Fortuna e abilità in 65 anni di serie A

Introduzione – 1. Come posizionare i Campionati di Serie A lungo il continuum fortuna/abilità – 2. L’andamento della fortuna nel tempo – 3. Quali fattori dietro la fortuna: ipotesi di ricerca – 4. I fattori che spiegano il peso della fortuna in Serie A – 5. Fortuna e media spettatori – 6. Il Campionato di Serie A 2010/11 in chiave diacronica e in ottica europea – 7. I campionati e le squadre più (e meno) fortunati – Conclusioni – Bibliografiafortuna, abilità, campionato di calcio di serie A

The cohesion of committees is key in determining their legislative effectiveness

The role played by legislative committees in parliamentary democracies is a rather underestimated topic. After all, legislative standing committees exist in almost all parliamentary democracies. Still, they can have an impact on our understanding of how a democracy works. Luigi Curini explains what exactly it encompasses, and argues that the similarity of committee members’ preferences represents the most important factor in deciding the effectiveness of committee work

Spatial contagion and party competition on environmental issue salience

This study explores the dynamics of party competition on issue salience, taking the environment as a case study. We integrate concepts from saliency theory, issue ownership, and the “riding-the-wave” approach with a novel concept: the spatial contagion effect. This effect posits that a party’s emphasis on environmental issues spills over to rival parties, amplifying the riding-the-wave phenomenon. Employing spatial regression analysis of party manifestos and survey data, we demonstrate the existence of this contagion effect. Interestingly, the effect is moderated by the presence of green parties. When no green parties compete, the contagion effect strengthens the riding-the-wave phenomenon. However, the effect weakens when green parties are present, as they already “own” the environmental issue

When the Worlds of Preferences Collide: Determinants of MP’s Attitudes on the Italian Questione Romana 1861–1870

The relationship between original and induced preferences in affecting politicalactions has been a recurrent topic in the literature. Less attention has been de-voted to investigating the interaction between these two preferences, and possi-ble neutralising/reinforcing effects. We explore this dynamic on a crucial issue inXIX century Italy, the ‘Questione Romana’, employing a quantitative analysis onan original corpus of legislative speeches (1861–1870). The absence of strongparties allows investigating the relationship between MPs’ original preferencesand that induced by their voters’ linkage. Moreover, as politicians and voterswere part of the same elite, we can check how their paths of political socialisa-tion shape this relationship, leading to aligned or colliding preferences

Commenting on Political Topics Through Twitter: Is European Politics European?

The aim of this study was to explore social media, and specifically Twitter's potential to generate a European demos. Our use of data derived from social media complements the traditional use of mass media and survey data within existing studies. We selected two Twitter hashtags of European relevance, #schengen and #ttip, to test several theories on a European demos (non-demos, European democracy, or pan-European demos) and to determine which of these theories was most applicable in the case of Twitter topics of European relevance. To answer the research question, we performed sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis performed on data gathered on social media platforms, such as Twitter, constitutes an alternative methodological approach to more formal surveys (e.g., Eurobarometer) and mass media content analysis. Three dimensions were coded: (1) sentiments toward the issue public, (2) sentiments toward the European Union (EU), and (3) the type of framing. Among all of the available algorithms for conducting sentiment analysis, integrated sentiment analysis (iSA), developed by the Blog of Voices at the University of Milan, was selected for the data analysis. This is a novel supervised algorithm that was specifically designed for analyses of social networks and the Web 2.0 sphere (Twitter, blogs, etc.), taking the abundance of noise within digital environments into consideration. An examination and discussion of the results shows that for these two hashtags, the results were more aligned with the demoicracy and "European lite identity" models than with the model of a pan-European demos

Populism in the eye of the beholder? A conjoint experiment on citizens’ identification of populists

Despite decades of research on the nature and characteristics of populism, and on how political actors interpret populist attitudes, the study of how the public identify populist politicians remains a largely unexplored topic. Is populism in the eye of the beholder? What causes voters to perceive a political actor as populist? Is there any systematic heterogeneity in the evaluation of candidates among citizens according to their individual characteristics? We fill this gap by analysing what characteristics of politicians, and the political statements they make, drive citizens to classify them as populist. Furthermore, we investigate how the cognitive, ideological and attitudinal profiles of citizens shape their perceptions. To this end, we report results of a conjoint experiment embedded in a survey administered to a nationally representative sample of Italian citizens. Respondents were asked to evaluate different political statements by politicians, of whom we manipulated a variety of relevant attributes (e.g., their ideological profile, gender, previous occupation). Results indicate two clear trends: (i) More than the profile of politicians, what matters for their identification as populist is their rhetoric. (ii) The cognitive (with the partial exception of education) and ideological profiles of respondents are largely inconsequential. At the same time, populist voters are substantively less likely to identify populism as such

Who looks up to the Leviathan? Ideology, political trust, and support for restrictive state interventions in times of crisis

The extent in which voters from different ideological viewpoints support state interventions to curb crises remains an outstanding conundrum, marred by conflicting evidence. In this article, we test two possible ways out from such puzzle. The role of ideology to explain support for state interventions, we argue, could be (i) conditional upon the ideological nature of the crisis itself (e.g., whether the crisis relates to conservation vs. post-materialist values), or (ii) unfolding indirectly, by moderating the role played by political trust. We present evidence from a conjoint experiment fielded in 2022 on a representative sample of 1,000 Italian citizens, in which respondents were asked whether they support specific governmental interventions to curb a crisis, described under different conditions (e.g., type of crisis, severity). Our results show that the type of crisis matters marginally – right-wing respondents were more likely to support state interventions only in the case of terrorism. More fundamentally, political trust affects the probability to support state interventions, but only for right-wing citizens

The Gender Gap in Issue Attention and Language Use within a Legislative Setting: An Application to the Italian Parliament (1948–2020)

We investigate the gender gap in issue attention among members of parliament (MPs) by applying automated text analytic techniques to a novel data set on Italian parliamentary speeches over a remarkably long period (1948–2020). We detect a gendered specialization across issues that tends to disappear as women’s shares in parliamentary groups increase. We then investigate whether women’s access to previously male-owned issues brings with it a different agenda, operationalized as a different vocabulary. We detect a U-shaped pattern: language gender specificity is high when female MPs are tokens in parliamentary groups with a large preponderance of men; it decreases when their shares start increasing and grows again when they constitute a considerable minority. We argue that this pattern is consistent with the theory of tokenism, and it is produced by the interlinkage of commitment to shared norms and the distribution of “activation thresholds” among female MPs

Generational gap and post-ideological politics in Italy (POSTGEN): A generation-aware analysis of ideological destructuring and political change in the Italian case

Recent political upheavals, such as Brexit, Trump's election, the rise of challenger parties in Europe, and Italy’s first "populist" government in 2018, challenge traditional theories of voting behaviour and party competition. Conventional explanations often point to populism and voter irrationality. However, recent research highlights that challenger parties leverage issue opportunities that transcend traditional ideological boundaries, suggesting a de-ideologized context where voters are drawn to post-ideological platforms. Despite these insights, a possible de-ideologization process remains insufficiently understood. The POSTGEN project seeks to fill this gap by analysing de-ideologization mechanisms and dynamics, particularly in Italy—a key case of contemporary political transformation. It adopts a generation-focused approach, emphasizing the role of younger generations in the evolving political landscape. The project examines how political attitudes develop and impact individuals, generations, and society over time. It investigates whether political issues integrate into coherent ideological structures or remain fragmented, and how non-political influencers affect these dynamics amid the crisis of traditional epistemic authorities.The project employs a mixed-method, multi-method, longitudinal strategy that features multiple components: from mass surveys, to social media content (also analysed through automated methods), to dedicated surveys aimed at secondary-school students, to qualitative in-depth interviews to young adults. By integrating these methods within a robust theoretical framework, POSTGEN aims to provide insights into the evolution of the Italian political systems, also to help understand broader changes in democratic representation in Westernpolitical systems

Generational gap and post-ideological politics in Italy (POSTGEN): A generation-aware analysis of ideological destructuring and political change in the Italian case

Recent political upheavals, such as Brexit, Trump's election, the rise of challenger parties in Europe, and Italy’s first "populist" government in 2018, challenge traditional theories of voting behaviour and party competition. Conventional explanations often point to populism and voter irrationality. However, recent research highlights that challenger parties leverage issue opportunities that transcend traditional ideological boundaries, suggesting a de-ideologized context where voters are drawn to post-ideological platforms. Despite these insights, a possible de-ideologization process remains insufficiently understood. The POSTGEN project seeks to fill this gap by analysing de-ideologization mechanisms and dynamics, particularly in Italy—a key case of contemporary political transformation. It adopts a generation-focused approach, emphasizing the role of younger generations in the evolving political landscape. The project examines how political attitudes develop and impact individuals, generations, and society over time. It investigates whether political issues integrate into coherent ideological structures or remain fragmented, and how non-political influencers affect these dynamics amid the crisis of traditional epistemic authorities. The project employs a mixed-method, multi-method, longitudinal strategy that features multiple components: from mass surveys, to social media content (also analysed through automated methods), to dedicated surveys aimed at secondary-school students, to qualitative in-depth interviews to young adults. By integrating these methods within a robust theoretical framework, POSTGEN aims to provide insights into the evolution of the Italian political systems, also to help understand broader changes in democratic representation in Western political systems