Centripetal approaches to democracy in divided societies seek to promote inter-ethnic accommodation and moderation by making politicians dependent on the electoral support of groups other than their own base. Such cross-ethnic voting stands in contrast to situations where politicians need only the support of their own co-ethnics to win elections. This distinction can be used to evaluate the utility of centripetal electoral systems in promoting voting across ethnic divides. To do so, this article begins by considering some critiques of centripetalism, showing that cross-ethnic voting is more common in both institutional design and actual practice than some critics believe. It then moves on to examine cases of cross-ethnic voting via ethnically designated party lists, cross-regional party formation rules, at-large communal or sectoral seat reservations, and uni-directional vote-pooling, using these cases to construct an index of strong, moderate and weak centripetal electoral systems.

Prospects for democracy in multi-ethnic societies are generally more promising if elections are not mere ethnic censuses, in which people vote predominantly for co-ethnic parties and candidates. But what institutions facilitate or hinder ethnic voting? Unlike past studies, this article explores ethnic voting by conducting a natural experiment (rather than surveys or laboratory experiments). It examines the case of Fribourg, a bilingual (French/German) Swiss canton where elections at different levels of government, within the same electoral district, are held under both majoritarian and proportional systems. Coupled with the high territorial homogeneity of the linguistic groups, this unique setting allows us to conduct a robust empirical analysis of voter behaviour. We find that cross-ethnic voting is significantly more frequent in multi-member majoritarian elections than in list-PR elections or in two-member majoritarian elections. Our results yield qualified support to the centripetalist approach to electoral design in multi-ethnic societies, that favours majoritarian systems, rather than to the consociational school that advocates proportional representation.

Democracies come in all shapes and sizes. Which configuration of political institutions produces the highest democratic quality is a notorious debate. The lineup of contenders includes ‘consensus’, ‘Westminster’, and ‘centripetal’ democracy. A trend in the evaluation of the relationship between empirical patterns of democracy and its quality is that the multidimensional nature of both concepts is increasingly taken into account. This article tests the assertion that certain centripetal configurations of proportionality in party systems and government, and unitarism in the remaining state structure, might outperform all other alternatives both in terms of inclusiveness and effectiveness. Analyzing 33 democracies, the results of interactive regression models only partially support this claim. Proportional–unitary democracies have the best track record in terms of representation, but there are little differences in participation, transparency, and government capability compared with other models.

Recent developments, especially the outcome of the 2008 election, appear to point to the definitive sidelining of centrism in Italian politics. In reality, it remains significant – not least because of the opportunities for influence all bipolar systems give to parties not of the left or right, and because of the possible consequences of reassessments of centrism's historical significance. The term itself has been used to denote a kind of political outlook or ideology and, consequently, a kind of political strategy. A number of party and elite-level strategies called centrist are identified; one of these – transformism – has roots that stretch back at least to the nineteenth century and is not specifically Italian. Transformism has been variously interpreted. Against this background, the articles in this special issue together evaluate the historical importance of centrism and its current significance for Italian politics. As a governing strategy, centrism is practiced differently now than in the past, but it continues to be practiced.