.K. Trimurti, the owners of the newspaper, who were best-known as activitists of Political Party and senior journalists in Semarang at that time. As a local newspaper, the content of this publication differed considerably from the other local newspaper which mostly focused on news and advertisements. Pesat continuously published some information that had not been addressed by the media anywhere before. Pesat published transparently on the problems of family life and household. In particular, Pesat pointed the problems of marriage which placed women in domestic area in which they were not permitted to speak about the problems they were facing to other people in the public domain. This meant that a matter concerning the life of household which was previously considered private space was now published as news available to newspaper readers.</p> <p>Keywords: Pesat, private, colonial, Semarang, Java.</p> <p> </p> <p>Pesat adalah sebuah koran lokal di Semarang yang diterbitkan pada 1940-an selama era kolonial akhir. Pembentukan Pesat tak lepas dari pasangan IM Sajoeti dan SK Trimurti, pemilik surat kabar, yang dikenal sebagai aktifis Partai Politik dan wartawan senior di Semarang pada waktu itu. Sebagai koran lokal, isi dari publikasi ini berbeda jauh dari koran lokal lainnya yang berfokus pada berita dan iklan. Pesat terus menerbitkan beberapa informasi yang belum ditangani oleh media manapun sebelumnya. Dalam publikasi mereka, Pesat dipublikasikan secara transparan pada kehidupan masalah keluarga dalam rumah tangga. Secara khusus, diangkat masalah seputar pernikahan yang menempatkan perempuan dalam ruang domestik dan perempuan tidak diperbolehkan untuk berbicara tentang masalah yang mereka hadapi kepada orang lain dalam domain publik. Ini berarti bahwa masalah yang berkenaan dengan kehidupan rumah tangga yang sebelumnya dianggap ruang pribadi yang ada di luar keluarga diizinkan untuk tahu tentang itu sekarang telah diterbitkan sebagai berita tersedia bagi pembaca surat kabar.</p> <p>Kata kunci: Pesat, pribadi, kolonial, Semarang, Jawa.</p> <p> </p>


Author(s):  
I. Grishin

The article analyses results of Swedish parliamentary elections in September 2010. The author regards them as another manifestation of the fact that Sweden is losing peculiarity of its social development model. This is a result of the end of an era of two-block party structure of the Riksdag (left and right centers) and of the domination of Social Democrats in the political life of the country. The new third political force – the party of Swedish Democrats which strongly opposes the other culture immigration – is detail regarded.


2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rida Farida

Mechanism alteration of a ruling Member of Parliament (MP) and Its Implication to People Representation Concept. Alteration of a ruling Member of Parliament functioned as mechanism of control to political party that has representative in Parliament.  This regulation is obviously regulated in accordance with Act No 27 Year 2009 relating to People Representative Assembly, House of Representative and House of Regional Representative and Local House of Representative.  Nowadays, alteration of ruling MP becomes an effective mean to get rid of the MP whose ideas and visions are different with the political party where they belong. On the other hand, the existence of Member of Parliament is because of the election. DOI: 10.15408/jch.v1i2.2991


Islamovedenie ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-21
Author(s):  
Boris Vasilyevich Dolgov ◽  

The author analyses the course of the conflict, the composition and the actions of the armed opposition. The methods of the media war against the Syrian Arab Republic are examined. The role of Russia in the suppression of ISIS and the political solution of the Syrian crisis is demonstrated. The academic novelty of the author’s approach is its focus on the new stage of the Syrian crisis in the years 2018–2021, i. e. after the downfall of ISIS. The internal situation in SAR, the activity of the Constitutional Committee, the Presidential elections in 2021 are examined and analyzed. The author concludes that after the defeat of ISIS and its affiliated radical Islamist groupings, the main factors of the conflict continuation are the external actors illegitimately presented in SAR and the armed groups under their control, as well as the Kurdish factor. The author maintains that the polit-ical solution of the Syrian crisis is possible after the transformation of the armed groups of the moderate opposition into a political force and under the condition of the territorial integrity and sover-eignty of Syria that would guarantee the free creed of all its confessions.


Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi

Abstract Political parties share a very bad reputation in most European countries. This paper provides an interpretation of this sentiment, reconstructing the downfall of the esteem in which parties were held and their fall since the post-war years up to present. In particular, the paper focuses on the abandonment of the parties' founding ‘logic of appropriateness’ based, on the one hand, on the ethics for collective engagement in collective environments for collective aims and, on the other hand, on the full commitment of party officials. The abandonment of these two aspects has led to a crisis of legitimacy that mainstream parties have tried to counteract in ways that have proven ineffective, as membership still declines and confidence still languishes. Finally, the paper investigates whether the new challenger parties in France, Italy and Spain have introduced organizational and behavioural changes that could eventually reverse disaffection with the political party per se.


2022 ◽  
pp. 1476-1493
Author(s):  
Stephane Bignoux

The aim of this chapter is to analyse young voter engagement in modern Western democracies. Why young voters? Young voters are disengaged from the political process. In order to complete the analysis, the author adapts an engagement model from social media marketing. The adapted model consists of three parts: consumption, contribution, and (co) creation of brand related materials. The author hypothesises that each aspect of the model is related to the other and that all three aspects of the model are positively related to loyalty to the political party brand. The aim of this conceptual adaptation is to investigate a new way to re-engage young voters with the political party brand, thereby strengthening one pillar of modern democracy.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 398-407
Author(s):  
Mohammad Dawood Sofi

The year 2011 witnessed watershed events in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), resulting in long-awaited political and social transformation, with Tunisia acting as catalyst and modus operandi for the other countries of the region. Although the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ now seems to be gripped in a stalemate in Egypt, where vagueness still prevails, and in Syria and Libya, where the security situation continues to be extremely precarious and unstable, there seems to be a wind of change in the political context in Tunisia, where on 26 October 2014 the population witnessed the second post-revolution elections. The political party Ḥizb al-Nahḍah (Renaissance Party), officially founded in 1981, has been having a considerable impact on the political milieu of the region since its political career has experienced a renewed boost. Furthermore, Salafism has emerged as a legitimate force in the country demanding al-Nahḍah to redefine its role and strategy. While in power al-Nahḍah faced multifarious political, social and economic challenges that compelled it to devise new strategies and policies to suit the changing socio-political climate. In addition to exploring post-revolution transitions and transformations in Tunisia, this paper focuses on Ḥizb al-Nahḍah, the issues and challenges it encountered while in power, and those that lie ahead.


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