The geographical dynamics of Italian electoral change, 1987–2001

Much has been written about why the old Italian party system collapsed in the early 1990s, and the various features of the one that replaced it, such as the mixed electoral system and the emergence of the regionalist party, the Northern League. Relatively little research attempts to show how old parties were replaced as the system collapsed from 1987 to 1994, and as the subsequent system emerged and consolidated between 1992 and 2001. This paper uses spatial analysis to examine the geographical pattern of support for the fading and rising parties to show how the old Italian party system was replaced. Instead of seeing the geography of voting as a reflection of underlying social cleavages, on the assumption that new parties would just slot into the electoral “spaces” of the old ones, we see it as a useful diagnostic that can inform how one set of parties is replaced by another.