The huge success of the Democratic Party at the last European Parliament (EP) election in Italy has been widely interpreted as due to the unusual ability of its new leader Matteo Renzi to mobilize support for his party in an era of candidate-oriented and valence politics in which political leaders’ personal characteristics are crucial for vote choices and party performances. Framing the last EP elections as a sign of the overwhelming importance of personalized politics and personalized voting, however, does not tell us everything, there is to know about the role of leaders in voters’ decisions. According to the literature, in fact, leaders are not only a collection of personal traits and characteristics exerting short-term effects on voting behaviour, but also cognitive shortcuts that help decision-making by simplifying the complexity of the political environment. Within this framework, we investigate whether leader evaluations, in the form of confidence ratings, provide information about how Italian voters perceived the structure of political debate at the 2014 EP elections. Our results confirm that judgments of leaders imply specific representations of political competition, of which we try to outline some general features.

Leaders as cognitive shortcuts : on the representation of political competition at the European elections of 2014 in Italy / S. Camatarri, M. Cavataio. - In: CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN POLITICS. - ISSN 2324-8831. - 8:3(2016 Dec 14), pp. 262-276. [10.1080/23248823.2016.1244320]

Leaders as cognitive shortcuts : on the representation of political competition at the European elections of 2014 in Italy

S. Camatarri
Primo
;
M. Cavataio
Secondo
2016

Abstract

The huge success of the Democratic Party at the last European Parliament (EP) election in Italy has been widely interpreted as due to the unusual ability of its new leader Matteo Renzi to mobilize support for his party in an era of candidate-oriented and valence politics in which political leaders’ personal characteristics are crucial for vote choices and party performances. Framing the last EP elections as a sign of the overwhelming importance of personalized politics and personalized voting, however, does not tell us everything, there is to know about the role of leaders in voters’ decisions. According to the literature, in fact, leaders are not only a collection of personal traits and characteristics exerting short-term effects on voting behaviour, but also cognitive shortcuts that help decision-making by simplifying the complexity of the political environment. Within this framework, we investigate whether leader evaluations, in the form of confidence ratings, provide information about how Italian voters perceived the structure of political debate at the 2014 EP elections. Our results confirm that judgments of leaders imply specific representations of political competition, of which we try to outline some general features.
2014 EP elections; leaders; political competition; cognitive shortcuts; leader evaluation; majority/opposition scheme
Settore SPS/11 - Sociologia dei Fenomeni Politici
Settore SPS/04 - Scienza Politica
14-dic-2016
dic-2016
Article (author)
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2434/471237
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