This research contributes to the expanding literature on the determinants of government transparency. It uncovers the dynamics of transparency in the Italian case, which shows an interesting reform trajectory: until the late 1980s no transparency provisions existed; since then, provisions have dramatically increased under the impulse of changing patterns of political competition. The analysis of the Italian case highlights that electoral uncertainty for incumbents is a double-edged sword for institutional reform: on the one hand, it incentivizes the adoption of ever-growing transparency provisions; on the other, it jeopardizes the implementation capacity of public agencies by leading to severe administrative burdens.

What is the effect of the economy on political trust among Latin American countries? The few studies that have examined the causal link between the economy and trust in institutions have observed the phenomenon in a synchronic way, adopting information collected at the individual or at the aggregate level. The results shown by these works reveal a citizenry that is dissatisfied, less tolerant towards the political class, and oriented to de-legitimize the political system. In this work, which analyses the political attitudes of citizens in 18 Latin American countries from a longitudinal perspective (1996–2013), the conjoint effect that economic perceptions and the real economy have on political trust is estimated. In particular, by using data from the Latinobarómetro, we show that in contexts where the political regime continues to alternate between democracy and authoritarianism, citizens’ sociotropic understanding of the economy contributes to strengthening the relationship between citizens and political institutions.

The literature on populist parties has tended to look at this new phenomenon as distinct from traditional party models. While there are a number of studies focusing on specific dimensions, there have been few attempts to systematically examine the features of these new players through the eyes of distinct party types. This work uses the case of Podemos to highlight what distinguished this new party from mainstream parties. We consider the following dimensions: the genetic model, ideological and programmatic stances, its organization, and the profile of its electoral base. It is shown that Podemos presents hybrid characteristics, combining those of traditional party models with the characteristics transposed from the digital culture. The findings also show that populist parties evolve similarly to mainstream parties and this evolution depends not only on electoral and strategic pressures, but also on the process of institutionalization. The lessons of Podemos will allow us to discuss comparable cases from contemporary democracies, thus strengthening our findings and generating more robust evidence about the (alleged) novelty of populist parties with regard to party models.

Two main elements characterize a country as federal and the development of its federal system. The first one is directly connected to competences and how regions may or may not have powers over public policies. The second one focuses on the fiscal arena, and how regions generate their own income and share it with the central government. This paper describes from a historical point of view the different phases that the Spanish federal process has followed since its beginning in 1978 up to the last reform in 2016. These phases are related to the composition of both the regional and the national governments. It is therefore is important to investigate the connection between changes in these compositions and how they may have affected the phases of decentralization. Employing the new institutionalism paradigm and seeking for critical junctures in the different moments, we show how national governments are more important in shaping this process than regional ones.

This paper introduces a dynamic perspective on how (personal) political ideology shapes reactions to immigration policies at the mass level. Greater ethnic diversity and growing calls for multiculturalism represent a disproportionately greater challenge to rightists because they value conformity, tradition, and stability more than leftists. Consequently, we hypothesize that the impact of political ideology on opposition to immigration has become stronger over time. Analyses show that: (a) leftists were less opposed to immigration than rightists in both 2002 and 2014, and (b) rightists have become more opposed to immigration in the time between 2002 and 2014, whereas leftists’ reactions remained stable across this period. We tested our motivated reasoning hypothesis in a repeated cross-sectional (fixed effects regression) analysis of individual-level data from 18 countries (N = 55,367). The individual-level data on political ideology and immigration policy preferences is from the European Social Survey data sets fielded in 2002 and 2014.

Within the context of the economic downturn in southern Eurozone countries and the imposition of new constraints on national policy-making, this article examines the congruence between party issue prioritization, during and after the electoral phase. This is done through a longitudinal analysis of four countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) and use of party manifesto and parliamentary question data. We found that between the electoral and parliamentary arenas, parties tend to emphasize different issues. However, this occurs in different ways across time, countries, and parties. We propose a measurement of issue congruence in agenda framing between the pre- and post-electoral phases to assess to what extent elections provide a guide for public policies. Moreover, we propose arguments to explain different results in the analyzed countries and across parties. We show that the crisis magnified the capacity of the opposition to maintain programmatic coherence – a helping hand for opposition parties (including the radical ones) that succeeded in boosting the relevance of their signature issues.