Trust in national and local institutions is an essential component of democracy. The literature has dealt mainly with the former, while less attention has been given to the latter. This paper advances a novel theoretical approach to inquire about trust in local institutions, which is also used to test national ones. We posit that trust is affected by the perceptions individuals have of the physical space where they live. Both a) the perceived quality of life in the neighbourhood where individuals live and b) the neighbourhood (perceived) peripherality are hypothesized to affect trust in local (and to a lesser extent) national institutions. We test our hypotheses in Italy, over a large representative sample of more than 40.000 respondents. We show that both variables are crucial predictors of local trust, but only the perceived quality of life predicts national trust. Equally important, social, cultural and economic individual capital does not modify the relation.

Previous research suggests that Europeans want more experts in government, but which experts do they want and why? Using survey data collected in 15 European countries, this study compared citizens’ preferences for high-ranking civil servants, university professors, and business executives over traditional political actors (MPs and former ministers) as ministers in government. Overall, university professors were rated more positively than MPs or former ministers in almost all countries, whereas civil servants and business executives were only rated more positively than politicians in Poland, Italy, Spain, Greece, Ireland, and Belgium. While political distrust is a key predictor of preferring political outsiders, we also found that civil servants are not as appealing to politically distrusting individuals, depending on the country. Furthermore, while the demand for more expertise in government mainly influences preferences for university professors, the demand for more government by the people is connected to preferences for business executives and (to a lesser extent) civil servants. The latter finding challenges the common distinction between citizen and expert-oriented visions of democracy and the alleged ‘elitist’ underpinnings of empowering non-elected outsiders.

Scholars have long debated whether populism harms or improves the quality of democracy. This article contributes to this debate by focusing on the impact of populist parties in government. In particular, it inquires: (1) whether populists in government are more likely than non-populists to negatively affect the quality of democracies; (2) whether the role of populists in government matters; and (3) which type of populism is expected to negatively affect the quality of liberal-democratic regimes. The results find strong evidence that the role of populists in government affects several qualities of democracy. While robust, the findings related to (2) are less clear-cut than those pertaining to (1). Finally, regardless of their role in government, different types of populism have different impacts on the qualities of democracy. The results show that exclusionary populist parties in government tend to have more of a negative impact than other forms of populism.

In the last decades, the cartel party theory has been one of the most discussed topics in the academic literature on political parties. Several publications have dealt with the application of the theory at the systemic level, using a country as a unit of analysis. Less attention has been given thus far to the party level. This analysis is aimed at improving the study of the cartel party theory by focussing on the transformations of three social-democratic parties in Europe: the Parti Socialiste in France, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español in Spain, and the Partito Democratico in Italy. The main findings in this work will not confirm in toto the theoretical assumption of the cartel party, in particular as regards membership and, in part, political convergence. Albeit declining, membership has been resilient in the last two decades. Despite a clear-cut convergence in EU-related issues, political manifestos of mainstream parties have shown a certain degree of polarization. Finally, while the three parties under examination rely almost entirely on public subventions, political parties proved to be capable of reforming the public funding laws, increasing the transparency of donations and reducing the total amount of public subvention.