Category: politics

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Italy in the Council of the European Union: votes and statements

The Council of the European Union is considered to be ‘a consensus machine’. Yet, disagreements still happen at the voting stage, with abstentions, oppositions, and statements defining the positions of national delegations even at the end of long bargaining processes. 

This article explores the behaviours of Italian representatives in the Council from 1995 to 2019. The analysis uses roll call data to test expectations emerging from the previous comparative literature in the context of this more demanding single-country research design. Amongst the hypotheses, the results confirm that chairing the Council, and the partisanship of governments on the ideological and EU integration dimensions, are systematically associated with various ways in which opposition and dissent are expressed. Furthermore, we find that caretaker cabinets and government heterogeneity also reduce the likelihood of Italian disagreements in the Council.

 Marco Giuliani (2023) Italy in the Council of the European Union: votes and statements, Contemporary Italian Politics, DOI: 10.1080/23248823.2023.2220187 

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Absolute and benchmarked economic voting. A subnational perspective on a decade of elections in Southern Europe

The article analyses the 15 elections that took place between 2010 and 2019 in four South European countries – Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain – through the lenses of the retrospective vote theory. 

The large within-country variation of economic conditions justifies the adoption of an original subnational perspective, while the explicit test of alternative economic quantities and horizons provides a more credible assessment of voters’ behaviours. 

Besides offering a taxonomy of local retrospective voting, the research found that citizens assessed the incumbents against regional unemployment levels and national growth dynamics, further benchmarking the local economic conditions against their past performances. These results give credit to the idea that the South European electorate shares similar references in assessing the economic competences of incumbent governments.

 Marco Giuliani (2022) Absolute and benchmarked economic voting. A subnational perspective on a decade of elections in Southern Europe, South European Society and Politics, 27(2): 279–303, DOI: 10.1080/13608746.2023.2202468

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Policy-taking styles: a typology and an empirical application to anti-Covid policies

Several studies have investigated the variety of governance strategies adopted by European countries to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic. Some nations relied on a more liberal approach, based on recommendations and a lack of mandatory constraints; others trusted more top-down regulations and longlasting restrictions. The feasibility and success of the different strategies also depend on the way in which policy-takers react. 

The article uses this exemplary policy case to propose a novel theoretical framework which maps the variety of policy-taking styles applying March and Olsen’s (2006) logics of conditionality and appropriateness. Using mobility data, it then employs the new typology to explore the diverse styles adopted by policy-takers reacting to anti-Covid workplace regulations in 29 European countries. The categories proposed can be applied also in different contexts, especially where policy success crucially depends on countless individual behaviours, and policymakers need to choose the most effective mix of enforcement tools.

Marco Giuliani (2023): Policy-taking styles: a typology and an empirical application to anti-Covid policies, Journal of European Public Policy, DOI: 10.1080/13501763.2023.2188891