Turnout,preferential voting and vote flows in the E.U. election1

ABSTRACT

This article aims at focusing on four main features of the European elections that were held on 26 May 2019. Firstly, it analyses electoral turnout, both from a diachronic and a geographical point of view. Secondly, it presents electoral data and identifies winners and losers of the vote, not only by comparing 2019 E.U. results to 2014 E.U. results and 2018 political results, but especially focusing on the territorial dimension of electoral dynamics. Thirdly, it discusses flows of vote in five Italian cities (Brescia, Turin, Florence, Naples, Palermo), in order to give a clearer picture of how citizens (potentially) changed their electoral preferences from 2018 to 2019. Fourthly, it focuses on preferential vote, with the aim of distinguishing between parties characterized by ‘micro-personalization’ and ‘macro-personalization’. On many of these aspects, the 2019 European elections in Italy can be understood on the basis of the well-known ‘second-order election theory’. Yet, there are also interesting empirical findings that deviate from this pattern, among which the electoral success of the League – one of the two parties in government at the moment of the elections – merits further attention and can be mostly explained on the basis of government political action. That same electoral success, in addition, represented one of the causes that led to the end of the so-called yellow-green government in August 2019.     

Party Policy Positions in Newfoundland and Labrador: Expert Survey Results in the Buildup to the 2011 Provincial Election

In this article, we present the estimates of the party policy positions derived from two surveys: an expert survey and a voter survey, which were conducted in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador immediately prior to the October 2011 provincial election. The experts and the sample of voters were asked to situate the major political parties on eight policy dimensions and to rank the importance of each policy area. The results of the study present not only a map of party policy space and voter preference in Newfoundland and Labrador but also an indication of party policy awareness in the province.     

‘Shew Yourselves as Men’: Gender,Citizenship and Political Propaganda in the 1773 and 1774 Worcester Election Contests

This case study of the 1773 and 1774 election contests in the city of Worcester investigates how members of the local oligarchy, and the political opposition to that oligarchy, drew on contemporary discourses on citizenship to convince the electorate that their candidate would become a worthy representative of their city in parliament, and to refute the claims of their opponents. Since independence was absolutely essential to the voters’ identities as male householder citizens, this became the main issue of conflict. The candidate of the opposition interest, Sir Watkin Lewes, sought to establish himself as the guardian of the independence of the citizens of Worcester against the corrupt corporation. The candidates of the corporation, Thomas Bates Rous and his successor, Colonel Nicholas Lechmere, instead claimed that Lewes was the real threat, as his anti‐corruption campaign deprived the voters of the usual fruits of the election. While such claims also entailed an appeal by the local elite to the financial interest of the voters, the need to justify this incentive ideologically, and the high portion of voters who turned their backs on their patrons, does suggest the power embedded in the concept of citizenship in the political life at the level of the localities. Gendered and classed conceptions of citizenship, furthermore, were employed as offensive weapons in the political propaganda surrounding the elections, as each faction sought to discredit the other by claiming that they were neither manly enough, nor of the proper social status, to qualify as worthy political subjects. Thus, citizenship was not only fundamentally gendered in the masculine, but also highly hierarchical and equally intertwined with contemporary notions of class.     

Elite migrations in modern Italy: patterns of settlement,integration and identity negotiation

Abstract

Francesco Crispi has often appeared a paradoxical figure. In the earlier part of his life he was a revolutionary republican and a friend of Mazzini. After 1860 he accepted the monarchy, but remained very much a man of the Left and in many ways a quintessential democrat. Yet he ended his career as an authoritarian Prime Minister, a vigorous opponent of the Far Left, and an imperialist, who prorogued parliament and contemplated dispensing with representative government altogether. This article contends that Crispi's career has more coherence than is commonly suggested; it focuses on an important but hitherto neglected aspect of his thinking, namely the problem of how to achieve a sense of national consciousness in Italy through ‘political education’. The article traces the development of the idea of national political education throughout Crispi's career and argues that his two terms as Prime Minister in 1887–91 and 1893–6 can only be fully understood in the context of his long‐standing concern with this problem.     

Time,place, and the lifeworlds of feminist geographers: the US in the 1970s

The 1970s, the decade in which Susan Hanson took up an academic appointment in American geography, was a period of marked growth in women's representation and political activism in the discipline and of the emergence of feminist research and teaching. Susan's career illustrates the changes in consciousness, resiliency in the face of setbacks, and creativity of the times. Inspired by the women's movement, and exemplifying collegiality, women geographers identified masculine biases in scholarship and professional practices, initiated research and teaching on women and gender, and worked to enter the leadership of the Association of American geographers. Their efforts were the genesis of the feminism in the profession that has since flourished in the United States. It is fitting that Susan Hanson's leadership and contributions in this arena are widely recognized and honored.     

Arabs,Latins and Persians bearing gifts: Greek translations of astrolabe treatises,ca. 1300 D. M. Angeliki E. Laiou

Abstract

Although translation of foreign literature was rare in Byzantium, in c. 1300 three Greek translations of treatises on using the astrolabe appeared, two from Latin and one from Persian or Arabic; all three are assessed in terms of Greek style and significance for Byzantine culture. The Islamic treatise translated by Shams al-Din al-Bukhari includes a translator's preface, edited in full and translated into English here for the first time. In the preface, Shams describes a deluxe astrolabe sent to Andronikos II with the treatise in the hope, it is argued, of some personal benefit in return.