Sisp Conference 2019

Section 9 - Elezioni e comportamento di voto (Elections and voting behaviour)

Managers: Paolo Bellucci (paolo.bellucci@unisi.it), Alessandro Chiaramonte (alessandro.chiaramonte@unifi.it)

Thursday 12th September 2019
  Studium 6 - Aula 6-C4 10.15-12.00, 13.15-15.00
  Monastero - Sala gradonata 13.15-15.00
Friday 13th September 2019
  Studium 6 - Aula 2-B1 09.00-10.45, 11.15-13.00
  Donato Valli - Aula 9 11.15-13.00
  Studium 6 - Aula 2-B1 14.00-15.45
Saturday 14th September 2019
  Donato Valli - Aula 7 09.00-10.45
  Sperimentale Tabacchi - Aula SP7 09.00-10.45, 11.15-13.00

Chairs: Alessandro Pellegata, Carolina Plescia, Fabio Serricchio

Discussants: Aldo Paparo, Alessandro Pellegata

Electoral campaigns and second-order elections: strategic differences in the social media spreading of political message
Giuseppe Padricelli, Ferdinando Iazzetta , Gabriella Punziano, Rocco Mazza
AbstractThe contemporary permanent electoral campaign suggests to study the differences applied to the frame of political communication. The specific study field of social media strategies inspire the challenge that concernes the evolved sphere characterized by old and new differences adapted to the digital scenario. Moving in the field of quantitative content analysis, and using the patterns typical of textual and multidimensional stastistics, this paper examines strategies and choices selected from political leaders of Lega, Movimento 5 stelle and PD for Facebook and Tweeter posting during the electoral campaign for national elections 2018 and european elections 2019. The objective of the research aims to explain the differences of leader’s strategies about issues and posting methods applied regards their electoral programs and target-voters in the pre- and post-electoral periods. If the first objective can be achieved with a ping analysis about the cotents posted on social media, next one develops a multidimensional analysis about the influential context axes that affect the variations of posting styles useful for agreement impact. The results of the compared electoral periods seek to clarify the second-order election value in Italy and aim to define the european elections exploitation focused for political national debate. Keywords Social media strategies; permanent campaign; European election 2019

Assessing the relevance of the honeymoon period on the 2019 European elections
Peter Bence Stumpf
AbstractThe second-order election model of Reif and Schmitt (1980) has been used as the main theoretical framework for studying European elections. An important component of this concept is the so-called "honeymoon period" that refers to a time in the election cycle when governing parties retain their support among voters. According to this approach, European Parliament elections are always held in the shadow of a national election, thus they are second-order. However, results of recent research on opinion polls by Müller and Louwerse (2018) indicate that the honeymoon effect exists with certain conditions. The goal of this paper is to assess if the idea of the honeymoon period was relevant on the 2019 European elections and if there were any indication of the supranational contest leaving the shadow of the national, first-order elections. This is achieved by the quantitative analysis of the detailed results of the 2019 European Elections, results of the relevant national votes and the phases of the national electoral cycles.

The Campaign as a Translator? Analysing EU Issue Voting and its Link to Domestic Issues during the 2019 European Parliament Election
Carolina Plescia, James Wilhelm , Sylvia Kritzinger
AbstractWhile there is some support for the hypothesis that EU issue voting matters, much previous research holds the established view that European elections are ‘second-order’ in nature, with vote choice at EP elections mostly based on domestic concerns. Making use of original panel data collected as part of the Horizon 2020 RECONNECT project before and after the EP elections of May 2019 in 8 EU countries, this study seeks to investigate on the one hand the extent to which domestic issues attitudes shape citizens’ EU issue preferences and, on the other, whether the election campaign raises voters’ interest in European issues effectively disentangling second-order and first-order issue preferences. We put forward and test an original argument that foresees the election campaign de-activating the connection between domestic and European issues for cognitively more skilled citizens and under conditions of party system polarization. Support for such a model would blur the dichotomy between European elections as either first- or second-order, with – at least some – citizens potentially reliably translating their second-order issue preferences into first-order voting preferences.

Chairs: Alessandro Pellegata, Carolina Plescia, Fabio Serricchio

Discussants: Aldo Paparo, Alessandro Pellegata

Using Twitter to understand EU politicization in the 2019 EP election campaign
Giovanni Pagano
AbstractFrom Maastricht onwards, the issue of European integration as such has gained centrality in domestic political arenas. The very existence of the EU as a source of authority has been put into question, as well as its policies and decision-making processes. The academic debate has interpreted these developments in terms of a rapid politicization of the EU: in the field of EU studies, the concept of politicization has become increasingly relevant to analyze the new prominence of the European integration process in the political debate, as well as the rise of contention around EU institutions and policy-making. This paper aims at assessing whether the recent political developments in the EU – such as the economic crisis and the refugee crisis – have fuelled the EU politicization at the time of the 2019 European Parliament (EP) election campaign, thereby questioning the second order nature of EP elections. More specifically, the paper relies on the Twitter communication produced by (and directed to) all MEP candidates in four countries - Germany, France, Italy and Spain - to assess the degree of politicization of the EU during the campaign. The interactional nature of Twitter communication allows for the simultaneous investigation of the three main dimensions of EU politicization, as they have been operationalized in the relevant literature (Salience, Contentiousness, and Expansion to the public). The analysis of Twitter data – by means of manual and computational methods - allows to tap directly into how and to which extent candidates choose to politicize the EU, and to directly observe the degree to which the public pays attention to the EU dimension of the campaign. The aim of the analysis is to identify the factors that foster the development of EU politicization during the campaign both at the individual and at the party level, and to shed light on the mechanisms behind electoral competition in EP elections, with particular attention to one of the key assumptions of the second-order election theory, namely that European issues play an ancillary role in shaping the electoral campaign (when compared to national issues). An original dataset containing several million text messages is employed. For each of the covered countries, our data features all Tweets sent by candidates of parties achieving at least 3% in pre-electoral polls, together with all retweets and replies to such tweets. Data were collected during the fourteen days prior to the election day.

Media effects and political attitudes across the electoral cycle: the Italian case
Antonella Seddone, Giuliano Bobba, Cristina Cremonesi, Moreno Mancosu
AbstractThe effects of the media system on political attitudes in election campaigns have been widely studied in academic research. In particular, a fruitful branch of the literature investigated the impact of negativity on turnout. However, the findings are mixed, preventing to state a clear relationship between the two. This paper aims to shed a light on this topic by testing whether negative coverage may affect voters’ turnout and to what extent. It also approaches this research question by introducing two different dimensions, controlling whether the interplay of media negativity (press and TV coverage) with individual perceptions about politics (disaffection with politics) and the type of election (first vs. second order elections) has an impact on citizens’ propensity to vote. We test our hypotheses by referring to the Italian case study, offering a combination of systemic, opinion and media characteristics that allows addressing properly the topic. We rely on four datasets covering the 2018 Italian general elections and the 2019 European Parliament Elections, respectively, with opinion data (2018 PASTEL survey and 2019 SWG-University of Milan survey) and a dataset concerning a human content analysis carried out on media coverage during the seven weeks before the votes (2018 and 2019 ITEM data). Our findings do not allow stating any clear and direct connection between negative coverage and turnout. However, our main result concerns the fact that negative coverage seems to impact more clearly on politically involved people and that this is verified only for first order elections.

The congealing of a new cleavage? The demarcation bloc between identity and competition in the European Parliament elections
Vincenzo Emanuele, Bruno Marino, Davide Angelucci
AbstractOver the last years, a new transnational conflict has been deemed to structuring political conflict in Europe. Several scholars have posited the emergence of a new ‘demarcation’ vs ‘integration’ cleavage, pitting the ‘losers’ and ‘winners’ of globalization against each other. This new conflict is allegedly structured along economic (free trade and globalization), cultural (immigration and multiculturalism), and institutional (EU integration) dimensions. From an empirical viewpoint, it is still a matter of discussion whether this conflict can be interpreted as a new cleavage, which could replace or complement the traditional ones. In this context, the European Parliament elections of 2019 represent an ideal case to understand if this new cleavage has structured political competition in European party systems. The literature on bloc volatility tells us that the strength of a cleavage can be captured by the mobility of voters across the cleavage line. In cases of consolidated cleavages, limited electoral mobility across the cleavage line signals that voters conceive that conflict mainly as a domain of identification. Conversely, for emerging ones, the first phase of political and electoral consolidation is usually characterized by a relevant mobility across the cleavage line, as voters move towards parties emphasizing the new cleavage. Therefore, in these contexts, the new cleavage is mainly a dimension of competition. In this paper, we test whether a demarcation cleavage is structuring European political systems. To do so, we rely on our original dataset on electoral volatility in the European Parliament elections since 1979, including also specific data about parties emphasizing the demarcation conflict and the electoral volatility of the demarcation bloc.

Opening up the second-order black box? Domestic and European issues and general-EP elections voting shifts in Italy, 2018-2019
Davide Angelucci, Lorenzo De Sio, Aldo Paparo
AbstractThe second-order model (positing the relevance of domestic rather than EU-related factors) represents a standard theory for explaining electoral outcomes in EP elections. In this paper we test the model at the individual level, by investigating the comparative importance of domestic vs. EU-related issues for the voter-level determinant of aggregate second-order effects, i.e. individual party shifts compared to the most recent general election. We do so by relying on an original, CAWI pre-electoral survey featuring a distinctively large (30) number of both domestic and EU-related, positional and valence issues, with issue attitudes measured according to the innovative ICCP scheme (De Sio and Lachat 2019) which includes issue positions, issue priorities, and respondent assessments of party credibility on both positional and valence goals. We estimate multivariate models of party shifts between the general election of 2018 and the EP election of 2019, based on issue party credibility and issue priority. This allows to assess: a) the specific issues relevant for the electoral expansion or contraction of different parties; and b) the comparative impact of EU-related and domestic issues on the party shifts of Italian voters, effectively providing an individual-level exploration of the mechanisms leading to the second-order effect.

Chairs: Stefano Rombi, Fabio Serricchio

Discussants: Eugenio Pizzimenti

A personalisation effect? Party leaders\' autonomy in the selection of candidates for general elections
Bruno Marino
AbstractOne of the most important functions performed by parties has always been candidate selection. Indeed, despite recent accounts of party decline, political parties still play a fundamental gatekeeping role in selecting candidates for general elections and, as a consequence, in selecting institutional elites. Not surprisingly, the literature has extensively analysed the rules governing this process and its consequences on legislative behaviour, political careers, and so forth. Nonetheless, a central area of research has received much less attention: the effective autonomy of party leaders in candidate selection. In other words, much more attention has been devoted to rules governing candidate selection than practices, especially from a comparative diachronic viewpoint. This is an interesting area to investigate also in light of recent accounts of a more personalised politics, where (party) leaders and candidates have allegedly become more central in democratic representative processes. To fill this gap, this paper proposes an analysis of the determinants of the autonomy of party leaders in selecting candidates for general elections in Western Europe between the mid-1980s and today, by means of a new dataset including information for the most important Western European parties between the mid-1980s and the mid-2010s. More specifically, I investigate the effect of party leaders’ features (e.g., being a Prime Minister, or past political experience) and parties’ characteristics (i.e., ideology) on their autonomy in candidate selection before each general election. The empirical analysis will help to shed new light on a crucial intra-party phenomenon and possibly open up new avenues of research in many fields of research, including party politics, legislative behaviour, and political elites.

Dal Partito “amalgama” di Veltroni al partito “Omnibus” di Zingaretti (2007-2019): ruolo della leadership, forma partito e costruzione della linea politica negli orientamenti dei delegati dell’Assemblea nazionale.
Luciano Mario Fasano, Paolo Natale
AbstractNel corso dei suoi dodici anni di vita il Pd ha sperimentato differenti leadership (4 i segretari eletti direttamente, ai quali si sono aggiunti 3 segretari “reggenti”), cui hanno corrisposto diversi modelli di partito, dal punto di vista politico e organizzativo, nonché diversi equilibri interni fra le sue principali anime culturali. Dal partito “amalgama” di Veltroni, che nel pieno della fase costituente ha cercato un’inedita sintesi (alla fine, non riuscita) fra l’anima radicale, quella social-democratica e quella liberal-democratica, al partito “vecchio stampo” di Bersani, caratterizzato da un compromesso fra l’anima radicale e quella socialdemocratica. Dal partito “pragmatico” di Renzi, segnato dallo scontro (fino a subire una scissione) fra le anime radicale e social-democratica e quella liberal-democratica, al partito “omnibus” di Zingaretti alla ricerca di una possibile ritrovata unità fra le diverse anime interne. La vicenda del Partito Democratico è stata costellata da concezioni assai diverse e spesso anche inconciliabili del ruolo della leadership, della forma organizzativa e delle modalità di costruzione della linea politica. In parte, tali vicende sono state chiaramente influenzate dall’adozione di un meccanismo di elezione diretta del segretario - estesa alla partecipazione degli elettori - ispirato alla logica delle cosiddette primarie (aperte). In parte, sono state di volta in volta il prodotto delle condizioni politiche che hanno permesso l’affermazione di segretari con stili di leadership profondamente diverse fra loro. Il nostro contributo si propone di ricostruire e comparare, con l’ausilio di dati provenienti dai sondaggi condotti sulla platea dei delegati dell’Assemblea nazionale fra il 2007 e il 2019, le diverse visioni che si sono affermate sotto le segreterie Veltroni, Bersani, Renzi e Zingaretti, al fine di stabilire come, al di là della costante rappresentata dalla regola di elezione, differenti fasi politiche e assetti politici interni abbiano influenzato il dibattito fra i quadri intermedi del partito, producendo orientamenti volta per volta diversi. In particolare, ci si propone di mettere in luce come un partito - il PD - caratterizzato da un basso grado di istituzionalizzazione, con un elevato turn over nelle leadership e un accidentato percorso di costruzione della propria identità, e della propria cultura politica, non abbia trovato nella dimensione istituzionale, ossia nella regola di selezione del party leader, un minimo comun denominatore sufficiente a conferire la stabilità e la continuità necessaria alla propria capacità di azione politica.

Countervailing forces? Zipper systems and preferential voting in the Austrian elections of 2017
Marcelo Jenny
AbstractIn the Austrian 2017 parliamentary election several parties employed a zipper system for their candidate lists, leading to an increase in the share of female candidates. The Peoples' Party (ÖVP), the winner of the elections, used the zipper system for the first time, the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) for the second time. The ÖVP also voluntarily strengthened the relevance of preferences votes for intraparty seat allocation, while the SPÖ followed the state's rules for winning seats through preferential votes. The paper analyzes candidate lists of parties, patterns of preferential voting and the final intraparty seat allocation to see whether combining a zipper system with stronger preferential voting rules strengthened male candidates' incentives in the ÖVP to campaign for personal votes and weakened women's representation in parliament.

Chairs: Stefano Rombi, Fabio Serricchio

Discussants: Sara Nanetti

Reconnecting European institutions to its peoples: the 2019 European elections’ spitzenkandidaten campaign.
Emma Garzonio, Melissa Mongiardo, Melissa Stolfi
AbstractThe spitzenkandidat is a quite recent figure within the political world of the European elections. Launched and tested in occasion of the 2014 elections, this new-born system of candidacies’ selection and proposal seems to have been refined on the upcoming elections of May 2019. The declared goal of the establishment of a solid link between the lead candidate, appointed by the various European political party, and the Presidency of the European Commission is to reduce the distance between the latter and the European voters and to overcome the alleged unchangeability of the European core institutions with regards to the actual electoral trend. Today new challenges for the European Union are emerging, in a Europe bruised by sovereignisms, skepticisms, severe nationalisms and dreaded “-exit”. Can this renewal of the concept of European leadership be the answer to the need of restoration of continuity between the voters’ will and the effective political composition of the European institutions? The research aims to analyse the campaign deployed by the spitzenkandidaten appointed for the upcoming European elections, especially through social networking platforms, starting from a scope definition for the role and function of the spitzenkandidat through the individuation of its regulatory framework. With an eye on the strategic and sociographic dimensions – i.e. how and why, through which selective pathway and thanks to which mobilisation powers on the loyal electorate, the current spitzenkandidaten have been appointed by their respective European party – the research perspective should be comparative not only in diachronic but also in geographical terms. The research will also provide results and first-hand data from the European elections monitoring activity performed within Platform Europe project, coordinated by professor Edoardo Novelli and funded by the European Parliament. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, the monitoring of electoral materials makes it possible to identify various dimensions within the spitzenkandidaten campaign, such as more or less active political forces, the type of content used (Facebook posts, press), the most discussed topics, the perception that one has of Europe from extremely positive to extremely negative, the use of emotional or rational leverages.

Three Decades of Party Leader Effects on Vote Choice: A Cross-National Comparison
Diego Garzia, Henrik Oscarsson
Abstract(NOTA PER GLI ORGANIZZATORI: Cari Fabio e Stefano, la proposta è probabilmente off-topic, ma il vostro resta comunque il panel col fit migliore nella intera sezione. Mi aspetto diate precedenza ai paper in linea con il tema della candidate/leader selection, ma se ci fosse uno spazio libero questo paper potrebbe fare da contraltare andando oltre la selezione dei leader, volgendo lo sguardo al loro effetto elettorale..) Over the last decades, the "personalization of politics" has turned into one of the defining elements of the democratic process. However, the common wisdom that sees popular political leaders as a fundamental electoral asset for their own parties finds only limited support in the existing voting literature. So far, comparative electoral research has proven hesitant in systematically addressing the impact of leaders on voting across time and space. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to empirically assess the extent to which voters’ evaluations of political leaders have come to affect their party choice in a longitudinal, large-N perspective. We take advantage of the CSES Integrated Module Dataset, which covers over 50 countries for a period spanning three decades (1995-2015). Its world-wide dimension will allow for an extensive testing of the institutional, contextual and technological factors mediating short term leader effects on vote choice across time and space. We will also tackle the media¬ting role exerted by the struc¬tural characteristics of the political parties (age, size, party family) and the socio-political characteristics of the voters (age, gender, education level, interest in politics, strength of party identification). A systematic analysis of the dynamics of personalization at the micro-level will provide insights into which segments of the electorate are more prone to base their vote choices on personality evaluations, focusing on parti¬cular on the relationship between cognitive mobilization and the mag¬ni¬tude of leader effects on vote choice. The results will improve our under¬stan¬ding of democratic elections in times characterized by partisan dealignment, high volatility and widespread rise of populist forces across the globe.

La selezione dei leader di partito in Italia, 1946-2018
Fulvio Venturino, Antonella Seddone
AbstractLe ricerche condotte in tema di personalizzazione hanno evidenziato l’importanza degli individui e delle loro caratteristiche per il funzionamento di diversi ruoli politici. In linea di principio, non vi sono attori esclusi da questa tendenza: candidati, parlamentari, elettori, attivisti, mass media possono essere – e di fatto spesso sono – interessati dal personalismo. Nondimeno, la maggior parte dell’attenzione dei ricercatori si è indirizzata verso i leader dei partiti. Questa preminenza è facilmente spiegabile con la centralità assunta dai leader nella conduzione delle campagne elettorali, come motivatori delle scelte degli elettori, come attori di governo in caso di esito favorevole delle elezioni. Lo studio della personalizzazione della politica, e del contributo dei leader di partito alla personalizzazione, è stato intrapreso seguendo diverse prospettive. Quella mediatica esamina la presenza dei leader nei flussi di comunicazione; quella comportamentale guarda invece ai rapporti fra leader e cittadini, con speciale riferimento alle fasi elettorali. Questo paper si interessa al ruolo dei leader all’interno dei partiti politici, in particolare prende in esame i meccanismi di selezione e di de-selezione, evidenziando come queste procedure possano incidere a livello organizzativo per quel che concerne le dimensioni relative al profilo socio-demografico dei leader, gli esiti in termini di rinnovamento della classe politica e la durata della leadership. La ricerca si avvale di un dataset, composto da numerose variabili, comprendente informazioni sui leader dei partiti italiani che nel periodo 1946-2018 hanno ottenuto una presenza parlamentare.

Chairs: Marco Valbruzzi, Davide Pellegrino

Discussants: Dario Tuorto

Come vota Milano?
Marta Regalia
AbstractGli studi di Verba e colleghi hanno dimostrato l’esistenza di una relazione (positiva) tra status socio/economico e partecipazione politica. Non si può tuttavia affermare lo stesso per quanto riguarda la relazione tra status socio-economico e preferenze elettorali. Non sempre, cioè, le classi più disagiate votano per i partiti di sinistra (che si presuppone siano più vicini ai loro interessi) e le classi più avvantaggiate per i partiti di destra. Il paper si propone di indagare tale relazione analizzando il comportamento elettorale degli elettori milanesi. Utilizzando i dati al massimo livello di disaggregazione disponibile, si cercherà di mettere in relazione i principali indicatori socio-economici con il comportamento elettorale. Attraverso un’indagine ecologica, verrà messa alla prova l’ipotesi secondo la quale i ceti maggiormente disagiati abbiano progressivamente reindirizzato le proprie preferenze verso i (nuovi) partiti anti-establishment.

Periferie al voto. Nuove geografie sociali e politiche a Torino
Cristopher Cepernich, Davide Pellegrino
AbstractIl paper analizza in prospettiva geografica l’evoluzione del comportamento di voto come conseguenza della distribuzione delle aree di disagio e della marginalità urbana a Torino. L’indagine si inserisce all’interno di un programma di ricerca coordinato dall’Istituto Carlo Cattaneo composto da 15 unità di ricerca, che fanno riferimento alle attuali città metropolitane. L’obiettivo è studiare i cambiamenti del comportamento elettorale e della rappresentanza nelle periferie caratterizzate da persistenti diseguaglianze, prendendo in esame le elezioni Politiche ed Europee nell’arco temporale 2008-2018. La ricerca intende inquadrare le tendenze intervenute nelle periferie sociali e politiche, osservandole anche in un’ottica territoriale. La geografia politica italiana, infatti, come quella di altri Paesi europei e non solo, ha subito profonde trasformazioni, soprattutto in seguito alla crisi economica e finanziaria del 2008-2011. È riemersa così la centralità del cleavage centro/periferia per spiegare risultati elettorali che in una prima fase sono apparsi sorprendenti: nel caso in analisi, l’affermazione di Chiara Appendino, candidata del Movimento 5 Stelle, alle Comunali del 2016. L’analisi sul voto è qui condotta a livello di unità territoriali sub-comunali: sezioni di censimento Istat per la costruzione di un indice di marginalità urbana (variabile indipendente) da correlare con le corrispondenti sezioni di voto del Comune di Torino (variabile dipendente). I dati disponibili in letteratura hanno mostrato fin qui in modo frammentario le differenze di orientamento politico e sociale nelle diverse aree della città. Se in passato era possibile trattarle come unità analitiche monolitiche, oggi – a causa di trasformazioni demografiche, economiche, urbanistiche e tecnologiche – le città sono diventate al loro interno significativamente più diversificate e complesse. È in questo contesto di riscoperta del territorio come spazio sociale che trova spazio lo studio delle cosiddette “periferie”, vale a dire di quelle zone urbane caratterizzate dalla presenza di cittadini accomunati da un senso di abbandono rispetto alle opportunità garantite ad altri residenti in zone cosiddette centrali. Sulla base di marginalità e degrado prende forma il “voto per il cambiamento”, come reazione ad uno stato di deprivazione relativa reale e/o percepita. Considerato lo spazio come variabile moderatrice, la dualità centro/periferia si dimostra generica ed imprecisa. La periferia elettorale, intesa più articolatamente come lo spazio nel quale si manifesta il diverso grado di percezione di marginalità da parte dei cittadini, non può essere ridotta alla sua alterità rispetto alla centralità geografico-amministrativa delle aree urbane di maggior prestigio economico e di status. Di qui una ricerca che riprende un filone di analisi a lungo trascurato per spiegare come variabili culturali e sociali, oltreché economiche, possa incidere sulle dinamiche elettorali che coinvolgono segmenti significativi di cittadinanza accomunati dall’esperienza di un territorio.

Periferie al voto. Il caso di Genova
Fulvio Venturino
AbstractIn occasione delle elezioni degli ultimi anni, in concomitanza con l’ascesa dei partiti populisti, si è potuto riscontrare un forte cambiamento nell’insediamento territoriale di tutte le forze politiche. Questo cambiamento è stato spesso discusso a livello nazionale, insistendo sulla geografia del voto e sulla virtuale scomparsa delle pre-esistenti zone geopolitiche. Ma si sono potuti osservare anche importanti cambiamenti a livello locale. Per esempio, specialmente a livello giornalistico, è stata enfatizzata la concentrazione dei voti a favore del Partito Democratico e del centrosinistra nei quartieri centrali delle città, a cui è corrisposto un calo del sostegno nei quartieri periferici. Questo paper analizza i cambiamenti della partecipazione e del voto intervenuti nel comune di Genova in occasione delle elezioni parlamentari del 2008, 2013 e 2018. A questo scopo, verranno utilizzate le 71 aree statistiche in cui è ripartito il territorio comunale.

Periferie e comportamento elettorale: il caso di Cagliari tra il 2008 e il 2018
Stefano Rombi
AbstractLe determinanti del comportamento elettorale sono state spesso ricondotte ad almeno due categorie: individuali e istituzionali. Le prime hanno a che fare con le caratteristiche dei singoli elettori, le seconde con gli incentivi posti dall'ambiente istituzionale in cui le elezioni si svolgono. In questo paper, invece, ci soffermeremo sulle determinati territoriali del comportamento elettorale. Ipotizzando la sussistenza di una relazione significativa tra l'area di residenza degli elettori - alla quale sono associate un numero rilevante di variabili socio-economiche - e la propria scelta di voto, utilizzeremo la città di Cagliari come caso di studio. Più esattamente, dopo aver raccolto tanto dati socio-economici quanto dati elettorali a livello dei 31 quartieri cittadini, potremo verificare se e in che misura esista una relazione tra perifericità urbana e scelta di voto. Saremo anche in grado di apprezzare gli eventuali cambiamenti di questa relazione nel tempo e a seconda che si tratti di elezioni di primo o secondo ordine. L'analisi, infatti, riguarderà tutte le elezioni parlamentari ed europee svoltesi tra il 2008 e il 2018.

Chairs: Davide Pellegrino, Marco Valbruzzi

Discussants: Cristopher Cepernich

Il voto e le periferie di Palermo
Francesca Montemagno, Laura Azzolina
AbstractLa recente ondata di intolleranza per le diversità, riacutizzazione di istanze conservatrici, disaffezione e sfiducia per le istituzioni (nazionali ed europee), che si accompagna alla diffusione di preferenze per movimenti e partiti anti-sistema e richiesta di poteri forti, è stata connessa da studiosi e osservatori alla crescita del disagio sociale e delle diseguaglianze che si sono aggravate negli ultimi decenni anche per effetto della globalizzazione e della crisi del 2008. Svariate indagini demoscopiche suggeriscono in effetti che l’elettore “marginale”, complice anche la crisi della rappresentanza e l’antipolitica, abbia orientato le proprie scelte di voto sui partiti anti – establishment. Ma, a differenza che in passato, disagio sociale e diseguaglianze assumono oggi sempre di più una connotazione territoriale, in cui, pur non essendo l'unica, la dimensione urbana appare quella in cui tali fenomeni sembrano assumere maggiore spessore e criticità. Questo lavoro intende analizzare eventuali connessioni osservabili a livello urbano fra comportamento di voto e disagio sociale, osservando l'esperienza della città di Palermo; città, fra le più grandi del Mezzogiorno, che si caratterizza per un elevato livello di disagio sociale e marginalità. Verrà effettuata una analisi della geografia elettorale interna della città di Palermo a partire da un lavoro di segmentazione territoriale in aree subcomunali quanto più possibile omogenee. I voti delle 600 sezioni elettorali cittadine verranno quindi riaggregati in 55 aree statistiche definite come Unità di Primo Livello (UPL). Queste ultime rispondono ad una vecchia suddivisione amministrativa non più in uso ma ancora sfruttata per scopi statistici, vista la sua corrispondenza ai quartieri storici della città. A tale livello di aggregazione verrà analizzato il rapporto tra l'esito delle più recenti consultazioni elettorali (elezioni Politiche 2008 - 2013 - 2018 ed elezioni Europee 2009 - 2014) e alcuni indicatori di perifericità socio – economica costruiti sulla base dei dati censuari (2001 e 2011). Il risultato atteso è una mappa urbana del legame fra marginalità e disaffezione politica. Emergerebbe così il ruolo delle città che da motore di sviluppo, di integrazione sociale e luogo prioritario di consolidamento politico-partitico, si trasformano in vettori di istanze autoritarie e anti-sistemiche.

Il comportamento politico nello spazio sociale urbano. Il caso di Reggio Calabria
Antonella Coco, Francesco Raniolo
AbstractNel nostro contributo ci proponiamo di osservare la geografia sociale e politica nella città di Reggio Calabria, alla luce delle evidenze empiriche emerse da un programma di ricerca volto a cogliere (attraverso una metodologia quantitativa basata sui dati censuari 2011 e sui risultati delle elezioni politiche 2008, 2013 e 2018) le distanze e le fratture sociali e politiche tra i centri e le periferie nelle città metropolitane italiane. Tali fratture ridefiniscono il legame tra i cittadini e la politica, rilevabile attraverso la partecipazione e gli orientamenti politici. Quanto e in che modo i fattori socio-economici e i fattori spaziali sono correlati rispetto ai comportamenti elettorali e in particolare quanto essi spiegano il voto ai partiti di protesta (movimento Cinque Stelle e Lega)? L’obiettivo è quello di riconoscere e definire, nella città, il centro, quale spazio sociale caratterizzato da condizioni socio-economiche agiate, elevata attrattività e concentrazione di opportunità, e le periferie, più o meno distanti dai centri nello spazio fisico, segnate da marginalità, disagio sociale e scarsa dotazione di opportunità, per poi rintracciare le correlazioni tra queste variabili e le scelte elettorali.

Bari e suoi doppi. Le contorsioni elettorali di una periferia della periferia
Onofrio Romano, Paolo Inno
AbstractDecifrare i comportamenti elettorali dei baresi è sempre stata una sfida ardua per gli analisti, dal momento che la città ha un rapporto storicamente controverso con i “poteri centrali” e , in generale, con la dimensione pubblico-istituzionale. Un rapporto segnato da un sostanziale senso di estraneità, derivante dalla condizione periferica anche rispetto allo stesso Mezzogiorno, che conduce i baresi da un lato a indulgere allo “spirito del tempo” (ossia a obbedire ai modelli socio-politici di volta in volta promossi dai poteri di turno, per evitare di restare esclusi dai flussi di risorse ad essi annessi), dall’altro a intraprendere percorsi autonomi che pragmaticamente assicurino una massimizzazione dei benefici, confidando nell’anima mercantile della città. Per questo, Bari appare ad un tempo conformista e innovatrice. Questo schema generale è applicabile anche alla dinamica interna tra le classi popolari e le élite politiche, professionali ed economiche, nonché a quella tra periferie e salotti buoni della città. Il gioco di simulazione tra obbedienza e ribellismo marca il ritmo della dialettica sociale e trova nel comportamento elettorale una delle sue più sensibili forme di espressione. In questo quadro, occorrerà però discernere in maniera appropriata la varietà socio-urbanistica interna alla città, al di là dello schema elementare centro-periferia. Molta parte della periferia “socio-economica” della città si trova infatti ben collocata nel centro urbano (S. Nicola, Libertà); altre aree subcomunali presentano una consolidata mixité (Madonnella, Japigia, Picone); altre si connotano come classiche periferie dormitorio, con logiche interne nettamente eterogenee rispetto al resto città (S. Paolo, S. Pio). In questo paper, ci concentreremo sui comportamenti elettorali nelle politiche e nelle europee a Bari, disaggregati per aree-subcomunali, a partire dal 2008 fino ad oggi, avendo come elementi di comparazione sia il voto nelle altre grandi città italiane sia le coeve competizioni amministrative (comunali e regionali). Questo periodo è connotato dall’imperversare della crisi economica (che a Sud ha avuto risvolti più drammatici rispetto al Nord, al contrario di quanto sia avvenuto nelle crisi conosciute nel corso del Novecento), nonché dal progressivo deteriorarsi degli equilibri politici tipici della “seconda Repubblica”. Queste vicende s’incrociano a Bari con la cosiddetta “primavera pugliese”, a partire dal 2004, che vede il capoluogo regionale in prima linea in un processo di rinascita civico-politica portatore di grandi speranze e aspettative. Sarà interessante vedere come queste due correnti di mutamento, di verso pressoché opposto, abbiano inciso nei comportamenti elettorali dei cittadini baresi, connotati in maniera ondivaga ora da fiducia istituzionale, ora da impulsi anti-sistemici.

Periferie “Interne” ed “Esterne” alla prova del voto: marginalità sociale e centralità geografica nel comportamento elettorale napoletano (2008 – 2018)
Pietro Sabatino
AbstractL’analisi ecologica del voto, con particolare riguardo alle periferie urbane, è tornata prepotentemente di attualità a livello nazionale nel corso dell’ultimo ciclo elettorale. La distribuzione territoriale del voto, con nettezza a partire dal 2016, si è più nitidamente allineata nelle grandi aree urbane del paese secondo uno schema centro-periferia che ha premiato, nelle aree contrassegnate da livelli più elevati di marginalità e deprivazione socio-economica, le forze politiche “populiste” e/o “anti-sistema”. Tale fenomeno si pone all’interno di una più generale ricomposizione del voto su scala continentale che vede i territori in generale “periferici” - i luoghi che non contano – place that don’t matter (Rodriguez-Pose, 2018) - esprimere congiuntamente una sofferenza rispetto alle forze politiche tradizionali. Rispetto a questo quadro, il contributo si pone l’obiettivo di analizzare il comportamento elettorale delle unità sub-comunali napoletane nel corso di un decennio (2008-2018), con particolare riferimento alle elezioni Europee (2009, 2014) e Politiche (2008, 2013, 2018). Le unità sub-comunali saranno “classificate” sia rispetto a un criterio di perifericità socio-economica, sia spaziale (distanza dal/dai centro città). Particolare attenzione verrà data alla combinazione dei due effetti (socio-economico e territoriale) per cercare di cogliere differenze rilevanti di comportamento elettorali tra periferie “interne” ed “esterne”.

Chairs: Giorgio Malet

Discussants: Julia Schulte-Cloos

Beyond left and right: the post-ideological second life of (several) green parties in Europe
Alessandro Testa
AbstractThe last decades’ electoral results show that European voters are no more identifying themselves with traditional parties, now disappeared or strongly reduced. On the Right wing we could see an extended sharp increasing of anti-immigration and anti-EU parties, especially in the European Parliament elections. On the other side of the spectrum, the situation is more complex. Both the radical left parties and the green ones, in fact, try to offer a lefty alternative to the former voters of socialist and socialdemocratic parties, who actually evaluate them not so different in respect to the popular ones (often they are allied in long-term great coalitions) about welfare, immigration/integration and taxes policies. Mapping the electoral results in Europe since 1994, the paper will show how the “green waves” periodically are blowing around Europe are generally limited to the northern side of a parallel cutting the Alps, including Northern Italy. A quarter-century later, this is the outcome: almost extinct in France and Italy, and never blossomed in the rest of Mediterranean (and European) Europe, green parties are still growing and conquering places in Central and Northern Europe, especially in Germany, Austria, UK, Scandinavian and Baltic countries. What about the reason-why creating the differences between these successful or unsuccessful stories? The paper will compare electoral results, alliances (before and after voting, including the regional level), type of leadership and frequency of national assembly in all the European green parties which elected minimun one MP or MEP in the last fifteen years (2004-2019), looking for relevant matchings. A special survey will be focused of green parties’ kind of behaviours with other parties: no alliances (as in the UK), marriage-type alliances with left or centre-left parties (as in France and Italy) or post-ideological ones, following the electoral results and other circumstances (as in Germany and Austria). Our hypothesis is that green parties demonstrating more independence (without alliances or without fixed partnerships) have better performances and longer life than satellite parties.

Changing patterns of trans-national solidarity over time 1992-2016
Francesco Visconti
AbstractThe process of EU integration together with the increased mobility of EU and extra-EU citizens impinged on territorial and conceptual boundaries that shape citizens’ attitudes towards immigration. This article investigates individual level attitudes towards welfare exclusionary policies. It adopts a longitudinal perspective enabling an evaluation of antecedents of welfare chauvinism in different contexts in 1992, before the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, and in 2016, in the aftermath of the great recession, of the Eurozone and Schengen crises and of the Brexit referendum. Based on REScEU project survey data in five EU countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom), the article shows that trans-national solidarity has weakened, and that the politicization of the cross-border welfare rights has levelled the political space in the minds of the mass public in these five major EU countries.

Macro-Economic Perceptions and Partisan Cheerleading: The Political Conditions for un-Biasedness
Matthew Loveless
AbstractWe investigate effect of partisan cheerleading on individuals’ retrospective sociotropic economic evaluations (RSEE’s). Contributing to recent debates about the nature of this effect of partisan influence, we identify circumstances under which partisans’ better/higher evaluations align with objective economic conditions. That is, when are winners are better at evaluating macro-economic conditions? We propose a theory of issue narrative in which increasing ideological presence in government also provides control of the public narrative about the utility of particular issues as the best metric for evaluating national economic performance. When this takes place, winners’ RSEE’s are more likely to align with the actual performance of the national economy. Merging individual-level survey data with both party and macro-economic performance data, we find strong and consistent evidence for the issue narrative approach across 28 European countries.

Bloc without foundations? Class cleavage strength and Class bloc electoral support in Western Europe after WWII
Vincenzo Emanuele
AbstractAfter several decades where the class cleavage was considered the basis of politics and electoral competition, since the 1980s the literature offers contrasting pieces of evidence, with many studies emphasizing the decline of the class cleavage and others questioning these claims and supporting its enduring relevance. However, most of these studies rely on individual-level survey data that are unable to gauge the real social, cultural, and organizational features of the class cleavage and fail to take into account properly its temporal variation, as longitudinal survey data are hardly available before the 1980s. This paper aims at filling this gap by testing the impact of class cleavage strength on the electoral support for class bloc parties and its variation over time. This research question is addressed through a comparative longitudinal analysis in 20 Western European countries after World War II. In particular, the impact of class cleavage strength on the electoral support for the class bloc is investigated by disentangling the class cleavage into different components related to social structure, cultural identity, and organizational density, thus accounting for its multidimensional nature properly. Empirical results show the overall electoral relevance of the different aspects of the class cleavage but also underlines the historical decline of the explanatory capacity of these factors, so much that in the last 10-15 years the electoral support for the class bloc seems to be completely detached from the social, cultural, and organizational factors the originally allowed for their electoral emergence.

Chairs: Pierangelo Isernia, Gianluca Piccolino, Maria Giovanna Sessa

Discussants: Maria Giovanna Sessa, Gianluca Piccolino

Closer to the elites? How emotions and information determine populist attitudes
Davide Morisi, Markus Wagner
AbstractUnderstanding the origins of populist attitudes, that is, the belief that a pure people is opposed to a corrupt elite, can explain the success of populist actors and of attempts to reduce the distance between voters and politicians. Yet, existing research has largely failed to examine the determinants of populist attitudes. In this article, we consider the impact of information and emotions. Concerning emotions, our panel and experimental data provides unclear evidence of a direct effect of anger or fear on populism. Concerning information, we present results from a survey experiment that shows that fact-based information about politicians reduces populism. This indicates the existence of a cognitive route to populist attitude change. However, exposure to fact-based information only has an effect on populist attitudes among voters who are not angry. Hence, providing fact-based, positive information may reduce levels of populism, but less so in emotionally-charged contexts.

Populism and Anti-Science: A New Analytical Framework
Krisztian Szabados
AbstractRecent changes in politics mark the dawn of a new era of the “post-truth” world. This post-truth world is being advanced globally by a new breed of populist leaders. The rise of populism has sparked fierce debate about the role of science, scientific evidence and scientists in society. Societies are embattled by the flood of fake news, and scientific misinformation, the spread of pseudoscience and science denialism further strengthen the ubiquitous sentiment of uncertainty and distrust in the public. Populist politicians encounter a growing demand for such ideas among their voters, further exacerbating the political polarization. The main research question this paper intends to answer is whether anti-science politics is an intrinsic part of the populist toolkit. To do so, it will propose a new, extended definition of anti-science politics as well as suggesting a novel analytical framework that may allow for a more precise examination of the topic. First, this paper will present the comparative empirical analysis of anti-science politics in the U.S., Russia, Turkey and Hungary utilizing the definition and set of criteria put forward by Amend and Barney (2016). Second, this paper will argue why this definition needs to be revised following the recent anti-science developments in emblematic populist regimes such as Russia and Hungary. A novel analytical framework will be presented that reveals the subtle but all the more damaging instruments that populist regimes employ in pursuit of their anti-science politics. The paper will conclude by arguing that populism and anti-science are closely linked, populist regimes utilize anti-science politics to an increasing degree, but variations exist.

The evolution of political families in Central and Eastern Europe: dynamics of electoral volatility and political orientation from the democratic transition to present days
Mattia Collini
AbstractParty politics in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is generally considered characterized by instability, fragmentation and volatility, at least when compared with the traditionally more stable Western Europe. However, are these phenomena affecting all in the same way or can we see some differences among ‘blocs’ or ‘political families’? This question is particularly relevant in a time of political changes both in Eastern and Western Europe. Indeed, in CEE we saw an evolution of parties and party systems between the mid ‘90s and early 2000s that resulted in party systems largely mirroring the ones existing in Western Europe, with a central role played by the traditional party families, or at least by parties referring to them. However, in more recent times new challenges emerged for traditional party families, particularly for the left. This paper aims to be a comprehensive assessment of these phenomena, based on empirical evidence from the region. Blocs are a key aspect of the research, which explores how much the concept of ‘bloc’ can be applicable, and what are the main characteristics of old and new political families in CEE. Thus, the first goal of the paper Is to present a comparative diachronic analysis of the electoral dynamics of political blocs/families in Central and Eastern Europe. Many works have been devoted to the study of electoral volatility in CEE, but the issue of political orientation has, up to now, been neglected, as well as the concept of political blocs. Indeed, electoral volatility is a good indicator of (aggregate) electoral stability and change, but it does not distinguish between how political blocs behave in terms of vote transfers. Hence, it is important to disaggregate electoral volatility not only into vote share of new parties and established parties but also in relation to parties’ political affiliations, as well as to assess the direction of electoral change over time. Confronting the main political blocs, and if and how they changed over almost two decades, the research contributes to the study of the general structure of political competition in CEE. The paper covers six Central and Eastern European countries that have joined the EU between 2004 and 2007 (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary). The time period will be from their democratic transition to the 2019 European Elections, covering both national elections and elections for the European Parliament. This long timespan allows to trace the entire evolution of party systems and political families from their origin to the present days. In the first part, this paper looks at the major political families and explores the applicability of the concept of blocs in CEE. The second stage assess their characteristics, diachronic evolution, and provide an updated map of electoral volatility in CEE related to each political bloc, with a focus on the main political families and emerging challengers. The last part is dedicated to a mid-range comparison of electoral volatility, (intra)bloc fragmentation, and political positions, which are considered among the main variables to assess whether there are differences and/or recurring trends within the systems, as well as the emergence of newcomers. In particular, regression analyses will be used to search for correlations.

Uncovering Determinants of Populist Attitudes at the Level of Sub-dimensions
Veronika Dostálová, Vlastimil Havlík, Lenka Hrbková
AbstractSince the 2010 general election, centrist populist parties have been an inseparable part of Czech coalition governments. Yet the concept of populist attitudes remains unnoticed in the Czech context. Following the ideational approach to populism, we attempt to fill in this research gap by conducting a pilot study examining determinants of populist attitudes on a convenience sample of Czech voters. One’s socio-economic characteristics, left-right identification and personality are considered possible factors shaping populist attitudes. Our contribution is twofold. First, personality is approached at both the level of broad personality traits and the level of personality facets, with a focus on altruism, anxiety and openness to ideas. Second, unlike the previous studies, we analyse what effect each of the potential factors has on the three core sub-dimensions of populist attitudes, namely anti-elitism attitudes, a belief in unlimited popular sovereignty, and a perception of homogeneity and virtuousness of the people. Items proposed by Schulz et al. are used for the measurement of populist attitudes. Results of the confirmatory factor analysis of this attitudinal scale confirm a higher-order structure of populist attitudes, i.e. their three core sub-dimensions exist independently from one another. Results of multivariate regression analyses show most of broad personality traits to have stronger impact on one particular sub-dimension of populist attitudes than on populist attitudes as the whole. Openness to ideas is the only facet with considerable effect on populist attitudes and their sub-dimensions. Interestingly, the results also suggest that personality facets may have stronger effect on populist attitudes and their sub-dimensions than broad personality traits, as is the case for openness to ideas. Design of our study brings deeper knowledge of formation of voters’ populist attitudes. Despite limitations of our findings, arising from the lack of sample’s representativeness, performing analyses at the level of sub-dimension of populist attitudes furthers our understanding of the electoral success of populist parties, not only within the Czech context. Therefore, we encourage adoption of this approach in the future research examining activation, formation or effects of populist attitudes.

Chairs: Selena Grimaldi, Aldo Paparo

Discussants: Fulvio Venturino

MODELLING VOTING BEHAVIOUR THROUGH WELL-BEING INDICATORS IN MICRO TERRITORIAL AREAS
Rossana Sampugnaro, Venera Tomaselli, Francesca Montemagno
AbstractIdentifying the determinants of electoral behaviour has generally been extremely difficult, since the traditional sociological variables - gender, education, territorial affiliation, partisanship, income, etc. - have partly lost their explanatory capacity. Recent studies have formulated new hypotheses that aim to review the categories of 'economic' voting and to identify new interpretative keys. These tend to include “relative deprivation” with regard to an initial economic condition and all aspects related to the precariousness of work. The evident shift is towards categories of meaning that recall economic-social well-being. Numerous studies show that social and economic distress is a very useful variable to explain voters’ choices in a period characterized by economic collapse such as occurred in 2008, crises of representation and widespread feelings of ‘anti-politics’. This study adopts the concept of 'fair and sustainable' well-being, used in the BES Report of ISTAT (2016). The BES indicators have also been used in budget cycle since 2017 to support the economic planning of the Government. In addition to the more strictly economic indicators, the analysis takes into account BES indicators referring to social welfare and performance of institutions and public services, following the evolution of the economic crisis in recent years. The indicators have been selected from the 12 BES domains, which in turn are grouped into 6 thematic groups (economy and labour market, education, environment, institutional performance, safety and quality of services), proposing a data analysis through micro territorial units. The explanatory capacities of the indicators have been checked through the estimation of multivariate regressive models, in order to evaluate the effects of the diachronic dimension of the economic crisis on voting behaviour during the most recent electoral events: the Constitutional Referendum (2016) and the General Election (2018).

Indicatori di disagio e voto nelle periferie. Il caso di Bologna
Dario Tuorto, Marco Valbruzzi, Pasquale Colloca
AbstractIl paper si propone di analizzare la relazione tra disagio socioeconomico e voto, con riferimento alle ultime due elezioni politiche del 2013 e 2018. L'originalità della proposta sta nel fatto che questa relazione viene testata assumendo come dimensione di analisi la città. Il paper intende riflettere sull'effetto della variabile interveniente centralità-perifericità geografica sulla relazione tra disagio e voto nel caso di Bologna, proponendo al contempo una riflessione di carattere metodologico sulla costruzione degli indicatori di centralità-perifericità e di disagio socio-economico. I dati di riferimento sono quelli politico-elettorali rilasciati dal Ministero dell'Interno (per sezione elettorale) e quelli amministrativi Istat riferiti ad unità di analisi sub-comunali.

Il voto a Firenze negli anni della crisi. Un’analisi dell’influenza del disagio socio-economico tra centro e periferia
Lorenzo Cini, Nicola Maggini
AbstractL’affermazione del voto populista nelle elezioni politiche del 2018 ha segnato la definitiva trasformazione della geografia sociale e politica italiana, iniziata con gli anni della crisi. La mutazione della geografia politica italiana è esemplificata dal forte arretramento elettorale dei partiti del centro-sinistra alle ultime politiche nella ex “zona rossa”, soprattutto nelle zone periferiche. Questo paper indaga queste dinamiche a livello locale analizzando il rapporto tra disagio socio-economico e voto ai partiti nel territorio del Comune di Firenze con una specifica attenzione alla distinzione tra aree centrali e periferiche. L’obiettivo di questo studio è duplice: in primo luogo, verificare se e in che misura anche nel contesto fiorentino sussistono delle differenze significative in termini di risultati elettorali tra centro e periferia; secondariamente, analizzare il rapporto tra disagio socio-economico, area territoriale di residenza e voto ai partiti, attraverso un’analisi di tipo ecologico. In particolare, costruendo specifici indicatori di disagio socio-economico sulla base dei dati del censimento del 2011, vedremo come le diverse aree sub-comunali (centrali e periferiche) sono connotate socialmente e come questa connotazione sia correlata con: a) tasso di partecipazione, b) voto Lega, c) voto M5S; d) voto centro-sinistra, e) voto centro-destra nelle elezioni politiche del 2008, 2013 e 2018, e nelle elezioni europee del 2009 e 2014.

Round table

Chairs: Elisa Volpi