Abstract
The Italian general election of 4 March 2018 was highly paradoxical in that it changed little or nothing while at the same time changing everything. On the one hand, though vote switches and changes in the distribution of the vote were at record levels, this, unlike the past, was not because of the emergence of new political protagonists. On the other hand, the election brought to power a coalition consisting of two outsider, populist, parties, the League and the Five-star Movement, with echoes and profound implications extending well beyond Italy’s borders. This chapter introduces the story of this remarkable event by providing the basic background information required to make sense of the material in the following chapters, covering, first, the line-ups among which voters were required to choose and then the institutional framework within which the election took place. From there we present the most salient features of the election outcome, the election context and the election campaign.
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Notes
- 1.
They were: Più Europa (More Europe), under the veteran Radical Party spokesperson and former EU Commissioner, Emma Bonino, which took 2.56% in the Chamber of Deputies contest and two seats; Italia Europa Insieme (Italy and Europe together) fielded by representatives of the Italian Socialist Party and the Greens (with 0.58% and one Chamber seat); Civica Popolare bringing together a kaleidoscope of personalities inspired by civic and left-leaning Christian Democratic values (with 0.54% and two seats); SVP-PATT (standing for Südtiroler Volkspartei-Partito Autonomista Trentino Tirolese, or South Tyrolese People’s Party-Trentino Tyrolese Autonomy Party) which together represent the interests of the those living in the Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol region (with 0.41% and—as its support is geographically concentrated—four seats), and finally, a list uniting the PD with the Union Valdôtaine (Valdostan Union) and the Union Valdôtaine Progressiste (Progressive Valdostan Union) in the tiny Valle d’Aosta region (with 14,429 votes and no seats).
- 2.
The scandal took its name from the city—Milan—where it first erupted, the term being invented by journalists to poke fun at the tendency (real or presumed) of the Milanese to consider themselves more upstanding than Italians living elsewhere, to the extent that the city, Italy’s commercial capital, was sometimes referred to as ‘il capitale morale’ (‘the moral capital’)
- 3.
The party takes its name from the first line of the Italian national anthem. It remained a minor formation in 2018 taking 4.4% of the Chamber vote and 32 seats. The results for the principal contenders, the PD, FI, the League and M5s are discussed below.
- 4.
This is calculated by taking the sum of the changes in the proportions of the vote won by each party between an election and the subsequent one and dividing the result by two. The index varies from 0 (where each party receives exactly the same vote shares at the two elections) and 100 (which would describe an almost inconceivable situation, at least in a democracy, in which none of the parties receiving all of the vote at one election received anything at all at the subsequent election, and vice versa, all of the parties receiving nothing at the first election took all of the votes at the second election).
- 5.
- 6.
We follow convention and describe the outcome by giving the results for the Chamber only. The Senate results differed slightly, but not significantly.
- 7.
Italian journalists and academics often ask themselves whether, analogously, the 2013 election can be said to mark the beginning of a ‘Third Republic’.
- 8.
In the case of the 2018 election, the Economist took the opposite view, now seeing Berlusconi as a mainstream politician who should be supported in the interests of keeping the growing tides of populism at bay.
- 9.
Such as the emergence of corruption allegations involving the son of the Campanian regional president and most notably the incident on 3 February when a 28-year-old, Luca Traini, with evident far-right sympathies, went on the rampage in the city of Macerata, wounding with a shotgun six people all of sub-Saharan African origin.
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Ceccarini, L., Newell, J.L. (2019). Introduction: The Paradoxical Election. In: Ceccarini, L., Newell, J. (eds) The Italian General Election of 2018. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13617-8_1
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