After decennia of research on economic voting, it is now established that the state of the economy affects voting behaviour. Nevertheless, this conclusion is the result of a focus on predominantly national-level economies and national-level elections. In this paper, we show that at a local level as well, mechanisms of accountability linked to the economy are at work. The local economic context affected voting behaviour in the 2012 Belgian municipal elections, with a stronger increase of unemployment rates in their municipality significantly decreasing the probability that voters choose an incumbent party. Additionally, we observe that voters are not opportunistically voting for incumbents who lower tax rates. Instead, voters seem to be holding local incumbents accountable for local economic conditions. We hence conclude that voters care about economic outcomes, not about what specific policies are implemented to reach these outcomes.

The debate that has arisen around the weakening of the traditional cleavages’ heuristic power in explaining vote suggests considering the role of lifestyles in designing politically meaningful social aggregates. We investigated the relationship between lifestyle and voting behavior, establishing the degree to which this relationship traces the effect of the socio-structural categories (e.g. social class) or is, at least in part, independent of them. Through a k-means clustering, we individuated a typology of four Italian lifestyles; we showed its relation to socio-demographic features and its ability to discriminate participants’ political attitudes. The subscription to each lifestyle was significantly associated with voting behavior, net of the variance accounted for by the traditional cleavages. The theoretical implication and further direction of research are discussed.

Social scientists have often neglected, or not sufficiently explored, the role of political factors in shaping state capacity. When they did, they mostly focused on key institutional features of political regimes, especially democracy. In this paper, we broaden this approach: besides the institutional traits of democracy, we analyze how governments and their ideologies influence state capacity. In particular, we assess the impact of democracy and executives’ partisanship on a composite index of state capacity, based on political order, administrative ability, and extractive capacity. To this end, we apply a pooled cross-sectional time-series model to 18 Latin American countries between 1995 and 2009. Our findings suggest that, in recent years, state capacity in the region was significantly affected by both democratic features and the ideological bearing of elected governments.

The recent and still enduring global economic and financial crisis deeply impacted the institutional framework in Italy and Spain by prompting a series of reforms, which ultimately re-shaped the local government features. Based on a qualitative comparative analysis of recent reforms, the author shows that (directly and indirectly) crisis-driven provisions have significantly impacted the local levels and changed the central/local relations in both countries. During the years of crisis, a decrease in local discretion in its three main facets (fiscal, administrative, and political/functional) has taken place. This outcome could both allow for a better understanding of how central and local governments have interacted during the crisis and to contribute to the formulation of more general considerations on local discretion and central/local relations in Italy and Spain.

The last part of 20th century saw the collapse of a dramatic number of dictatorships. Rather than democracy, several of these transitions brought regimes where limited political competition coexists with persistently authoritarian practices. The diffusion of this form of authoritarianism in the developing world raises several questions about its broader consequences. Most importantly, does political change short of democratization matter for ordinary citizens? Recent research demonstrates that nominally democratic institutions, even in the absence of people empowerment, can result in better living conditions. The paper adds to this debate by formulating and testing new hypotheses. I compare electoral authoritarianism with democracy and full dictatorship, including specific subtypes of the latter, and focus on both policy outputs and outcomes.