IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/italej/v10y2024i1d10.1007_s40797-022-00218-y.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inequality and Elections in Italy, 1994–2018

Author

Listed:
  • Francesco Bloise

    (Sapienza University of Rome)

  • Daniela Chironi

    (Scuola Normale Superiore, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences)

  • Donatella Porta

    (Scuola Normale Superiore, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences)

  • Mario Pianta

    (Scuola Normale Superiore, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences)

Abstract

The increase in income and wealth inequality in Italy is well documented, but less attention has been devoted to its association with social and political outcomes. This article investigates the association between inequality and several variables on socio-economic conditions with the evolution of Italian politics over the 1994–2018 period. Voting in Italy’s regions for the centre-left and centre-right coalitions—with a focus on the Lega—is examined in seven rounds of general elections, before and after the 2008 crisis, which emerges as a key divide in these relationships. The centre-left vote is higher in the regions with an increase in mean wealth and employment rates and shows a reversal after 2008 in the support of part time employees. The centre-right vote is associated with impoverished middle classes and an increase in disparities of Southern regions. The associations shown by Lega voting are distinct from those of other centre-right forces. While political and cultural factors are important to understand political changes, our findings show that a more unequal and distressed society is clearly associated with changes in electoral behaviour.

Suggested Citation

  • Francesco Bloise & Daniela Chironi & Donatella Porta & Mario Pianta, 2024. "Inequality and Elections in Italy, 1994–2018," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 10(1), pages 1-23, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:italej:v:10:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1007_s40797-022-00218-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s40797-022-00218-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40797-022-00218-y
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s40797-022-00218-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eugenio Levi & Fabrizio Patriarca, 2020. "An exploratory study of populism: the municipality-level predictors of electoral outcomes in Italy," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 37(3), pages 833-875, October.
    2. Yann Algan & Sergei Guriev & Elias Papaioannou & Evgenia Passari, 2017. "The European Trust Crisis and the Rise of Populism," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 48(2 (Fall)), pages 309-400.
    3. Enrico Cantoni & Vincent Pons, 2021. "Do interactions with candidates increase voter support and participation? Experimental evidence from Italy," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 379-402, July.
    4. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/2i9jel1usb85nr2j7tejsaldfu is not listed on IDEAS
    5. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/2i9jel1usb85nr2j7tejsaldfu is not listed on IDEAS
    6. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/1divsbu8t888r9vqektjbmlqoa is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Hui Zou & Trevor Hastie, 2005. "Addendum: Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 67(5), pages 768-768, November.
    8. Hui Zou & Trevor Hastie, 2005. "Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 67(2), pages 301-320, April.
    9. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/1divsbu8t888r9vqektjbmlqoa is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tutz, Gerhard & Pößnecker, Wolfgang & Uhlmann, Lorenz, 2015. "Variable selection in general multinomial logit models," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 207-222.
    2. Oxana Babecka Kucharcukova & Jan Bruha, 2016. "Nowcasting the Czech Trade Balance," Working Papers 2016/11, Czech National Bank, Research and Statistics Department.
    3. Carstensen, Kai & Heinrich, Markus & Reif, Magnus & Wolters, Maik H., 2020. "Predicting ordinary and severe recessions with a three-state Markov-switching dynamic factor model," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 829-850.
    4. Hou-Tai Chang & Ping-Huai Wang & Wei-Fang Chen & Chen-Ju Lin, 2022. "Risk Assessment of Early Lung Cancer with LDCT and Health Examinations," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(8), pages 1-12, April.
    5. Margherita Giuzio, 2017. "Genetic algorithm versus classical methods in sparse index tracking," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 40(1), pages 243-256, November.
    6. Nicolaj N. Mühlbach, 2020. "Tree-based Synthetic Control Methods: Consequences of moving the US Embassy," CREATES Research Papers 2020-04, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    7. Wang, Qiao & Zhou, Wei & Cheng, Yonggang & Ma, Gang & Chang, Xiaolin & Miao, Yu & Chen, E, 2018. "Regularized moving least-square method and regularized improved interpolating moving least-square method with nonsingular moment matrices," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 325(C), pages 120-145.
    8. Dmitriy Drusvyatskiy & Adrian S. Lewis, 2018. "Error Bounds, Quadratic Growth, and Linear Convergence of Proximal Methods," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 43(3), pages 919-948, August.
    9. Sophie Brana & Dalila Chenaf-Nicet & Delphine Lahet, 2023. "Drivers of cross-border bank claims: The role of foreign-owned banks in emerging countries," Working Papers 2023.06, International Network for Economic Research - INFER.
    10. Mkhadri, Abdallah & Ouhourane, Mohamed, 2013. "An extended variable inclusion and shrinkage algorithm for correlated variables," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 631-644.
    11. Lucian Belascu & Alexandra Horobet & Georgiana Vrinceanu & Consuela Popescu, 2021. "Performance Dissimilarities in European Union Manufacturing: The Effect of Ownership and Technological Intensity," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-19, September.
    12. Candelon, B. & Hurlin, C. & Tokpavi, S., 2012. "Sampling error and double shrinkage estimation of minimum variance portfolios," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 511-527.
    13. Susan Athey & Guido W. Imbens & Stefan Wager, 2018. "Approximate residual balancing: debiased inference of average treatment effects in high dimensions," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 80(4), pages 597-623, September.
    14. Andrea Carriero & Todd E. Clark & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2025. "Specification Choices in Quantile Regression for Empirical Macroeconomics," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(1), pages 57-73, January.
    15. Kim, Hyun Hak & Swanson, Norman R., 2018. "Mining big data using parsimonious factor, machine learning, variable selection and shrinkage methods," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 339-354.
    16. Jaime Oliver Huidobro & Alberto Antonioni & Francesca Lipari & Ignacio Tamarit, 2022. "Social capital as a network measure provides new insights on economic growth," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(8), pages 1-18, August.
    17. Shuichi Kawano, 2014. "Selection of tuning parameters in bridge regression models via Bayesian information criterion," Statistical Papers, Springer, vol. 55(4), pages 1207-1223, November.
    18. Yize Zhao & Matthias Chung & Brent A. Johnson & Carlos S. Moreno & Qi Long, 2016. "Hierarchical Feature Selection Incorporating Known and Novel Biological Information: Identifying Genomic Features Related to Prostate Cancer Recurrence," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 111(516), pages 1427-1439, October.
    19. Chuliá, Helena & Garrón, Ignacio & Uribe, Jorge M., 2024. "Daily growth at risk: Financial or real drivers? The answer is not always the same," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 762-776.
    20. Enrico Bergamini & Georg Zachmann, 2020. "Exploring EU’s Regional Potential in Low-Carbon Technologies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-28, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:italej:v:10:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1007_s40797-022-00218-y. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.