Spaghetti Politics: Local Electoral Systems and Alliance Structure in Italy, 1984-2001.

ELECTION law; POLITICAL change; ITALIAN politics & government, 1976-1994; POLITICAL parties; MAJORITIES; ELECTIONS

This article describes the impact of the Italian electoral reforms of 1993 on the structure of local political alliances. The reform, which moved Italy from a purely proportional representation system to a mixed, largely majoritarian system, was designed to increase transparency, reduce corruption, limit the number of political parties, and create the conditions for a politics of interests rather than a politics of influence. Paradoxically, moving to a mixed electoral system had the opposite effect. In this article we demonstrate this impact by modeling the structure of political alliances at multiple levels (municipal, provincial and regional) of the Italian polity from 1984 to 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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