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Policy agendas in Italy: introduction to the special issue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2019

Enrico Borghetto ,
Marcello Carammia  and
Federico Russo
Enrico Borghetto*
Affiliation:
Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences – CICS.NOVA, NOVA University of Lisbon, Avenida de Berna, Lisboa, Portugal
Marcello Carammia
Affiliation:
Institute for European Studies, University of Malta, Msida, Malta
Federico Russo
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Storia, Società e Studi sull’Uomo, Università del Salento, Lecce, Italy
*
*Corresponding author. Email: enrico.borghetto@fcsh.unl.pt
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Abstract

Policy agendas studies analyse the dynamics of attention to policy issues over time and across actors and institutions to obtain insights into the functioning of political systems. The articles in this special issue draw on this approach to investigate key aspects of the Italian political system, with a special emphasis on the period spanning from the political crisis of the early 1990s to the watershed elections of 2013. They analyse a broad range of institutional and policy venues, including public opinion, political parties, the executive, the Parliament, and the Constitutional Court. While single articles address different research questions and focus on different institutions, they all share a focus on the dynamics of issue attention over time. This introduction provides a summary overview of the theoretical and methodological tools employed in the volume, highlighting how the study of policy agendas can contribute to the understanding of political systems and their change over time. It then summarises the main findings of single articles which, taken together, shed new light on several classic questions that have been widely debated in the literature on the evolution of the Italian political system.

Keywords

agenda-settingItalyparliamentgovernmentpolitical parties
Type
Research Article
Information
Italian Political Science Review / Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica , Volume 48 , Special Issue 3: Policy Agendas in Italy , November 2018 , pp. 265 - 274
Copyright
© Società Italiana di Scienza Politica 2018 

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