Neither left nor right: genesis of alternative ideological space in Italy?

The present research project is principally focused on the current social and ideological representations of political competition in Italy. Most of the attention will be given, in particular, to the so-called «aliens» voters, so defined because of their refusal to take any position on the left-right schema. As a matter of fact, these individuals, until now appeared somehow extraneous to this traditional ideological dimension because of their general ignorance about its coordinates and implications, seem now to present a new interesting profile. First of all, their general cognitive abilities appear rather higher than in the recent past. Moreover, it is precisely within this segment of voters that we can find the highest levels of both electoral fluctuation and vote to anti-establishment parties in the last general elections of 2013. It seems therefore logic to ask whether the absence of any self-placement along a left-right continuum can today be considered in Italy as the expression of a shared interpretative framework of political reality which drives voters to specific attitudes and behaviors in the electoral sphere. Different research techniques will be possibly used in order to test this hypothesis. In a first quantitative phase, mostly aimed at generalizing the research results to the whole Italian electorate, the presence of statistically significant relationships among a series of variables concerning political attitudes, predispositions and party choices is going to be tested. After that, an experimental phase will take place. A series of experimental subjects, in fact, will be subjected to different stimuli and political scenarios, so as to understand whether and how these latter affect both their political beliefs and probability of adopting a political self-definition in terms of left and right.