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Born in 2009 by the joint effort of a small group of young Italian researchers from different universities, the Italian Agendas Project has progressively grown and it is now established as an active partner in the "Comparative Agendas Project" research network.

Principal Investigator: Alice Cavalieri (alice.cavalieri@dispes.units.it); Enrico Borghetto (enrico.borghetto@unifi.it); Marcello Carammia (marcello.carammia@unict.it ); Federico Russo (federico.russo@unisalento.it )
Email: italianpolicyagendas@gmail.com
Downloadable Data Series:  4
Time Span:  1983-2014
Total Observations:  11,523

Italy

Featured Research:
An Intelligent system for the categorization of question time official documents

Cavalieri et al. (2023) "An Intelligent system for the categorization of question time official documents of the Italian Chamber of Deputies". Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 20(3): 213–234.    ABSTRACT In this work, we present an intelligent system for the automatic categorization of political documents, specifically the documents containing the parliamentary questions collected during the weekly Question Times at the Chamber of... Read more

The behaviour of populist parties in parliament

“The behaviour of populist parties in parliament. The policy agendas of populist and other political parties in the Italian question time”. Authored by Alice Cavalieri & Caterina Froio (2021) Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica/Italian Political Science Review, open access   ABSTRACT This article addresses the question of whether populist parties behave differently from other political parties in parliament. Building on the attention-based... Read more

Policy Polarisation in Italy

Policy Polarisation in Italy: The Short and Conflictual Life of the ‘Government of Change’ (2018-2019) By Nicolò Conti, Andrea Pedrazzani & Federico Russo 2020, South European Society and Politics ABSTRACT This article uses the concept of policy polarisation to understand the short and conflictual life of the Conte I cabinet which remained in office in Italy from June 2018 to September 2019. We show how policy polarisation in parliament and between... Read more

Raising the flag among the ruins

Authored by Nicolò Conti, Andrea Pedrazani and Federico Russo Published in the Italian Political Science Review / Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, Volume 49 , Issue 3, pp. 293 - 309. ABSTRACT 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... Read more

Challenger parties in Parliament: the case of the Italian Five Star Movement

In 2013, the Five Star Movement (M5S) won representation for the first time in the Italian parliament, the heart of the institutions they criticised and aimed to reform. With parliamentary ranks filled mostly with inexperienced politicians and a strong identification with the role of outsiders challenging the mainstream political consensus, the expectation is that their opposition style should differ substantially from that of other parties. This article explores this... Read more

The programme-to-policy link in Italy between the First and Second Republic

Carammia, Marcello, Enrico Borghetto, and Shaun Bevan. 2018. ‘Changing the Transmission Belt: The Programme-to-Policy Link in Italy between the First and Second Republic’. Italian Political Science Review / Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica This article analyses the transmission of policy priorities from electoral campaigns to legislative outputs under different institutional configurations. Taking an agenda-setting approach, the article tests whether a... Read more

Government ideology and party priorities

Russo, Federico, e Luca Verzichelli. 2016. «Government ideology and party priorities: the determinants of public spending changes in Italy». Italian Politica Science Review/Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica 46 (3). Focusing on Italy (1948-2009), this article empirically tests whether shifts in governments' ideology and policy priorities are related to public spending changes in four policy sectors. The results indicate that shifts in governments'... Read more

The role of the Italian Constitutional Court in the policy agenda

Rebessi, Elisa, and Francesco Zucchini. 2018. ‘The Role of the Italian Constitutional Court in the Policy Agenda: Persistence and Change between the First and Second Republic’. Italian Political Science Review / Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica If we examine the current literature, no study on policy agenda has so far addressed the agenda of a Constitutional Court in a country that has recently experienced crucial changes in its political system. The... Read more

From agenda setters to agenda takers?

Borghetto, E., Russo, F., Forthcoming. The determinants of party issue attention in times of crisis: from agenda setters to agenda takers? Party Politics. Question time represents one of the most relevant institutional arenas where parties compete to get their favourite issues on the parliamentary agenda. Parties select which issue to address by weighing up two commitments simultaneously: fulfilling the party mandate received by their voters at election time;... Read more

L’analisi comparata delle agenda politiche: il Comparative Agendas Project

Enrico Borghetto and Marcello Carammia (2010) “L’analisi comparata delle agenda politiche: il Comparative Agendas Project”, Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, n.2, pp.301-15 Read more

The Impact of Party Policy Priorities on Italian Law-Making

Borghetto, Enrico, Marcello Carammia, and Francesco Zucchini. 2014. “The Impact of Party Policy Priorities on Italian Law-Making from the First to the Second Republic (1983-2006).” In Agenda Setting, Policies, and Political Systems, eds. Stefaan Walgrave and Christoffer Green-Pedersen. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 164–82. Read more

The Influence of Coalition Parties on Executive Agendas in Italy (1983-2008)

Borghetto, Enrico, and Marcello Carammia. 2015. “The Influence of Coalition Parties on Executive Agendas in Italy (1983-2008).” In The Challenge of Coalition Government: The Italian Case, eds. Nicolò Conti and Francesco Marangoni. Abingdon: Routledge, 36–57. Read more

The Policy Content of the Italian Question Time.

In this article, Federico Russo and Alice Cavalieri analysed the policy content on the Italian Question Time, presenting a new dataset consisting of about 4000 questions asked between 1996 and 2012. This study demonstrates that the changing content of questions mirrors the transformation affecting Western politics in general but also the changing mood of public opinion.  ... Read more

Government Agenda-Setting in Italian Coalitions

Borghetto, Enrico, Francesco Visconti, and Marco Michieli. “Government Agenda-Setting in Italian Coalitions. Testing the «Partisan Hypothesis» Using Italian Investiture Speeches 1979- 2014.” Italian Journal of Public Policies, no. 2/2017 (2017): 193–220 Despite variations in institutional and political settings, comparative political research is consistent in pointing to executives as the main drivers of national agendas in parliamentary... Read more