The South Tyrolean Party System

Evolving Nationalism (EvoNat) Research Briefs, 2015

South Tyrol, together with the province of Trentino, forms one of the five Italian regions with a special statute, out of 20 regions in total. It is often considered to be a model region in terms of how to deal with violent ethnic conflict through the implementation of group rights and territorial autonomy. Implemented to tame centrifugal tendencies, the consociational system has for a decade been losing its balance, with pro-autonomy stances ceding ground to secessionist pressure in the German-speaking arena. Focusing on their strategic behaviour, this brief examines the centre-periphery dynamics and the sovereignty proposals of South Tyrolean ethnic minority parties. Challenged by the electoral success of the secessionist opposition, the hegemonic and autonomist South Tyrolean People’s Party (SVP) is responding with a new pro-European devo-max objective. The rise of secessionism is accompanied by an end to the pro-European elite consensus.

European Centre for Minority Issues - Working Papers, 2018

Located in the northeastern part of Italy, the Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen, also known with the historical name of South Tyrol, is one of the two provinces of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol region. It is a border region and a deeply divided place, with a majority of German-speaking population (62.3%) and minorities of Italians (23.4%), Ladins (4.1%) and past and recent migrants (10.2%). On the 21st October 2018 almost 400,000 South Tyrolean citizens (69.1% Germans, 26.4% Italians, and 4.5% Ladins) casted their vote to elect the Provincial Council. This Working Paper therefore aims to analyse the party competition in this electoral campaign, underling specificities and evolutions of such a peculiar political system.

This article aims to highlight how the process of mainstreaming has affected regionalist parties that have experienced lengthy periods of government participation. Adopting an analytic frame- work based on party goals, issues and styles, we investigate the conditions under which the process of party mainstreaming is favoured. A comparative-historical approach enables us to con- duct an in-depth study of the development of three successful regionalist parties of recent decades: Italy’s Südtiroler Volkspartei and the Union Valdôtaine, and Switzerland’s Lega dei Ticinesi. Underlining the crucial role of party strategy, intra-party dynamics, multi-level institutional settings and external shocks, the analysis shows that as far as pivotal regionalist parties are concerned, mainstreaming is not a homogenous process that can be taken for granted.

Georg Menz (ed.), The Resistible Corrosion of Europe`s Center Left After 2008. Routledge: Abingdon, New York, 2022

Social scientific analysis of current developments in Austrian political parties is a desideratum. This applies not least to the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ). The last substantial publications about the party date back many years and are now inevitably outdated (cf. Ucakar 2006, Müller 1996). While recent political science in Austria has produced little research on political parties, international comparative studies also usually lack relevant sections on Austria. 1 Of course, this does not mean that Austrian social democracy is not a publication topic: on the contrary, calls and appeals for political reorientation (Nowotny 2016; Scheiber 2019; Zeiler 2019), autobiographically inspired reflections from the party's internal perspective (Cap 2018), biographies of its leaders (Petritsch 2010; Misik and Kern 2017), or the presentation of the party's historical "success story" (Androsch et al. 2020) appear at regular intervals. However, most of these publications hardly claim to be critical in terms of social scientific analysis. Even the current book by political scientist Anton Pelinka (2020) is more of a polemic. The following essay first sets out some general historical lines of development and national characteristics before focusing on the last 20 years, i.e. the period since the turn of the millennium. Since the Austrian example in particular has received little attention in the literature compared to others, I will go into more detail about the historical context and peculiarities in the party history of the SPÖ. The central question concerns the reasons for the almost uninterrupted decline of the SPÖ since the 1980s, both in terms of elections and members. As in other European countries, the former core voter group of social democracy, the working class, has become considerably smaller. Moreover, for various reasons, the party ties of workers to social democracy have weakened without new voter groups being won over to any significant extent.

The term populism has become an important issue in the current political science. However there are very few studies dealing with development of populist parties after they gain electoral success or even become part of a governing coalition. The main idea is that populist appeals are best suited for parties outside the establishment. However, when populists succeed to enter the national parliament or even the government, the credibility of their populist appeals becomes difficult to sustain. If populists become aware that their profile is rather incompatible with the new situation, a shift of their character may be expected. First, in ideological terms, these parties may drop the populist appeal and seek another programmatic basis. Second, this change may be reflected in the structure of the electorate as different voters may be attracted by the new party's ideology. Finally, the adaptation process of a populist party may be present also in reforming its internal organization and building a structure resembling classical parties. The main aim of the paper is to analyze the Slovak party Smer-SD (Direction) and its pathway from populism to social democracy. The party emerged in 1999 and in the following years it has become the core of the system with power influence on both national and subnational level of domestic politics. The paper seeks to study its shift in three areas – the ideology, electoral support (using national election studies and data from European Social Survey) and internal organization. It shows that populist parties may successfully modify their original profile if they find it harmful for their further ambitions and adapt for an existence within their earlier enemy - the establishment.

Regionalist parties matter. Over the past 40 years, they have played an ever-larger role in West-European democracies. Because of their relevance and temporal persistence, their achievements have become increasingly visible not only in the electoral arena, but also as regards holding office and policy-making. This book enhances our understanding of these different dimensions of success as it analyses various types of regionalist party success. Beyond conventional perspectives, the focus of this book is also on how the dimensions of success are related to each other, and in particular to what extent electoral and office success – jointly or alternatively – contribute to policy success. Adopting a common theoretical framework and combining the in-depth knowledge of experts from different countries, each chapter explores the evolution and impact of regionalist parties in regional or federal states, that is, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Switzerland. This allows for a comprehensive and comparative analysis of one of the main political challenges within West-European democracies.

dev.ulb.ac.be

Politics & Policy, 2009