Vincenzo Emanuele

Oggi in Luiss ricordiamo la figura e la lezione di Leonardo Morlino, un grande maestro per molti di noi.

📚 In our Collection on The #RadicalRight in Southern Europe #FreeAccess

Radical-Right Surge in a Deinstitutionalised Party System: The 2022 Italian General Election

🆓Read the article by A. Chiaramonte, @vincenzoemanuele.bsky.social, N. Maggini & A. Paparo 👇
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Today and tomorrow in Florence with a fantastic lineup #southerneurope #partysystems #epelections

Tomorrow from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., we at the Italian Center for Electoral Studies will host a webinar with @sldelange.bsky.social to analyze the evolution of the Dutch party system after the recent 2025 election!

Info and link to join here: scienzepolitiche.luiss.it/research-sem...

and here www.vincenzoemanuele.com/dataset-of-p... you may also find dataset on new parties and party system innovation updated for 2025.

I have updated my electoral volatility dataset for 2025. You can find the new data and related information here www.vincenzoemanuele.com/dataset-of-e...
The dataset is now 10 years old and I'm proud it has become a reference for many party system scholars across the world! ✅

Electoral change in 2025 has been remarkable in the #Netherlands, thanks to the collapse of NSC and large vote shifts among established parties. The election is the third most-volatile in country's history and among the top-15 in post-1945 Western Europe (the 10th for RegV) according to my data.

The 2024 European Parliament elections in Portugal: media, results, and vote determinants in national and European elections This study examines the 2024 European Parliament election in Portugal by testing the second-order national election (SONE) model across three key dimensions: media coverage, electoral outcomes, and...

Happy to share my our publication in @sespjournal.bsky.social by Tiago Silva and me on the 2024 EP Elections in Portugal. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10...., part of a Special Issue on the 2024 EP Elections in Southern Europe, edited by Aldo Paparo, @vincenzoemanuele.bsky.social and myself. 1/5

Happy to see that our article, “Bringing Rokkan into the twenty-first century: the cleavage structure of Western Europe”, coauthored with @vincenzoemanuele.bsky.social, has made it into the top 5 most read in @jeppjournal.bsky.social over the past year! Proof that cleavage theory is alive and well.

5/ @vincenzoemanuele.bsky.social & Bruno Marino test Lipset & Rokkan’s famous freezing hypothesis w fresh data, finding some conditions for freezing L&R hypothesize are *not* associated with cleavage structuring and other societal/institutional factors were overlooked.

bsky.app/profile/vinc...

@dpzollinger.bsky.social and I are thrilled "Cleavage Politics in Western Democracies" is out as an SI at @wepsocial.bsky.social!

Its papers explore the foundations of the cleavage pitting new left against radical right parties, and how it compares to the classic cleavages of Lipset & Rokkan:

🧵⬇️

NEWCOMING Four main goals mapping the conflicts emerging from the economic, social, and cultural transformations of the age of globalization identifying the economic, social, and cultural groups emerging from.....

This is the first output of the NEWCOMING project— newcomingproject.weebly.com . We are indebted to our project’s colleagues who collaborated in designing our original survey data. Happy to discuss the paper with anyone working on cleavages, party systems, or identity politics in Europe!

So what?
👉 Parties face a fragmented society shaped by multiple cleavages.
👉 Representation is harder.
👉 Voter alienation may grow if parties can’t bridge diverging social groups.
A challenge for European democracy in the 2020s and beyond.

🔍 Our method matters too.
We’re the first to operationalise Bartolini & Mair’s cleavage theory using survey data, covering structure, identity, and party representation.
Check out the design if you’re working on cleavages or identities!

The conflict between skilled vs. unskilled workers?
It qualifies as a cleavage — but a separate one.
We find little overlap with cultural conflicts.
So, there’s no unified “transnational/globalisation cleavage” on the demand side.

💡 On the “new” side:
• Ethnonationalism vs. Cosmopolitanism
• Traditional values vs. LGBTQ+ rights
• Economy vs. Environment
These 3 overlap socially and politically — and form a multidimensional GAL/TAN cleavage.

Which cleavages are most structured?
💥 The class cleavage remains very strong.
🌱 The GAL/TAN cleavage (green/alternative/libertarian vs. traditional/authoritarian/nationalist) is also robust.
But not all old (or new) conflicts make the cut.

Key findings:
❌ We reject the idea that (all) old cleavages have vanished.
❌ We also reject the notion of a single globalisation cleavage.
✅ Western Europe is shaped by multiple, distinct cleavages — a mosaic rather than a monolith.

We stick to a classic definition:
A cleavage must meet 3 criteria:
1️. Socio-structural
2️. Normative (Shared group identity)
3️. Organisational (Having political representation)
No cherry-picking. We assess all conflicts using the same standards. 🔍

We designed an original survey across 7 Western European countries 🇫🇷🇩🇪🇮🇹🇳🇱🇪🇸🇸🇪🇬🇧 to evaluate 8 socio-political conflicts, both “old” (Rokkanian) and “new” (globalisation-related).
And we asked:
Which of these are really cleavages?

Cleavage theory is alive and well — but the debate is split:
📉 Some say old cleavages (like class) are in decline.
🌍 Others point to a new “globalisation” cleavage.
But few studies test both within the same framework. We do.

🧵 Posting also here our new article out in JEPP (Open Acess)!
With Mirko Crulli, we explore the structure of political cleavages in Western Europe — bringing Rokkan’s classic theory into the 21st century.
🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Here are the main takeaways 👇

We show that left parties have historically reduced most forms of #inequality but their equalizing effect has decreased over time and has become not significant since the 1980s.

📣Just issued on @poppublicsphere.bsky.social our article analyzing 🔴left #parties in #government and the reduction of inequalities 📉. @fedetrastulli.bsky.social
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Implication: political science must rethink how it classifies party systems. Before asking which type of system exists, we must first ask: is there a system at all?

The big picture: the old labels (unipolar, bipolar, multipolar) capture only fleeting snapshots. In many countries, instability itself has become the rule. In those contexts, classifications are useless for long-term accounts.

Results indicate that many systems have become ‘non-systems,’ with fluctuating and unstable party poles.

We define party systems based on the number and composition of relevant political poles (governing alternatives) and, through a long-term analysis of Western Europe (20 countries since 1945), assess their degree of systemness.

With Alessandro Chiaramonte and Marco Improta, we ask whether party system #classifications are still useful or by now irrelevant as most party systems have been losing their 'systemness'.

📣New #openaccess publication on Western European #party systems within the #Sartori symposium on IPSR.
lc.cx/b_xy8Y
A short 🧵👇