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Targeting the government in the referendum: the aborted 2016 Italian constitutional reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2018

Danilo Di Mauro  and
Vincenzo Memoli Open the ORCID record for Vincenzo Memoli [Opens in a new window]
Danilo Di Mauro*
Affiliation:
Department of Law and Economics, Unitelma Sapienza – University of Rome, Rome, Italy
Vincenzo Memoli
Affiliation:
Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Catania, Catania, Italy
*
*E-mail: danilo.dimauro@unitelma.it
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Abstract

This study investigates the factors explaining voting in the 2016 Italian referendum on constitutional reform. As we show through voting alignments within the Parliament and key aspects of the electoral campaign, this was a case where the government took the leadership of the entire referendum process, transforming it into a plebiscite. Within this context, we hypothesize that key elements explaining voting choices follow a government-support vs. opposition dynamics. Employing Italian National Elections Studies Association pre/post-referendum survey, we estimate the effects of factors increasing predictability (e.g. party closeness, ideology, social cleavage) or uncertainty (e.g. government performance, the economy) of voting choices. The resulting logistic regression models show that the leading role of the government in the referendum reshapes the impact of factors explaining voting choices. While some lose significance, others follow a pro- or anti-government logic.

Keywords

referendumItalygovernmentpolitical supportvote
Type
Research Article
Information
Italian Political Science Review / Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , July 2018 , pp. 133 - 154
Copyright
© Società Italiana di Scienza Politica 2018 

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/0LN6PR
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