Aldo Di Virgilio, Daniela Giannetti, Andrea Pedrazzani and Luca Pinto Party Competition in The 2013 Italian Elections: Evidence From An Expert Survey

Government and Opposition, Vol. 50, No. 1, pp.
65–89, 2015
doi:10.1017/gov.2014.15
First published online 5 June 2014
Aldo Di Virgilio, Daniela Giannetti,

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Western Australia Library, on 23 Aug 2020 at 11:20:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
Andrea Pedrazzani and Luca Pinto*
Party Competition in the 2013 Italian

Elections: Evidence from an
Expert Survey
In this article, we examine the structure of party competition in Italy in the

February 2013 elections. We rely on the spatial approach to party competition
to analyse the most salient dimensions of the policy space in the Italian context.
Our analysis is based on quantitative estimates from expert survey data. These
data highlight the salience of the socioeconomic policy dimension and capture
the change in the importance of the EU dimension. Finally, this study provides
an analysis of potential coalition governments in the aftermath of the 2013
general election that is grounded on the spatial approach to coalition formation.
THE PURPOSE OF THIS ARTICLE IS TO MAP OUT THE DIMENSIONS OF

party competition and explain coalition government formation
following the general election of February 2013 in Italy. This task is
undertaken by using data from an expert survey fielded by the
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.2014.15
authors which employs a methodology developed by Benoit and

Laver (2006). The analysis highlights the importance of two dimensions:
socioeconomic left–right and pro-/anti-EU policy. In comparison to the
2008 elections, the EU dimension has become much more relevant to
Italian parties’ relative positioning in the policy space. This change may
be explained by the fact that the EU had played an increasingly
* Aldo Di Virgilio is an Associate Professor in Political Science in the Department

of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna. Contact email: aldo.
divirgilio@unibo.it.
Daniela Giannetti is Professor in Political Science in the Department of Political and
Social Sciences at the University of Bologna. Contact email: daniela.giannetti@unibo.it.
Andrea Pedrazzani is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political and Social
Sciences at the University of Bologna. Contact email: andrea.pedrazzani@unibo.it.
Luca Pinto is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Sciences
at the University of Bologna. Contact email: luca.pinto@unibo.it.
© The Authors 2014. Published by Government and Opposition Limited and Cambridge University Press
66 GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION
important role in Italian domestic politics since the start of the 2008
economic crisis. This was most apparent in the appointment of the
technocratic government that ruled Italy throughout 2012 in order to

implement a number of emergency policy measures requested by the EU.
The argument presented in this article is structured as follows. The
first section provides an overview of the context in which national
elections took place. This is followed by a brief summary of the expert
survey methodology and the data used in this article. Thereafter, the
third section presents a two-dimensional account of the Italian party
system, based on the socioeconomic left–right and the EU dimen-
sion, while the fourth section deals with government formation. Con-
cluding remarks follow in the final section.
THE ITALIAN GENERAL ELECTION OF FEBRUARY 2013
The Italian general elections held on 24 and 25 February 2013 took

place after the resignation of Prime Minister Mario Monti, head
of a technocratic government that had ruled Italy for about a year
(16 November 2011 to 21 December 2012). The prime minister had
been appointed by the president of the Italian Republic, Giorgio
Napolitano, at the end of 2011 as head of an emergency cabinet after
the fall of the Berlusconi government, which had been unable to
guarantee the adoption of policy measures requested by the EU. The
government was supported by a ‘strange majority’ that included the
three largest party groups in the parliament: the centre-right People

of Freedom (PDL), the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and the
Centrist Democratic Union (UDC).
Three main features marked Italian political life during this per-
iod (Di Virgilio and Radaelli 2013). First, there was increasing public
discontent with government austerity measures, high unemployment
and lack of economic growth. Second, a stalemate occurred among
political parties who proved unable to implement a long-awaited
reform of political institutions in order to change the electoral rules, cut
the ‘costs of politics’ and fight widespread corruption. Third, following
the local elections held in May 2012, there was the rise of the Five Star
Movement (M5S), led by the former comedian Beppe Grillo.
The ‘strange majority’ collapsed in December 2012 due to internal
conflicts, after the People of Freedom withdrew its support for the
government. Earlier elections were scheduled for February 2013.
PARTY COMPETITION IN THE 2013 ITALIAN ELECTIONS 67
Parties and coalitions that contested this general election included

the following: the left-wing coalition formed by the Democratic Party
and Left, Ecology and Freedom (SEL), led by the Democratic

Party secretary Pierluigi Bersani; the right-wing coalition including
the People of Freedom, the Northern League (LN) and other minor
groups such as the right-wing splinter of the People of Freedom, the
Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia – FDI), led for the sixth time by
Silvio Berlusconi; a coalition including the Centrist Democratic
Union and other centrist forces called Civic Choice (Scelta Civica –
SC), which endorsed the incumbent Prime Minister Monti as a
prospective premier; the Five Star Movement led by Grillo, who,
however, did not run as a candidate; finally, the extreme left joint list
called Civil Revolution (RC).
According to many commentators, the centre left’s campaign was
lacklustre and mostly targeted towards traditional left-wing voters.
The incumbent Prime Minister Monti championed his reform
agenda, strongly associated with a pro-Europe stance, but lost a great
deal of his personal support after entering the political race. The
growth in opposition to increased taxation and reduced spending
during 2012 created an opportunity for party leaders to seek electoral
gains by promoting populist policies such as repealing taxes introduced
by the Monti government or renegotiating Italy’s position in the EU and
eurozone. This populist and Eurosceptic style of campaigning was most
strongly associated with Berlusconi and Grillo.
For the 2013 elections, Italy used the same electoral system as that
employed in the 2006 and 2008 elections – a closed list proportional

representation system with a seat bonus which generates a majority of
54 per cent for the party list or coalition that gains a plurality of
the popular vote. There are important differences in the rules for
electing the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The most important
one concerns the allocation of the seat bonus: it is assigned on a
national basis for electing the Chamber and on a regional basis for
electing the Senate. The consequence of this provision is that there is no
guarantee that a coalition or party list that obtains the largest number of
votes at the national level will gain an absolute majority of the seats in
the Senate.1
Table 1 presents the electoral results of the Chamber and the
Senate. No party achieved more than 26 per cent of valid votes. Nine
party lists obtained seats in the Chamber, 12 in the Senate. The centre-
left coalition gained a plurality of votes in the Chamber (29.6 per cent of
68
Table 1
Results of the Italian General Election of February 2013
Chamber of Deputies Senate
Votes Seats Votes Seats
Parties/coalitions N % N % N % N %
PD 8,932,615 25.5 297 47.1 8,683,690 27.0 109 34.6
SEL 1,106,784 3.2 37 5.9 912,308 2.9 7 2.2
GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION

Other centre-left lists 313,876 0.9 11 1.8 766,712 2.4 8 2.6
Bersani’s coalition 10,353,275 29.6 345 54.8 10,362,710 32.3 124 39.4
PDL 7,478,796 21.3 98 15.6 7,050,937 22.0 99 31.4
LN 1,392,398 4.0 18 2.9 1,331,163 4.1 17 5.4
FDI 668,881 1.9 9 1.4 592,448 1.8 0
DX 219,769 0.6 0 224,309 0.7 0
Other centre-right lists 314,265 0.9 0 439,969 1.4 1 0.3
Berlusconi’s coalition 10,074,109 28.7 125 19.8 9,638,826 30.0 117 37.1
M5S (Grillo) 8,797,902 25.1 109 17.3 7,471,671 23.3 54 17.1
SC 3,004,739 8.6 39 6.2
UDC 609,565 1.7 8 1.3
FLI 159,332 0.5 0
Monti’s coalition 3,773,636 10.8 47 7.5 2,982,534 9.3 19 6.0
RC 781,098 2.2 0 575,391 1.8 0
FFD 391,664 1.1 0 295,898 0.9 0
Others 885,603 2.5 4 0.6 796,951 2.5 1 0.3
Total 35,057,287 100.0 630 100.0 32,123,981 100.0 315 100.0
Note : PD: Democratic Party (Partito Democratico); SEL: Left, Ecology and Freedom (Sinistra, Ecologia e Libertà); PDL: People of Freedom (Popolo
delle Libertà); LN: Northern League (Lega Nord); FDI: Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia); DX: The Right (La Destra); M5S: Five Star Movement
(Movimento 5 Stelle); SC: Civic Choice (Scelta Civica); UDC: Centrist Democratic Union (Unione di Centro); FLI: Future and Freedom for Italy
(Futuro e Libertà per l’Italia); RC: Civil Revolution (Rivoluzione Civile); FFD: Act to Stop the Decline (Fare per Fermare il Declino).
Source : http://elezionistorico.interno.it/index.php?tpel=C&dtel=24/02/2013.
valid votes), and the seat bonus ensured it a majority of seats in the
Chamber (340 seats out of 630). In the Senate, the centre-left coalition
gained 124 seats: a number far short of the majority threshold required
to govern (158). The centre-right coalition gained about 28.7 per cent
of valid votes in the Chamber and 30.0 per cent in the Senate. The
centre-right coalition lost the majority bonus in the Chamber by a tiny
number of votes (279,167) and gained slightly fewer seats (117) than
Bersani’s leftist coalition in the Senate. The coalition led by Monti barely
passed the 10 per cent electoral threshold set for having representation
in the Chamber. In the Senate, the Monti-led coalition won 19 seats,
not enough to be pivotal for any potential centre-left or right-wing
government.
To sum up, the 2013 elections resulted in a tie between the centre
left, which had been predicted to win in the pre-election polls, and the
centre right. The coalition led by Monti dropped to fourth place. The
Five Star Movement was the indisputable winner of this election, gaining
25 per cent of the popular vote, which translated into 109 seats in the
Chamber. In the Senate, the Five Star Movement won 23.3 per cent of
the vote and gained 54 seats because of the disproportionate effects of
the electoral system (Di Virgilio and Giannetti 2014).
In all the Italian general elections between 1996 and 2008, a
majority of votes and seats were won by one of the two main electoral
blocs on the centre left and the centre right. As a result, the seat
bonus went to coalitions that secured about 40 per cent of the
popular vote. The fragmentation of party support in 2013 made it
possible for the left-wing coalition to obtain the seat bonus in the
Chamber with less than 30 per cent of the total vote. This process also
had an important effect on the conversion of votes into seats in the
Senate, making it impossible for any coalition to win a majority of
seats in the Senate, and hence no one was able to form a government.
Voter turnout in 2013 at 75 per cent, although high in compara-
tive terms, represented the lowest level of electoral participation in
an Italian general election since 1946. Most commentators inter-
preted this record low turnout as reflecting popular disaffection with
party politics in Italy. This alienation from contemporary Italian
parties is also strongly evident in the changing levels of support for
parties between the 2008 and 2013 general elections: one rough
index of the level of vote switching between 2008 and 2013 is the fact
that the total number of ‘lost votes’ (11.2 million) constituted a third
of the total electorate in February 2013. This remarkably high level of
volatility stems mainly from the emergence of Grillo’s political

movement, which attracted more than 8.5 million votes in February
2013 to become the second largest party in the Italian Chamber.
DATA AND METHODS
The spatial approach to party competition is grounded on the

assumption that some kind of policy space can be used to describe
the preferences and choices of relevant political actors. Policy
dimensions can be thought of as ways of describing preferences on
clusters of related issues. For instance, if preferences in economic
issues such as taxation, workers’ rights and public spending are highly
correlated, then we may think of these issues as being part of an
underlying economic policy dimension. We use policy dimensions to
describe different positions taken by political actors on them.
For example, a party that favours a strong interventionist role for
the state in the economy would be regarded as holding a left-wing
position on the economic policy dimension; a party which is in favour
of the opposite would be regarded as a right-wing actor on the same
dimension. The implementation of spatial models requires the
measurement of relative distances between party positions and their
movement in the policy space. In the Western political world, a widely
understood ‘left–right’ dimension has been used to measure the
positions and movements of political parties. In addition, two-
dimensional maps of policy space have been constructed for most

European countries (Benoit and Laver 2006).
The spatial approach is valuable because it allows us to represent
party policy positions and citizens’ preferences in a common space,
in order to test hypotheses about party competition and coalition
government formation. In addition, it helps us to understand political
change – for example, by looking at how the policy positions of political
actors change over time and also how new dimensions structuring the
policy space are strategically created by political actors (Riker 1982).
A crucial requirement for testing spatial models is accurate estimates
of the policy positions of political actors. Several techniques – such as
mass surveys, expert surveys and content analysis of party manifestos –
have been used to estimate party positions (Laver 2001). One of the
most important sources of data is the Manifesto Research Group/
Comparative Manifestos Project (MRG/CMP), which has been
coding the electoral platforms of most parties in more than 50 coun-

tries since 1945 (Budge et al. 2001; Klingemann et al. 2006; Volkens
et al. 2013). Here the focus will be on expert survey data. The expert
survey methodology is characterized by the following features: dimen-
sions or scales are predefined and parties are located on these scales by
country experts. Estimates of party positions are the aggregated results
of expert judgements. This has several advantages over other methods,
as it provides more confidence in the accuracy of estimates; it is a
relatively quick and costless way of gathering data and it allows us to
estimate policy positions for single parties even when pre-electoral
coalitions are competing (Benoit and Laver 2006).
This is especially important for the Italian case, because since the
1996 elections the Manifesto Research Group has coded pre-electoral
coalition platforms and not single parties’ documents, which were
unfortunately not available. For comparative purposes, expert survey
data present some limitations. Some are related to comparison across
countries, since the substantive content of dimensions can change from
country to country.2 Moreover, expert surveys are conducted at specific
points in time and do not usually provide time series data (McDonald
and Mendes 2001). In the context of this research, these limitations are
less relevant for two reasons. First, the analysis is limited to a single
country. Second, previous expert survey data for Italian elections have
been gathered since 2001, thereby allowing comparison across time.3
Following the research methodology developed by Benoit and
Laver (2006), a survey among Italian experts was fielded in February
2013. We asked political experts to locate political parties on nine

substantive policy issues, as well on the general left–right dimension
using 20-point scales. The dimensions in the survey measure parties’
support for public spending vis-à-vis lower taxes (‘taxes vs. spend-
ing’), state regulation of the market (‘deregulation’), liberal policies
on matters such as abortion, gay rights and euthanasia (‘social policy’),
integration of immigrants (‘immigration’), environmental protection
(‘environment’) and territorial decentralization of decision-making
(‘decentralization’). The survey also includes three dimensions dealing
with parties’ positions on specific aspects of European politics: the
scope of EU intervention (‘EU authority’), its peacekeeping role
(‘EU security’) and the relative powers of European institutions (‘EU
accountability’).4
Taking, for instance, the ‘taxes vs. spending’ dimension, a party
that is strongly in favour of increasing public spending is located
closer to point 1 on the scale, where the opposite holds for a party
that is in favour of cutting taxes. Country experts were also asked to
locate each party on a scale measuring the importance of the policy

dimension to the party in question. This scale ranges from 1 (not
important at all) to 20 (very important).
The survey was carried out in February 2013, during the parlia-
mentary election campaign. Following Benoit and Laver (2006:
125–6), we included only the politically relevant parties, selecting
only the 12 parties which in February 2013 were expected to win at
least 1 per cent of the vote. Our survey had more respondents
than any other expert survey conducted in Italy: we sent an email
invitation to 379 experts, 95 of whom completed the questionnaire,
with a response rate of about 25 per cent.5 Table 2 presents some
summary data from the survey reporting the mean and the standard
error of the expert placements for each party on each policy
dimension.6 In the next section, we will make use of these data to
map out the relevant dimensions of party competition and the policy
positions of Italian parties in the general election of February 2013.
A TWO-DIMENSIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ITALIAN PARTY SYSTEM, 2013
In the previous section, we presented the data and methods used to

measure the positions of Italian parties on a set of nine distinct policy
dimensions, as well as on a general left–right scale. In this section, we
will analyse this set of substantive issues in order to describe the

spatial structure of party competition in Italy in the 2013 elections. We
will undertake this task in two steps. First, we will use expert judgements
to identify which policy dimensions are more important in Italy. Second,
we will analyse the patterns of correlation between party positions on
different policy dimensions revealed by the experts in order to identify
the underlying axes of political competition in Italy.
The expert survey method is based on a priori decisions that
identify the policy issues of potential importance in a given context.
Parties attach different degrees of importance to each of these issues,
and party salience scores enable us to understand which dimensions
are the most relevant. We measured the overall importance score
for each policy dimension in the 2013 general election by computing,
for each issue, the mean of the party-specific salience scores and
weighting it by the vote share received by each party. The first column of
Table 2
Experts’ Placement of Italian Parties in the February 2013 General Election
Votes/policy dimensions Importance SEL RC PD M5S UDC SC FLI FFD PDL LN FDI DX
PARTY COMPETITION IN THE 2013 ITALIAN ELECTIONS

Vote share 2013 3.2 2.2 25.5 25.1 1.7 8.6 0.5 1.1 21.3 4.0 1.9 0.6
Taxes vs. spending Mean 13.14 4.19 4.47 7.29 9.44 10.24 12.73 10.95 17.44 14.80 13.20 10.95 9.08
Se 0.24 0.29 0.38 0.28 0.43 0.29 0.42 0.36 0.35 0.38 0.38 0.43 0.48
Deregulation Mean 12.37 4.01 3.82 8.30 9.01 10.51 13.67 10.87 18.47 14.40 12.49 9.92 6.41
Se 0.19 0.24 0.24 0.32 0.49 0.33 0.35 0.39 0.25 0.35 0.44 0.49 0.43
Social policy Mean 10.96 3.03 4.43 6.28 7.60 16.82 12.32 10.80 7.12 15.15 16.63 15.94 18.63
Se 0.25 0.43 0.43 0.27 0.41 0.40 0.34 0.46 0.48 0.40 0.38 0.38 0.35
Immigration Mean 11.85 2.56 3.87 4.93 10.48 9.87 9.57 11.00 9.81 15.00 19.13 16.57 18.95
Se 0.23 0.24 0.37 0.24 0.53 0.27 0.24 0.45 0.49 0.35 0.20 0.29 0.23
Environment Mean 11.50 3.28 4.73 7.94 3.39 12.31 13.20 13.21 14.60 16.29 15.09 13.78 13.35
Se 0.46 0.28 0.39 0.27 0.36 0.28 0.32 0.33 0.39 0.30 0.36 0.34 0.45
Decentralization Mean 10.76 11.06 12.53 9.11 8.08 11.66 10.75 12.91 7.89 8.67 2.47 13.80 16.06
Se 0.17 0.44 0.46 0.27 0.49 0.31 0.36 0.41 0.52 0.35 0.36 0.48 0.47
EU authority Mean 13.78 10.13 12.15 5.64 17.39 6.32 3.56 9.29 8.74 14.36 18.11 14.86 18.04
Se 0.14 0.43 0.50 0.32 0.34 0.34 0.35 0.47 0.57 0.36 0.28 0.37 0.28
EU security Mean 10.78 16.06 16.73 6.56 17.60 6.13 5.51 6.34 8.30 7.65 15.10 7.89 10.57
Se 0.12 0.48 0.44 0.37 0.33 0.34 0.41 0.42 0.53 0.36 0.42 0.52 0.71
EU accountability Mean 11.30 6.11 7.49 6.12 11.23 8.23 7.61 11.06 9.93 13.99 15.34 14.26 16.34
Se 0.15 0.45 0.57 0.40 0.81 0.41 0.60 0.49 0.61 0.45 0.63 0.53 0.50
Left–right Mean – 2.97 3.42 6.17 8.58 11.24 11.90 13.41 14.06 15.38 16.98 17.03 19.20
Se – 0.16 0.35 0.18 0.43 0.15 0.22 0.24 0.28 0.20 0.22 0.20 0.11
Sympathy Mean – 8.78 12.14 5.26 13.20 14.39 10.02 14.52 10.37 17.55 18.41 17.78 19.23
Se – 0.69 0.69 0.46 0.54 0.40 0.55 0.45 0.64 0.40 0.27 0.31 0.21
73
Table 2 reports the overall importance score of each dimension, as well

as the associated standard error.
As Table 2 shows, the ‘EU authority’ dimension, which measures

parties’ propensity to increase/reduce the set of areas subject to
European intervention, was judged by our sample of experts to be the
most important dimension in Italian politics during the 2013 general
election. The fact that ‘EU authority’ is the top-rated policy issue
indicates the importance attached by Italian parties to EU-related
themes during the campaign. The policies adopted by the Monti
government during 2012 created increasing tensions both between
and within parties because of the austerity measures demanded by
the EU. Moreover, the involvement of European institutions in
Italian domestic affairs was one of the dominant themes of the 2013
election campaign. Some parties declared themselves ready, in the
event of victory in the February elections, to renegotiate Italy’s
position in the EU and eurozone and even to propose a referendum
for abandoning the euro. Remarkably, the ‘EU authority’ dimension
in 2013 received on average higher importance scores than the
dimensions dealing with economic policy (‘taxes vs. spending’ and
‘deregulation’), which are the next most important policy dimen-
sions. This indicates a strong change in the relative weight given by
Italian parties to several themes in the election campaign. Indeed,
past waves of expert surveys fielded in Western European countries
revealed that economic issues were most often the top-rated dimensions
(Benoit and Laver 2006).
The fourth most salient issue in the 2013 Italian elections was
‘immigration’, while ‘EU security’ and ‘decentralization’ are ranked
last in overall importance.7 The relatively low salience of the EU’s
peacekeeping role, which ranks just ahead of decentralization, is
surprising. Despite the recent political crises in a number of non-
democratic regimes in North Africa and the Middle East, with the
potential military involvement of European countries, the issue of
peacekeeping operations remained one of the least salient electoral
campaign themes in Italy. As far as ‘decentralization’ is concerned,
the very low importance accorded by Italian experts to this issue
probably reflects the marginal role played in the 2013 campaign by
the Northern League: a territorial party that has traditionally been
the main promoter of decentralization in decision-making.
A quick glance at the positions of the four largest Italian parties
along some salient issue dimensions suggests that a single axis or
policy dimension is not enough to characterize adequately the policy

space in the 2013 general election. As Table 2 shows, along the
‘taxes/spending’ and the ‘deregulation’ issues Bersani’s Democratic

Party and Grillo’s Five Star Movement are on the left and very close to
each other. On the same dimensions, Civic Choice and the People of
Freedom are both on the right and have similar positions. This picture
changes if we consider the ‘EU authority’ issue. On this dimension,
the Democratic Party is quite far from the Five Star Movement, and the
People of Freedom is well away from Civic Choice. In both cases, the
distance is as much as 11 points. In particular, the Democratic Party is
on the pro-integration side and very close to Monti’s Civic Choice, the
party that is most in favour of increasing European intervention in
domestic Italian politics. In turn, the People of Freedom is placed just
three points away from the Five Star Movement, which is among one of
the most anti-EU parties. In other words, these three policy dimensions,
which prove to be the most important for Italian parties in 2013, are not
related to the same underlying axis of competition. Although two of
them deal with economic policy and are clearly correlated, they do not
seem to be linked to the ‘EU authority’ issue, and this implies a need for
a multidimensional description of the Italian policy space.
We identify and measure the key axes of political competition in
Italy by using principal components factor analysis, a statistical ‘data
reduction’ technique that allows us to describe the variability among
a large set of observed variables in terms of a few unobserved
underlying or latent factors.8 Each of the extracted factors can then
be substantively interpreted by looking at those original variables that

correlate (or ‘load’) onto each factor estimated. If some of our nine
policy dimensions load highly on a single factor, we can say that the
factor summarizes well parties’ placements on those dimensions, and
hence we can ‘replace’ that set of policy dimensions with a more
fundamental or latent axis of political competition.
The results of the factor analysis applied to the experts’ placements of
Italian parties indicate that the full set of the nine policy dimensions
identified for Italy can be reduced to two primary axes of competition. As
the top panel of Table 3 shows, for only two latent factors the eigenvalue
is greater than 1, and this implies that the competition among Italian
parties in the 2013 elections can be described in a two-dimensional
political space.9 From the last column of the top panel, we see that these
two factors account for about 66 per cent of the total variance in Italian
party positions on all the nine original policy dimensions.
Table 3
Dimensional Analysis of the 2013 Italian Policy Space
Factor Eigenvalue Proportion Cumulative

Factor 1 3.84 0.43 0.43
Factor 2 2.09 0.23 0.66
Factor 3 0.97 0.11 0.77
Factor 4 0.60 0.07 0.83
Factor 5 0.47 0.05 0.88
Factor 6 0.33 0.04 0.92
Factor 7 0.27 0.03 0.95
Factor 8 0.23 0.03 0.98
Factor 9 0.22 0.02 1.00
Varimax rotated factor loadings
Factor 1 Factor 2
Dimension Socioeconomic Pro-/anti-EU
Taxes vs. spending 0.83 0.05
Social policy 0.82 0.13
Deregulation 0.80 − 0.03
Environment 0.81 − 0.29
Decentralization − 0.08 − 0.38
Immigration 0.76 0.47
EU authority 0.22 0.88
EU accountability 0.53 0.54
EU security − 0.31 0.84
Note : Principal component factor analysis weighted by the vote share received
by each party, N = 684; parameters = 17, Variable loadings higher than 0.5
are in bold, except when the variable has a higher loading on another factor.
The first and most important factor emerging from the analysis
explains 43 per cent of the variance observed across the nine policy
issues and can be interpreted as reflecting the socioeconomic left–
right dimension. As reported in the bottom panel of Table 3, this
factor is associated with a wide range of policy issues: two dimensions
dealing with economic policy (‘taxes/spending’ and ‘deregulation’),
two dimensions tapping social liberalism vs. conservatism (‘social
policy’ and ‘immigration’), as well as environmental policy. All of
these issues exhibit high loadings on factor 1.
Therefore, we may conclude that in Italy parties on the left prefer
public spending rather than tax reduction, are in favour of state
intervention in the economy, prioritize environmental protection,
are liberal on moral issues and promote the integration of
immigrants. In contrast, parties on the right tend to have anti-taxation

positions, oppose state regulation, support economic growth even at the
cost of damaging the environment, are conservative on moral issues and

are against immigration.
The second factor identified in the factor analysis is associated
with the three dimensions related to European politics, and accounts
for approximately 23 per cent of the total variance observed. This
factor can thus be easily interpreted as capturing the attitude of
Italian parties towards the EU and can be labelled ‘pro-/anti-EU’
policy. Pro-EU parties are in favour of greater EU authority over
domestic politics and greater involvement of Italy in European
military security and would like to strengthen the European Parliament
vis-à-vis national governments. On the other hand, anti-EU parties
oppose further European integration and involvement in EU security,
and would give more powers to national governments rather than to a
supra-national institution like the European Parliament.
The emergence of a distinct pro-/anti-EU axis of political com-
petition represents a major change from the past. None of the expert
surveys estimates revealed a distinct pro-/anti-EU axis in the recent
Italian general elections (2001, 2006 and 2008). In all previous
elections, ‘EU authority’ and ‘EU accountability’ were highly corre-
lated with other policy dimensions and were incorporated into the
socioeconomic left–right axis, which constituted the first factor.
In 2001 and 2006 the ‘EU security’ issue represented a third factor
following left–right and decentralization/deregulation. Later, in
2008, ‘EU security’ was associated with decentralization/deregulation

and formed part of the second most important factor.10 In 2013,
attitudes towards the EU became a primary political axis of compe-
tition on their own, orthogonal to socioeconomic policy.
Such a change is not so surprising if we consider the crisis in the
eurozone (starting in 2008) and its dramatic consequences on Italian
economy and politics. Previous research, in fact, has underlined
the importance of economic motivations – together with national
and local identities – in explaining most of the variation in public
attitudes towards Europe (Gabel 1998; Hooghe and Marks 2005).
This instrumental relationship has proved to be particularly strong in
Italy, where the idea of Europe seems to be mainly associated with
material benefits (Bellucci et al. 2012). In this sense, the euro crisis
has weakened popular enthusiasm for the EU in Italy.11 Undoubtedly,
this change in public opinion has had consequences on party
Figure 1
A Two-Dimensional Map of the Italian Policy Space in February 2013
LN
M5S
1
DX
Pro-/anti-EU
RC
SEL FDI PDL
0
FLI FFD
PD UDC
-1
SC
-2
-2 -1 0 1 2
Socioeconomic left-right
Note : The size of the markers varies according to party vote share. Horizontal
and vertical lines represent 95 per cent confidence intervals.
competition. In 2013, we find strong anti-EU attitudes on both the

centre left (Five Star Movement) and on the centre right (People of
Freedom) of the Italian party system, subverting the well-known
‘inverted U-curve’: traditionally opposition to the EU was confined to
the extreme left and right (Hooghe et al. 2002).
Having identified the underlying structure of the policy space in

the 2013 Italian election, we estimated parties’ positions on the two
main dimensions of competition. Figure 1 presents a two-dimensional
map of this policy space. The horizontal axis corresponds to socio-
economic left–right policy (factor 1), while the vertical axis represents
pro-/anti-EU policy (factor 2). We estimated each party’s position, as
shown in Figure 1, using mean regression scores from factor analysis.
Horizontal and vertical bars represent the 95 per cent confidence
intervals for the mean estimates, while the size of each bubble reflects
each party’s vote share.
Figure 1 shows that the two largest parties, the Democratic Party
and Five Star Movement, are very close on the socioeconomic left–
right: the overlapping confidence intervals reveal they have an
indistinguishable common left–right position. In contrast, both par-
ties are far apart on the pro-/anti-EU axis. The third largest party, the
People of Freedom, has an intermediate position on EU policy, but is

far to the right on socioeconomic issues. Monti’s Civic Choice party is
on the right on the socioeconomic axis and clearly pro-EU on the

second dimension, whereas Left, Ecology and Freedom and the
Civil Revolution are located on the extreme left and are somewhat
opposed to European integration. The remaining small parties are
on the right in socioeconomic terms, but are divided in their orien-
tation towards the EU.
A SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF POTENTIAL COALITION GOVERNMENTS

AFTER THE 2013 GENERAL ELECTION
Estimating parties’ policy positions is an important methodological

task, central to the spatial analysis of the process of coalition gov-
ernment formation. Earlier formal models of coalition formation
assume that political parties and their leaders are rational actors that
try to maximize their share of office rewards. Starting from these
assumptions, office-seeking models elaborate a series of propositions
about coalition formation in multiparty systems which are essentially
based on the relative size (seats) of those parties involved in coalition
bargaining (von Neumann and Morgenstern 1944; Riker 1962;
Leiserson 1966).
A second generation of models assumes that government coalitions
will be formed between actors with similar ideological backgrounds (de
Swaan 1973). When parties compete on a single ideological dimension,

policy-based models predict that the party controlling the median legis-
lator will have a bargaining advantage in government negotiations, since
there are no other proposals in the policy space that can defeat the
median legislator’s position through a majority vote. However, empirical
analysis of multiparty systems suggests that coalition formation may be
better analysed using a two-dimensional rather than a uni-dimensional
account of the policy space (Laver and Schofield 1990).
Within the two-dimensional approach, the political heart model
developed by Schofield (1993, 1995) takes into account both party
size (seats) and policy position. The model gives specific predictions
about coalition formation based on the notion of the ‘political heart’.
The political heart is the union of the ‘core’ and the ‘cycle-set’.
A ‘core party’ is one that occupies a strategic position in the policy
space that cannot be defeated in a majority vote. In a two-dimensional
Figure 2
The Political Heart Model: Cycle-set and Core Party
Source : Curini and Pinto (2013).
space a core party will exist only when all the median lines intersect at
one party’s ideal point. In general, only the largest party in a parliament
can be a core party. When the median lines do not intersect at one point
in the policy space the core is said to be empty. In this situation, the
process of coalition formation will be characterized by instability. How-
ever, cycles do not span the entire political space, but are confined to the
area enclosed by the intersection of the median lines which is known as
the ‘cycle-set’. Assuming that no policy proposals will be made that make
all members of a majority coalition worse off, the cycle-set contains all the
points in the policy space that are Pareto optimal for every possible
majority coalition.
For clarification, consider Figure 2, which describes parties’ size
and policy positions in two hypothetical four-party systems. The lines
represented in the figure are known as median lines. Each line has
the property that ‘either on or to one side of it can be found parties
that between them compose a legislative majority’ (Laver and Shepsle
1996: 115). The line A–C in the left panel, for example, defines a
majority holding 55 seats (A + C) on or above the line, while coali-
tions of parties holding 80 (A + B + D) or 65 (C + B + D) lie on or
below the line. The same holds for all the other median lines.
As noted earlier, when the core is empty – as shown in the left
panel of Figure 2 – the political heart model predicts that instability
will be confined to an area defined as the cycle-set, here delimited by

parties A, B and C. The cycle-set can be interpreted as ‘the centre of
gravity’ of a legislature: any point outside this area is pulled towards it

by majority voting. For example, if a policy were proposed by D, the
majority on or to the left of the C–B median line would prefer a point
in the area delimited by A, B and C. It follows that a government
should be formed by a combination of these parties, which can be
considered dominant players, in contrast to those outside the cycle-
set (Debus 2008; Schofield 1995, 1996).
Conversely, in the right panel of Figure 2 we see that party A has
moved to the right. Now all the median lines intersect at this party
ideal point, which constitutes a core. B, C and D – the only majority
that excludes A – cannot agree on any single policy without including
A. In such a situation, negotiations among all parties will end either
with a single-party cabinet formed by the core party, or with a coa-
lition government that includes the core party where the latter’s ideal
point is the coalition policy programme (Laver and Schofield 1990;
Schofield 1995).
The political heart model is a powerful analytical tool in the study
of coalition politics.12 Here we use the political heart model in order
to shed light on the government-formation process that followed the
Italian general elections of February 2013. Panel A of Figure 3 pre-
sents the spatial map of parties’ policy positions. Party positions are
represented as points in this space, while the seats each party holds in
the Senate are reported in parentheses.13 We focus on the Senate
because no coalition had the majority of seats required to form a

government (see above).
As we can see, the core is empty, since the median lines do not
intersect at a single party ideal point. However, the model allows us to
predict that the solution for the government-formation game will be
found in one of the combinations of parties delimiting the cycle-set.
The Democratic Party, the People of Freedom and the Five Star
Movement can be considered dominant players in government
negotiations, while parties outside the region delimited by the med-
ian lines (Civic Choice, the Northern League and Left, Ecology and
Freedom) are peripheral to the coalition-formation game. There-
fore, the Italian government after the general elections of February
2013 should be formed by one of the following party combinations:
(1) the Democratic Party and the Five Star Movement, possibly with
the support of Left, Ecology and Freedom; (2) the Democratic Party
82
Figure 3
GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION
The Political Heart in the Italian Senate, February 2013
and People of Freedom, possibly with the inclusion of Civic Choice;

or (3) People of Freedom and the Five Star Movement, with the
support of the Northern League. Hence, this theoretical account

depicts three scenarios.14
The first one, which we can refer to as the ‘government of
change’, was the path taken by the secretary of the Democratic Party,
Bersani, appointed as a formateur by the president of the Republic,
Napolitano, a few days after the elections. Bersani’s project to build a
government majority based on eight programmatic points promoting
big change in Italian social and public life failed because the Five
Star Movement (with a different vision of change) refused to parti-
cipate in any government. The second scenario, which commentators
named ‘governissimo’, was the revival of the majority that supported
Monti’s technocratic government. The third option was a coalition
composed of People of Freedom and the Five Star Movement, with
support from the Northern League. This unprecedented combina-
tion includes the parties that most contested the authority of the EU.
Hence, we can refer to this scenario as the ‘government of the
Eurosceptics’.
Predictions from the political heart model are based exclusively
on parties’ size and policy positions. However, an analysis of coali-
tion politics may also benefit from taking into account important
behavioural and institutional constraints (Debus 2008, 2009).
Among the behavioural constraints taken into account here are pre-
electoral commitments to govern together and anti-pact rules such
as ‘party combinations that are rejected a priori by at least one party

that participates in the potential coalition’ (Debus 2009: 47). Due to
the importance given to credibility, these statements, which are
usually public, constitute a powerful constraint on coalition bar-
gaining (Golder 2006; Martin and Stevenson 2001; Strøm et al.
1994). These behavioural constraints to coalition formation allow us
to rule out the first and third scenarios predicted by the political
heart model.
Turning now to institutional constraints, Italy’s symmetric bica-
meralism requires an investiture vote in both chambers. In 2013 all
coalitions had to necessarily include the Democratic Party, which was
the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies, holding about 47 per
cent of the seats. Hence, the ‘government of the Eurosceptics’ did
not survive as a feasible option. The same fate befell the ‘government
of change’. A coalition between the Democratic Party and the
Five Star Movement was not viable because of Grillo’s refusal to take
part in any coalition that included parties linked to ‘old politics’. This
statement, made public before the elections, may be interpreted as

an anti-pact directed against all parties in the parliament. Once the
Five Star Movement was excluded from any potential coalition, the
only feasible option suggested by the political heart model remains
the ‘governissimo’ between the Democratic Party and the People of
Freedom as Panel B of Figure 3 shows. Excluding the Five Star
Movement from the set of potential negotiators results in only one
median line connecting the ideal points of the other two largest
parties in parliament. This is the coalition government that actually
formed in Italy on 30 April 2013.
Party leaders reached an agreement over government formation
after 61 days. The Democratic Party and the People of Freedom,
which had represented the centre left and the centre right in Italy
in the past two decades, relabelling themselves several times, were
traditional enemies. This might explain why the Democratic Party
leader Bersani, appointed as a formateur, spent several days exploring
the possibility either of obtaining the support of the Five Star
Movement or of forming a government without a majority of seats in
the Senate.
It should be noted that the process of government formation was
compounded by the election of the president of the Republic,
scheduled for 15 March. The process of electing the head of state
resulted for the first time in the reappointment for a seven-year
second term of incumbent President Napolitano, after other candi-

dates who had been proposed jointly or unilaterally by parties failed
to receive enough votes in parliament. After re-election, Napolitano
nominated Enrico Letta, vice secretary of the Democratic Party, as a
formateur. Letta worked to build an alliance between the Democratic
Party and the People of Freedom and was able to form a government
including ministers from the Democratic Party, the People of Freedom,
Civic Choice, plus several independents.
The government obtained the full support of Monti’s Civic Choice
party and for this reason can be categorized as a surplus or oversized
coalition. The inclusion of this party, not strictly predicted by the
political heart model, might be understood in terms of two intraparty
political considerations (Giannetti and Benoit 2009). First, the newborn
Civic Choice formed by Monti just two months before the elections
included, among others, former members of both the Democratic Party
and the People of Freedom. Second, the Democratic Party was deeply
divided over its coalitional strategies in the aftermath of the 2013 elec-
tion.15 This implies that full parliamentary support for government

legislative provisions was not guaranteed from the start, suggesting
that any prospective prime minister might have to rely on a wider
parliamentary majority. The government passed the investiture vote
with 453 for, 153 against and seven abstentions in the Chamber. In
the Senate the government passed the investiture vote with 233 for,
59 against and 18 abstentions. The Democratic Party, the People of
Freedom and Civic Choice voted in favour and the Five Star Move-
ment and Left, Ecology and Freedom parties voted against. The
Northern League abstained in both the Chamber and in the Senate.
To summarize, the theoretical and empirical arguments above
allowed us to identify the potential coalition governments in the
aftermath of the 2013 general election. According to the political
heart model, three coalition governments were predicted. Institu-
tional and behavioural constraints contributed towards explaining
why the coalition government including the two largest parties on the
left and on the right was the one that actually formed.
CONCLUSION
An analysis of party competition requires reliable estimates of the

policy positions of key political actors. In this article we presented
original data from an expert survey conducted by the authors

immediately before the Italian 2013 election. Our survey provides
updated information on Italian parties’ policy positions in a standard
format which can be easily used for systematic intra- and cross-
country comparison.
By using these data, we were able to describe the most important
dimensions that structured party competition in 2013 and to locate
political parties in a two-dimensional political space, where the main
axes are the pro-/anti-Europe and the socioeconomic left–right
dimensions. As our analysis shows, the dominance of a pro-/anti-EU
dimension in 2013 represents a major change from the past.
Moreover, our work based on expert survey data provided a the-
oretically grounded account of the process of government formation
in the aftermath of the 2013 elections. Most commentators portrayed
the coalition between the centre left and the centre right as a
‘marriage of necessity’ imposed by the president of the Republic in

order to deal with a deep institutional and economic crisis. In contrast,
our analysis shows that the outcome of the government-formation

process can be explained in terms of the structure of coalition bar-
gaining and the impact of behavioural and institutional constraints.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank Kenneth Benoit and Michael Laver for their help in conducting the survey.
In addition, we thank the Italian Political Science Association (SISP) and its members
for their support. We also gratefully acknowledge the comments of three anonymous
referees. Data are available from the authors upon request.
NOTES
1
Other differences are related to the different thresholds to be passed in order
obtain seats, i.e. 4 per cent and 10 per cent for parties and coalitions, respectively, in
the Chamber, and 8 per cent and 20 per cent for parties and coalitions, respectively,
in the Senate.
2
As Benoit and Laver (2006: ch. 6) show, the relative contribution of the different
policy issues to party placements on the left–right dimension varies considerably
across countries.
3
This comparison is not developed in this article. See, however, the third section.
For expert survey data about Italy, see Benoit and Laver (2006) and Curini and
Iacus (2008).
4
We also asked experts to place parties on a 20-point ‘sympathy’ scale indicating the
respondent’s closeness to each party. We used the same set of policy scales that
Benoit and Laver (2006: 83–7) chose on the basis of Italian experts’ judgement,
which have been employed in all subsequent expert surveys fielded in Italy. See the
online Appendix (http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/gov.2014.15) for the precise wording
of the questions and the corresponding scales.
5
Experts were members of the Italian Political Science Association (SISP).
6
Greater errors indicate higher uncertainty in expert judgements in positioning the
party. According to Mair (2001), expert judgements reflect a mix of several
different sources, such as parties’ past behaviour, ideology, electoral manifestos and
perceptions of what are the most salient dimensions for a given party. As a
consequence, higher uncertainty should be associated with small or newborn
parties, such as the Five Star Movement, whose left–right placement divides scholars
and commentators (Pedrazzani and Pinto 2013). In our analysis the confidence
intervals (that is, the range of values that are likely to include the true population
parameter) are very narrow. For example, the Five Star Movement has the highest
standard error on the general left–right dimension (0.43, see Table 2). This
translates to a 95 per cent confidence interval of 7.74–9.42 around the mean of 8.58.
These values do not overlap with the intervals associated with the Democratic Party
and the People of Freedom.
7
‘EU authority’, ‘taxes/spending’, ‘deregulation’ and ‘immigration’ are judged as
more important than the overall mean (11.83) calculated across all nine dimensions
identified in Italy.
8
Factor analysis has been applied to extract primary dimensions of party competition
both from the policy issues identified by expert surveys (Benoit and Laver 2006;
Laver and Hunt 1992) and from the coding categories of party manifestos (Budge
et al. 1987; Gabel and Huber 2000). The method we use for factor extraction is
principal component analysis. According to this method, the input variables are
modelled as linear combinations of a smaller set of factors in order to account for
the maximum possible variance in the data. To obtain factors that are more easily
interpretable, we used varimax rotation, which is the most common rotation option
employed in previous research.
9
In the factor analysis technique, only factors with eigenvalues greater than unity are
conventionally retained, since only these factors contain more information than a
single one of the input variables.
10
Factor analysis identifies a three-dimensional political space for the 2001 and 2006
elections, and a two-dimensional political space for the 2008 election. Results are
available upon request.
11
The level of trust in the EU among Italian citizens has progressively declined since
the economic crisis. While public opinion was largely positive until 2009, at the end
of 2012 the overall level of trust was below the EU average (31 per cent vs. 33 per
cent) (see Dehousse 2013).
12
For applications of the model to the Italian case, see Giannetti and Sened (2004),
Curini (2011) and Curini and Pinto (2013).
13
The policy positions reported in Figure 3 refer to parties that passed the electoral
threshold for electing senators. Civic Choice, the Centrist Democratic Union and
Future and Freedom for Italy presented a joint list in the Senate. Consequently, they
are represented by just one ideal point, which is the weighted mean (by their vote
share) of their original policy preferences. Left, Ecology and Freedom is currently a
member of the ‘mixed group’ in the Senate. We represented it as a single group and
redistributed the remaining four senators between the other parties according to
the list on which they were elected. We did the same for the other two small groups.
The 10 senators from ‘great autonomies and liberties’ were divided between the
People of Freedom and the Northern League, while the 10 members of the group
‘for the autonomies’ were assigned mainly to the Democratic Party. Finally, we did
not consider life-tenured senators when computing seats.
14
Predictions derived from the model hold, even though we allow parties’ ideal points
to move in the area defined by the confidence intervals reported in Figure 1.
Obviously, changes in party locations modify the size of the cycle-set, but not the
identity of dominant players.
15
The divisions within the Democratic Party were also revealed in the vote for the
president of the Republic, whereas 101 MPs did not vote for the candidate proposed
by party leader Bersani.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
To view supplementary material for this article, please visit http://

dx.doi.org/10.1017/gov.2014.15.
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Government and Opposition, Vol. 50, No. 1, pp.

Aldo Di Virgilio, Daniela Giannetti,

Andrea Pedrazzani and Luca Pinto*

Party Competition in the 2013 Italian

In this article, we examine the structure of party competition in Italy in the

THE PURPOSE OF THIS ARTICLE IS TO MAP OUT THE DIMENSIONS OF

authors which employs a methodology developed by Benoit and

* Aldo Di Virgilio is an Associate Professor in Political Science in the Department

technocratic government that ruled Italy throughout 2012 in order to

THE ITALIAN GENERAL ELECTION OF FEBRUARY 2013

The Italian general elections held on 24 and 25 February 2013 took

three largest party groups in the parliament: the centre-right People

Parties and coalitions that contested this general election included

and Left, Ecology and Freedom (SEL), led by the Democratic

employed in the 2006 and 2008 elections – a closed list proportional

Votes Seats Votes Seats

GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION

volatility stems mainly from the emergence of Grillo’s political

2013 to become the second largest party in the Italian Chamber.

DATA AND METHODS

The spatial approach to party competition is grounded on the

dimensional maps of policy space have been constructed for most

coding the electoral platforms of most parties in more than 50 coun-

2013. We asked political experts to locate political parties on nine

locate each party on a scale measuring the importance of the policy

A TWO-DIMENSIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ITALIAN PARTY SYSTEM, 2013

In the previous section, we presented the data and methods used to

will analyse this set of substantive issues in order to describe the

PARTY COMPETITION IN THE 2013 ITALIAN ELECTIONS

Table 2 reports the overall importance score of each dimension, as well

As Table 2 shows, the ‘EU authority’ dimension, which measures

policy dimension is not enough to characterize adequately the policy

‘taxes/spending’ and the ‘deregulation’ issues Bersani’s Democratic

be substantively interpreted by looking at those original variables that

Factor Eigenvalue Proportion Cumulative

immigrants. In contrast, parties on the right tend to have anti-taxation

cost of damaging the environment, are conservative on moral issues and

2008, ‘EU security’ was associated with decentralization/deregulation

competition. In 2013, we ﬁnd strong anti-EU attitudes on both the

Having identiﬁed the underlying structure of the policy space in

People of Freedom, has an intermediate position on EU policy, but is

on the right on the socioeconomic axis and clearly pro-EU on the

A SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF POTENTIAL COALITION GOVERNMENTS

Estimating parties’ policy positions is an important methodological

Swaan 1973). When parties compete on a single ideological dimension,

Source : Curini and Pinto (2013).

will be conﬁned to an area deﬁned as the cycle-set, here delimited by

gravity’ of a legislature: any point outside this area is pulled towards it

because no coalition had the majority of seats required to form a

The Political Heart in the Italian Senate, February 2013

and People of Freedom, possibly with the inclusion of Civic Choice;

support of the Northern League. Hence, this theoretical account

as ‘party combinations that are rejected a priori by at least one party

statement, made public before the elections, may be interpreted as

second term of incumbent President Napolitano, after other candi-

tion.15 This implies that full parliamentary support for government

An analysis of party competition requires reliable estimates of the

original data from an expert survey conducted by the authors

‘marriage of necessity’ imposed by the president of the Republic in

our analysis shows that the outcome of the government-formation

To view supplementary material for this article, please visit http://

Bellucci, P., Sanders, D. and Serricchio, F. (2012), ‘Explaining European Identity’, in

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