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To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2451.2010.01717.x Byline: Leonardo Morlino (1) Abstract: This article discusses the connections between legitimacy and the quality of democracy. The multiple dimensions of the quality of democracy are presented and it is shown that legitimacy is at the core of the definition of responsiveness. Citizens' reactions to government policies are analysed. Also stressed are the limits and constraints of considering responsiveness only in relationship to citizens' attitudes towards government and institutions. Other dimensions are taken into account, particularly electoral accountability. Author Affiliation: (1)Istituto di Scienze Umane, Florence

Analyses of consolidation and internal crisis need to complement each other to better explain the change within a democracy. This article integrates, revises, and develops the results of the existing literature starting from the empirical results of a systematic, comparative empirical research on the Southern European countries. The main theoretical conclusion concerns the salience of the process of democratic anchoring, when consolidation is considered, and de-anchoring with reference to crisis. The different sections of the article analyze the notions of anchors, anchoring, and de-anchoring; the connections with legitimation, democratic consolidation, and crisis: the patterns of consolidation and crisis building in the four Southern European cases: and the explanations and the theoretical background of anchoring and de-anchoring. The concluding remarks illustrate the possible research developments with reference to other areas and the salience of anchoring for every democracy. Keywords: consolidation; crisis; change; anchoring: legitimacy

The basic ideas are also very clear, which can be summarized as follows: it is necessary to re-establish a stable liberal order; this order can only be founded on a composition between democracy and the market that, internally, strengthens an inclusive welfare and, at the international level, is based on cooperation of the existing democracies, within the different international institutions and directly among themselves; in this refoundation of the liberal order, the European Union will have to play a fundamental role. Almost all, however, have moved in the wake of traditional international relations, which made a clear distinction between international and domestic politics, developing on this distinction a disciplinary identity of which one was proud. I would like to add that I share the author's analysis and, like him, I believe that especially in these years a path of international cooperation, the considerable strengthening of the European Union and the definitive transformation of our democracies into inclusive and protective regimes are the basic lines that will allow us to go through years that appear to be as difficult as those we have just experienced with the pandemic. [Extracted from the article]

South European countries were severely hit by the eurozone crisis. Adopting the theoretical framework of prospect theory, this article conducts an empirical analysis of the interpretation of the situation by the South European political leaders in terms of gains and losses. After discussing the stances of South European countries vis-à-vis a number of contested issues which emerged during the 2010–2013 negotiations, the article goes on to provide a comparative account of the determinants of national preference formation with respect to the eurozone crisis reforms in Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain, paying special attention to the relationship between governments and parliaments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts from the application to Latin America of an analytical tool that has been developed to evaluate the quality of democracies and is based on the three notions of quality, in terms procedures (rule of law, electoral accountability, inter-institutional accountability, participation and political competition), content (freedom and socio-economic equality), and result (responsiveness). It takes in full consideration the previous research of the author on the area, and underlines both the major shortcomings that the empirical work has brought out and the most appropriate policies that should be implemented in order to improve the democratic quality of those countries. Obviously, the absence, partial or complete, of the actual conditions to put in place those policies is another matter and depends on other and related factors that would require subsequent empirical research to be enucleated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When analysing transitions toward democracy during the last three decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century, it is readily apparent that the variety of empirical processes is so wide that achieving meaningful theoretical results is extremely difficult, as shown very explicitly by the existing literature on the topic. This paper addresses the key theoretical questions that need to be dealt with by the empirical analysis of the transitional process: Are there key. recurring actors and factors that we should take into account when analysing all cases in depth? Why is a focus on installation salient? Are there recurring patterns of successful transitions? Is or are there key recurring mechanism/s that critically explain successful transitions? And are there obstacles that make it impossible to achieve a successful transition and doom such a process to failure? On the basis of existing knowledge in the subfield an attempt is made to reply to these questions, and in this way to single out the main theoretical results achieved in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Southern Europe, the economic crisis (2008-2013) triggered a deeper political crisis, affecting a number of aspects of a representative democracy. Italy provides a particularly telling case of what happens when an economic crisis occurs in an unstable political context characterized by low government effectiveness, low efficiency, corruption, decline of electoral participation, fragmented and radicalized party competition, social inequality, high public debt, and other related features, here summarized in the model of “stalemated democracy.” On the basis of a comprehensive data set developed along with eight dimensions of democracy assessment and taking into account the policies pursued during the years of the crisis, we analyze the different effects of economic crisis—some of them expected, others more surprising—and how those effects characterize Italian political crisis and a new phase of great uncertainty. In the concluding remarks we offer an explanation of the role played by the economic crisis, focusing on the interplay between veto rules and actual veto players. Such an explanation is also relevant to see key, more in-depth aspects of Italian democracy during last 20 years and earlier. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article starts from the remarks by Peter Mair on the growing gap between responsiveness and responsibility – or middle-run responsiveness – and the declining capacity of parties to bridge that gap. It focuses on the empirical analysis of the association between economic and substantive democratic dimensions and responsiveness, which are highly relevant to the way in which parties compete and govern within contemporary democracies. Following an introduction of the topic, the second section puts forward key concepts and hypotheses; the third presents the operationalisation of the variables and the applied method; the fourth and primary empirical section of the article analyses the non-procedural determinants of political and economic responsiveness, including freedom and equality as well as several key economic structural factors. The concluding remarks recapitulate the main empirical findings and submit a number of aspects that party leaders ought to take into account when addressing the thorny issue of responsiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A literary criticism of the book "Why Nations Fail," by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson is presented, exploring the book's indirect political message. It describes three observations that are cited to be very different from each other but are all related to the authors' basic thesis which include the political analysis of recent years, the excess of generality so apparently huge to make it equivocal, and the distinction between inclusive institutions and extractive institutions.

How can the long process of change in Italian democracy (1992-2012) be analysed and explained? Answering this question requires placing the phenomenon of macro-political change of a democracy within a theoretical framework that will give answers to other questions: How should a transition from one type of democracy to another be analysed; have there been other cases of such a transition; what happened in Italy that brought about a change from a democracy to another one? By developing a theoretical proposal and providing a set of empirical data, replies are suggested to those questions and an explanation is given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analyses of consolidation and internal crisis need to complement each other in order to better explain the change within a democracy. This article integrates, revises and develops the results of the existing literature starting from the empirical results of a systematic, comparative empirical research on the Southern European countries. The main theoretical conclusion concerns the salience of the process of democratic anchoring, when consolidation is considered, and de-anchoring with reference to crisis. The different sections of the article analyze the notions of anchors, anchoring and de-anchoring; the connections with legitimation, democratic consolidation and crisis; the patterns of consolidation and crisis building in the four Southern European cases; the explanations and the theoretical background of anchoring and de-anchoring. The concluding remarks illustrate the possible research developments with reference to other areas and the salience of anchoring for every democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In these concluding remarks on authoritarian legacies and related politics in Southern Europe the definitions and dimensions of authoritarian legacies and politics of the past conclusions are recalled; the legacies and politics of the past are related to democratic quality and the influence of the former on the latter is assessed; the contextual dimensions influencing and conditioning the authoritarian legacies and the politics of the past in each country are also analysed; attitudes towards the past are reconsidered; and, finally, how the problem of the fading of legacies largely remains open is noted by elucidating some ironic aspects of the phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the fundamental factors of democratic quality, as well as elements that can compromise the quality of a democracy. Specific attention is given to defining democratic quality, as well as to the influence of political parties and their leaders on the democratic quality of their nation. Key factors in high quality democracies include stability, citizen participation and high citizen value of liberty and equality. The roles of political parties and leaders are analyzed with respect to the relationships between institutions and citizens. The author also notes the complexity of studying dynamic and evolving democracies, and highlights some of the challenges in researching the subject.

In recent years there has been growing interest and a related literature on hybrid regimes. Is there a good definition of such an institutional arrangement? Are there actually sets of stabilized, political institutions that can be labelled in this way? Is it possible that within the widespread process of democracy diffusion these are only ‘transitional’ regimes and the most suitable distinction is still the old one, suggested by Linz and traditionally accepted, between democracy and authoritarianism? This article addresses and responds to these questions by pinpointing the pertinent analytic dimensions, starting with definitions of ‘regime’, ‘authoritarianism’, and ‘democracy’; by defining what a ‘hybrid regime’ is; by trying to answer the key question posed in the title; by disentangling the cases of proper hybrid regimes from the cases of transitional phases; and by proposing a typology of hybrid regimes. Some of the main findings and conclusions refer to the lack of institutions capable of performing their functions as well as the key elements for achieving possible changes towards democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on democracy as a new political science concept. It outlines various variables and quantitative indicators of democratization. It examines the concepts of regimes, authoritarianism and democracy, and suggests a typology of hybrid regimes. It also evaluates the issue on whether new hybrid ways of democracy are needed by the society.

The growth of democratization and the relative development of associated research has, more recently, aroused great interest in the more specific theme of the spread of hybrid or 'transitional' regimes. This article will outline the quantitative terms of democratization; pinpoint the pertinent analytic dimensions, starting with definitions of the terms 'regime', 'authoritarianism' and 'democracy'; define what is a <>; propose a typology of hybrid 'regimes, and, in the last section, will try to answer the key question posed in the title, which, as will become clear, is closely bound up with the prospects for change in the nations that have such ambiguous forms of political organization and, more in general, with the spread of democratization. One of the main findings refers to ensure the existence of institutions more or less capable of performing their functions as well as to the potentially strong role of governments and international organizations in helping to build state institutions, prior even to establishing democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the assumptions and problems concerning the quality of democracy and democratic security. The article tries to come up with an answer to a question of whether it is possible to question the quality of actual democratic regimes through proposed debates pertaining to the study of the quality of democracies and how the quality is related with the challenges of the actual societies.

The most important traditional topics of empirical theory of democracy have been deeply reshaped by the phenomenon of the diffusion of democracies in the world during at least the last 30 years. More precisely, the definition of democracy is reconsidered under the new light shed by that phenomenon; the issue of hybrid regimes is addressed with all its problems of empirical intractability; the issue of the emergence of a theory, a quasi theory or at least a good theoretical framework about democratisation processes is discussed; and finally a contested issue such as that of the empirical assessment of democratic quality is introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the revised draft of the opening lecture given by the author at the 2004 Conference of Italian Society of Political Science in Padua. In the first section the main definitions of democracy and democratic qualities rule of law, electoral accountability, inter-institutional accountability, responsiveness, freedom and equality/solidarity are discussed. In the second, a key question is addressed: if we would like to explain the qualities of a democracy how much are the previous political traditions of the country relevant? Other explanatory factors, which complement the role of an authoritarian legacy, are also suggested and a few key hypotheses are proposed. The final section does not provide any comprehensive explanation, but analyzes of the impact of authoritarian legacy in a few countries of Southern Europe, such as Portugal, Spain, and Italy (but not Greece where it is not relevant) and in the Southern Cone as Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, where the quality of contemporary democracies is questioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to examine how, and to what extent, the process of Europeanisation has affected the reshaping of territorial representation in Italy. To explore this research question, it was considered how European Cohesion Policy and structural funds exercise a potential influence over the key dimensions of representation by providing regions with the opportunity to strengthen their roles as both ‘actors’ and ‘arenas’ of representation. Empirical research conducted through interviews and the analysis of documents in all twenty Italian regions revealed how each region has reacted to structural funds in a distinctive way due to different internal factors, such as the legacy of pre-existing policy styles and political structures, and the attitudes of the political/administrative elite. The article discusses this point in detail by focusing on the changes that occurred (or did not occur) at the regional level in light of the aforementioned dimensions of representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates whether and how political parties in Southern Europe changed between 1995 and 2005. Party changes have occurred in various countries in Southern Europe during the said period, including Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Turkey. A chart showing the total number of members of the two main parties in each South European country is presented. The role played by incumbency on party change is also discussed.

This article introduces three different notions of quality grounded in procedure, content and result. Those three notions are at the core of three different notions of democratic quality. Each of them has different implications for empirical research. Starting from these premises, the article proposes some theoretical arguments fundamental to the analysis of democratic quality and good democracy. In the first section definitions of democracy and quality are suggested. The subsequent three sections analyse the main emphasized dimensions, such as the rule of law, accountability, responsiveness, freedom and equality. Such an analysis calls for indicators, certain measures that reveal how and to what degree each dimension is present in various models of good democracy, the numerous and related problems associated with empirical study, and the essential conditions for its existence. The penultimate section indicates models of good democracy and highlights the related and much more common models of low quality democracies. The concluding remarks briefly mention the main directions of future research on the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the quality of democracy. Various dimensions of democratic quality; Different types of rights that encompasses freedom; Suggestion that responsiveness in a democracy is intrinsically complex and multidimensional; Tendency of the various dimensions of democratic quality to move together either toward democratic improvement or deterioration; Difficulty in determining where one dimension ends and another begins due to the densely interactive and overlapping linkages among the different elements of democracy.

The first part of the article discusses what is a 'good democracy' according to five dimensions: rule of law, accountability, responsiveness, freedom and equality. The second part analyses these dimensions in the case of Italy. In the Italian case study, the conclusions point to an improvement of vertical accountability because of the new party bipolarization and the actual possibility of change of government. At the same time, there has been a deterioration in the rule of law and horizontal accountability due to the weakening of parties, the extensive influence of the prime minister over the mass media in the early 2000s and some changes in the decision-making process with the weakening of Parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since early 1990s in Italy there has been a major change in the party system. Some of the explanations that are often mentioned, such as corruption, the April 1993 referendum, the new electoral laws, or the secularization of the society and the economic crisis, are important aspects of a complex funnel of causality. Together, however, they do not satisfactorily explain the change. Thus, we identify an idiosyncratic factor, the chronic, widespread dissatisfaction, that existed since the end of the 1940s, and explore the reasons why this dissatisfaction caused change only in the 1990s. The main explanations we suggest provide the basis for some speculations on changes in an Italian democracy that is still in a phase of transformation in the mid-1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the authors' views on political parties in European democracies since 1960-1990. According to them, there has been an organizational decline and a loss of organizational links which tie parties to electors. They say that raw membership count is one of the principal measures by which party membership strength can be assessed across national boundaries. They note that the pattern of party membership among the traditional liberal parties has also been erratic.

This article analyzes the impact of a mixed electoral system on the party system in the Italian case. A review of the two main qualitative dimensions, time and actors, suggests that the electoral reform of 1993 had no impact on party fragmentation and entailed a weak tendency toward electoral – not party – bipolarization. The real consequences are more complex and ambiguous. The actual impact is the following: new electoral rules bring about anticipated elite reactions; these and subsequent experiences provide a specific institutional learning; the rules and consequent growth of competition open the way to electoral bipolarization; reduced fragmentation and consequent party bipolarization do not follow automatically – though not strongly encouraged by the rules, these also contrast with the increased salience of centre parties. Differently from the declared (and undeclared, but apparent) purposes of the reform, the party system remained basically similar to the previous one of polarized pluralism. This has been the principal unintended consequence of an unfortunate reform. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the analysis of democratic consolidation(s) in Southern Europe the emphasis has been on three main factors: the relevance of institutional rules, the scope and activities of parties (and party elites), and the establishment of certain relationships between institutions, parties and interests, connected to the size of the public sector of the economy. From the varied combinations of these factors different consolidations result: an elite-based consolidation (Spain), a party-based one (Italy), a state-based one (Greece), and also a mixed party-state model (Portugal). Our analysis also suggests the emergence of different types of democratic regime, mainly characterized by (i) either a ‘chancellor’ democracy or a parliamentary arrangement; (ii) either a pivotal or a secondary role for parties; and (iii) either a large or small public economic sector. Recently the economic crisis, the resulting problems, and discontent arising from other causes, have brought about change in these democracies. The main transformations include the weakening of parties vis-à-vis other actors, the shrinking of both the public economic sector and the welfare institutions and, as a result, the prospect of greater autonomy for civil society. Thus, partially new regimes emerge, while the analysis also suggests the possibility of building a new typology of democratic regimes. Alongside the process of democratic consolidation in Southern Europe, there has also been an accompanying trend towards convergence: in the direction of majoritarianism, confirmed by the most recent national elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1990s, Italian democracy has entered a phase of far-reaching change, particularly of parties and the party system. This article proposes an assessment of what has changed, and why, with specific reference to the most basic features of parties (electoral performance, name, symbol, splits and alliances) from a systemic perspective. Also, to check the depth of change, party organization, the emergence of new models of parties and the turnover of parliamentary leadership are analysed. Finally, the impact of the party crisis and changes on the party system is evaluated and the degree to which the party system has changed is assessed. The concluding remarks will suggest how changes in the party system are related to the wider crisis of Italian democracy over the recent period, and the possible choices of the leaders as regards the future party system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on a study about social mobilization and relative deprivation theories. Dynamics of organizational process and social protest; Cost-benefit analysis of movements and political groups.

A foreword to "Comparative Sociology" is presented.