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For over forty years, Italy was seen as a ‘party government’ system, with a party system that was extremely fragmented, consisting of up to 10 national parties, at least seven of which could at any time be considered ‘relevant’. As a consequence of various factors that found expression in the results of two crucial elections in 1992 and 1994, all of this has abruptly come to an end. Party organizations have literally fallen apart after at least thirty years of successful adaptation to societal and political system changes, with all parties and other electoral competitors having been deeply affected, and a number of the traditional parties, including the three largest ones, suffering divisions and transformations. The transformation was the result of three sets of direct causes: first, there had been shifts in political demand for specific parties or even parties in general, resulting from greater potential voter mobility; second, there had been change in the political supply provided by the parties; and third, the new electoral law impacted directly on the parties’ parliamentary delegations; some of these factors are arguably still effective, and the transformation of the Italian party system is far from complete. The introductory section of the chapter discusses this changing structure of the Italian party system; the next three sections of the chapter cover the same topics as the other country case studies in the book, and examine party legitimacy, party organizational strength, and party functionality (in governance, political recruitment, interest articulation and aggregation, political communication and education, and political participation).

This chapter asks under which conditions elections are most meaningful by looking at (a) the contribution of institutions, (b) the supply side of politics, and (c) the demand side. Emphasis is placed on the conditions under which voters can base their choices on proximity considerations. The respective institutional hypothesis is that proximity considerations are moderated by the character of a political system: the more consensual it is the stronger the impact of proximity on the vote. For supply, the chapter takes the policy proposals parties made in their election platforms, looking for clarity in the offer with regard to the relationship between political offers and the perceived left–right position of a party. Regarding demand, the chapter investigates the impact of proximity on voting. The results do not support the assumption that consensus democracies produce more proximity and better representation as Lijphart claims. The results rather support the supply hypothesis.

This chapter analysis reasons for issue voting going beyond the claim in the literature that cognitive mobilization and the decline of cleavage politics is the explanation. The focus is on a utility based micro-foundation of issue voting. Results for Germany as well as from comparative analysis show that even for the most sophisticated voters issues are only considered in their vote choice if other, easier accessible criteria for voting fail to make a difference between political choices. The consideration weights for issues in vote choice thus are to a high degree depending on the structure of political supply.

This concluding chapter discusses the findings in the book against the background of the two dimensions of electoral change, namely heterogeneity and complexity. Results clearly show a structured heterogeneity that is an answer of voters to complexity of the context of voting. Voters are rather on the move looking for ways to cope with complexity than on the run away from politics. The implication for the understanding of the working of democracy is that just looking at the voters can only contribute little to the understanding of election outcomes. An integrated approach of electoral research needs to take into account the contingencies of voting behavior on political supply.