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ITANES - The Italian National Election Study series

Background

The study of political behaviour and elections has an established tradition in Italian social science. Between the 1960’s and 1980’s political science and sociology had relied mainly on contextual analysis of ecological data which provided elaborate analyses of electoral politics and contributed to the development of advanced research methodologies capable of correlating aggregate data with individual behaviour.

The very success of ecological analyses – coupled with some specific features of Italian politics (territorial heterogeneity of voting sustained by strong and adversarial political subcultures; proportional representation and multi-party system; reduced electoral mobility) – explains why the Italian scientific community is a late comer in National Election Studies (NES). Furthermore, public opinion surveys – the key instrument of NES – were evaluated with some caution by Italian scholars: a ‘reticent’ mass political culture according to which people considered voting choices something to talk about with suspicion (or better yet, not to reveal to an unknown interviewer), systematic under or over reporting of voting for certain parties, and a sociological rather than individualistic view of public opinion are all factors that explain why for a long time surveys were not thought to be the best instrument for analysing political behaviour. Of course, survey-based research was not lacking (among others: Barnes and Sani, 1975; Mannheimer and Sani, 1987) but these important efforts were mainly the individual involvements of Italian scholars in international and comparative studies and – while crucial both for their results and for the training of younger scholars – they did not translate into a cohesive and lasting collective effort.
ITANES – Italian National Election Studies – has evolved over the last decade, in concurrence with the re-shaping of the Italian party system which took place in the 1990’s. Two factors are behind the development of ITANES¹: a) the change, in Italy and elsewhere, in the determinants of the vote, and its greater individualization. Surveys allowed us to study differences among voters and to tap into the meaning subjectively attributed to casting a ballot; b) a greater role of public opinion in campaign-centred electoral politics, and the importance of voters’ subjective evaluation of the performance of government and parties for studying electoral outcomes.

The structure of ITANES

The change of political context and a new generation of students entering the field are therefore the pretexts of ITANES. The promoter of this scholarly enterprise has been the Istituto Cattaneo – the leading research institute on Italian elections within the tradition of ecological analyses – which set up a Committee on the study of political transition in Italy. This committee in 1994 evolved into the ITANES research programme, composed of scholars from several universities and the Istituto Cattaneo, which has carried out the studies listed in Table 1.

Year	Methodology	Sample size	Design	Main contents
1990	Face to face, PaP	1500	Post-election	Cleavages + few issues
1992	CATI	1861	Post-election	Cleavages + few issues
1994	CATI	2600	Post-election	Cleavages + issues
1996	CATI	2502	Post-election	Cleavages + issues, leaders, the economy
2001	CAPI	3209	Post-election	Cleavages + issues, leaders, the economy, campaign exposure
2001	WEB	3800	Pre-post election panel	Cleavages + issues, leaders, the economy, campaign exposure
2004a	CAPI	1882	Pre-election: Panel 2001-2004	Political culture, political and social engagement
2004b	CAPI+ Focus groups	1048 + 12 focus (86 people)	Pre-election	Political psychology, values
2006	CATI	1882	Panel 2001-04-06 (third wave, post-election)	All of the above + other (see Figure 1)
2006	CAPI	2005-1403	Pre-post election panel	..
2006	CAPI	2011	Post-election standalone	..
2006	CAPI	2000	Post-election stand-alone (CSES)	..
2006	CATI	8044 (4000)	Daily campaign survey (+ panel)	..
2006	Media analysis	…	Content analysis	Media analysis (issues and leaders in TV)

Table 1. The ITANES studies (in bold Parliamentary election years)

Financing large scale surveys is of course the greatest difficulty in setting up a NES. Until now the funding strategy has framed ITANES’ organizational structure. ITANES finances are not provided on a stable basis, (i.e., funds do not come from a National Science Foundation focused grant on elections which interested universities compete for). Instead, funding has been sought within the general Ministry of Education Research Fund (Progetti di Ricerca di Interesse Nazionale – PRIN) which launches an annual call trough a competitive bid for funds among social sciences scholars. Since PRIN encourages Departments’ cooperation on complex research projects involving inter-university efforts, ITANES scholars have set up inter-university Research Groups (RGs) and have competed (so far successfully) on consecutive projects over time in order to obtain the necessary funds for each study.
Until very recently, ITANES has been an informal association (an invisible college) among researchers in RGs, the units – one for each university department – created in order to present a proposal to PRIN². The Scientific Coordinator(s) has therefore become the Principal Investigator(s) of a given election study who is (are) in charge of designing it. Each RG appoints two members to the ITANES Steering Committee (Comitato Direttivo) which operates until the next election study. The Steering Committee decides over new RGs entering the programme and over substantive proposals. Thus, a sort of rolling committee has so far supervised ITANES.
This flexible structure has allowed many scholars to get involved with ITANES³ and has successfully been able to secure funds. However, the need to further institutionalise ITANES, to promote cooperation among participant institutions and to broaden the financial strategy in order to provide stable and complementary funding (from private foundations), has led to the establishment of a registered formal association in December 2007, whose founding members were the scholars steadily associated with the project and Istituto Cattaneo. This association will be responsible for the ITANES research programme, will preside over future studies, will insure scholars’ generational replacement and the promotion of new Research Groups. The current President of ITANES is Giacomo Sani (Univ. of Pavia) and the Steering Committee is composed of Paolo Bellucci (Univ. of Siena), Piergiorgio Corbetta (Univ. of Bologna), Marco Maraffi (Univ. of Milano), Arturo Parisi (Univ. of Bologna), Hans M. Schadee (Univ. of Milano Bicocca), Paolo Segatti (Univ. of Milano), and the legal representative of Istituto Cattaneo.

Research design of ITANES studies

The research design of the ITANES studies has evolved in complexity over time in tandem with the broadening of its theoretical focus. Earlier studies were still influenced by ecological analysis and the cleavage-based approach to political behaviour was reproduced in surveys. Later on, studies fully exploited the capacity of survey to focus on individual differences and addressed a broader set of theoretical concerns. From simple post-electoral surveys, ITANES has moved to panel-designed studies and enlarged the scope of the analysis to campaign study and media analysis. Surveys have been matched by qualitative techniques, such as focus groups. Also different survey modes have been explored: PaP, CATI, CAPI and WEB-based survey. Off-Parliamentary election studies have focused on mass political culture and on the psychological basis of political attitudes. Table 1 lists the ITANES studies and shows their main features.
The 2006 study has been by far the most comprehensive (and costly: around € 500.000) effort to study electoral behaviour. As Table 2 shows, it includes 6 parallel studies: a long-term 2001-2004-2006 panel; a short-term pre-post election panel; two post-election stand-alone surveys; a campaign study; a media study. Figure 1 frames ITANES 2006 within the Rokkanian theoretical approach which has inspired it, placing the factors (and variables included in the surveys) influencing voting in a bi-dimensional space defined by the long-term and short-term distinction and the macro/micro one. It represents an effort to supplement the Michigan traditional ‘funnel of causality’ explanation of voting with an attention to voters’ heterogeneity in their decision-making processes.

The Research Design of ITANES 2006

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Itanes 2006 in a Rokkanian space

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So far ITANES has published two volumes originating directly from each election study: one – sort of instant book – for the attentive public and one academic volume (see Table 3). But these reports have barely scratched the surface of a wealth of data. A year after the completion of the field work, the original data has been released to the scientific community and can be freely downloaded at www.itanes.org. It is our hope that many scholars in Italy and abroad will engage in research employing the ITANES data.
Table 3. Principal investigators and main publications (excluding journal articles) of ITANES

Year of ITANES study	Principal investigators	Main publications
1990	Arturo M.L. Parisi and Hans M.A. Schadee	Arturo M.L. Parisi e Hans M.A. Schadee (a cura di), Sulla soglia del cambiamento. Elettori e partiti alla fine della prima Repubblica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1995
1992	Piergiorgio Corbetta and Arturo M.L. Parisi	..
1994	Piergiorgio Corbetta and Arturo M.L. Parisi	Piergiorgio Corbetta e Arturo M.L. Parisi (a cura di), A domanda risponde. Il cambiamento del voto degli Italiani nelle elezioni del 1994 e del 1996, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1997
1996	Piergiorgio Corbetta and Arturo M.L. Parisi	ITANES, Italian National Election Studies, 1990-1996, Misure/materiali di ricerca dell’Istituto Cattaneo, Bologna, Istituto Cattaneo, 1997
2001	Mario Caciagli and Piergiorgio Corbetta	Itanes, Perché ha vinto il centrodestra, Oltre la mera conta dei voti. Chi, come, dove, perché, Bologna, il Mulino, 2001
2001	Mario Caciagli and Piergiorgio Corbetta	Mario Caciagli e Piergiorgio Corbetta (a cura di), Le ragioni dell’elettore. Perché ha vinto il centro-destra nelle elezioni italiane del 2001, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2002
2004a	Marco Maraffi	Marco Maraffi (a cura di), Gli italiani e la politica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2007
2004b	Patrizia Catellani and Piergiorgio Corbetta	Patrizia Catellani e Piergiorgio Corbetta (a cura di), Sinistra e destra. Le radici psicologiche della differenza politica, Bologna, il Mulino, 2006
2006	Paolo Bellucci and Paolo Segatti	Itanes, Dov’è la vittoria? Il voto del 2006 raccontato dagli italiani, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2006
2006	Paolo Bellucci and Paolo Segatti	Paolo Bellucci e Paolo Segatti (a cura di), Il Mulino, Forthcoming

References

• Mannheimer, R and G. Sani (1987) Il mercato elettorale. Identikit dell’elettore italiano. Bologna: Il Mulino.
• Barnes, S.H. and G. Sani (1975) Nuovi movimenti politici e partiti tradizionali. In M. Caciagli and A. Spreafico (eds.) Un sistema politico alla prova. Bologna: Il Mulino

Footnotes

¹ And also of the organised section of SISP devoted to Public Opinion and Political Behaviour: www.gips.unisi.it/circap/sisp.

² A grant proposal is usually advanced by 5 RGs from different university departments. PRIN regulation requires RGs to agree on a Scientific Coordinator for each proposal, chosen among the local coordinators

³ So far some 35 scholars – political scientists, political sociologists, political psychologists – have participated to the ITANES studies. Their names and institutional affiliation appear at www.itanes.org. The Steering Committee of the last 2006 ITANES study was composed by Paolo Bellucci (Univ. of Siena), Piergiorgio Corbetta (Univ. of Bologna, President), Patrizia Catellani (Univ. of Milano Cattolica), Marco Maraffi (Univ. of Milano), Paolo Segatti (Univ. of Milano), Salvatore Vassallo (Univ. of Bologna).