Motions Of Stars Research Articles

Italian Electoral Law: A Story of an Impossible Transition?

This study identifies three drivers of the break in the majoritarian path to which electoral reforms seemed to be leading the Italian political system since 1993. The first is the unconventional political landscape, with the rise of the Five Star Movement and significant fragmentation of parties. The second is the “original sin” of the Italicum, designed under the assumption that the Senate reform would be successful. The third driver is the groundbreaking intervention of the judiciary, called repeatedly into question in order to assess the constitutionality of the Electoral Law in a context characterized by the progressive decline of Italian politics. The article will focus on drivers two and three and will proceed as follows. The first section will draw a general picture of the changes that have occurred in Italian electoral law after 1993, underlying the common aim shared by all recent electoral law interventions: to foster the affirmation and consolidation of a bipolar pattern. The second section will focus on the landmark decision of the Italian Constitutional Court (ICC), Decision No. 1/2014, which struck down Law No. 270 of December 21, 2005 (Electoral law for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic). This decision paved the way for judicial intervention in a sphere typically left to the mediation of different political interests and gave the legislature the way forward which led to the Italicum. The third section will deal with the Italicum, addressing its genesis, its primary features, and the declaration of unconstitutionality by ICC Decision No. 35/2017. Finally, the fourth section will address the currently open issues and the need for a legislative intervention which could determine whether the Italian political system will follow the majoritarian trend in the name of government stability, or if it will be hostage to both the political conflicts and the institutional flaws of super-perfect bicameralism.

A Study on an Analysis and Design of the Internal Structure of Heumgyeonggak-nu

In this study, the internal structure of a Heumgyeonggak-nu (欽敬閣漏) was designed, and the power transmission mechanism was analyzed. Heumgyeonggak-nu is an automated water clock from the Joseon Dynasty that was installed within Heumgyeonggak (欽敬閣), and it was manufactured in the 20th year of the reign of King Sejong (1438). As descriptions of Heumgyeonggak-nu in ancient literature have mostly focused on its external shape, the study of its internal mechanism has been difficult. A detailed analysis of the literature record on Heumgyeonggak-nu (e.g., The Annals of the Joseon Dynasty) indicates that Heumgyeonggaknu had a three-stage water clock, included a waterfall or tilting vessel (欹器) using the overflowed water, and displayed the time using a ball. In this study, the Cheonhyeong apparatus, water wheel, scoop, and various mechanism wheels were designed so that 16 fixed-type scoops could operate at a constant speed for the water wheel with a diameter of 100 cm. As the scoop can contain 1.25 l of water and the water wheel rotates 61 times a day, a total of 1,220 l of water is required. Also, the power gear wheel was designed as a 366-tooth gear, which supported the operation of the time signal gear wheel. To implement the movement of stars on the celestial sphere, the rotation ratio of the celestial gear wheel to the diurnal motion gear ring was set to 366:365. In addition, to operate the sun movement apparatus on the ecliptic, a gear device was installed on the South Pole axis. It is expected that the results of this study can be used for the manufacture and restoration of the operation model of Heumgyeonggak-nu.

Gemini NIFS survey of feeding and feedback processes in nearby active galaxies – I. Stellar kinematics

We use the Gemini Near-Infrared Integral Field Spectrograph (NIFS) to map the stellar kinematics of the inner few hundred parsecs of a sample of 16 nearby Seyfert galaxies, at a spatial resolution of tens of parsecs and spectral resolution of 40 km s− 1. We find that the line-of-sight (LOS) velocity fields for most galaxies are well reproduced by rotating disc models. The kinematic position angle (PA) derived for the LOS velocity field is consistent with the large-scale photometric PA. The residual velocities are correlated with the hard X-ray luminosity, suggesting that more luminous active galactic nuclei have a larger impact in the surrounding stellar dynamics. The central velocity dispersion values are usually higher than the rotation velocity amplitude, what we attribute to the strong contribution of bulge kinematics in these inner regions. For 50 per cent of the galaxies, we find an inverse correlation between the velocities and the h3 Gauss–Hermitte moment, implying red wings in the blueshifted side and blue wings in the redshifted side of the velocity field, attributed to the movement of the bulge stars lagging the rotation. Two of the 16 galaxies (NGC 5899 and Mrk 1066) show an S-shape zero velocity line, attributed to the gravitational potential of a nuclear bar. Velocity dispersion (σ) maps show rings of low-σ values (∼50–80 km s− 1) for four objects and ‘patches’ of low σ for six galaxies at 150–250 pc from the nucleus, attributed to young/ intermediate age stellar populations.

Anti-System Parties Revisited: Concept Formation and Guidelines for Empirical Research

On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the concept of anti-system party it is time to ask whether it enjoys good health in addition to longevity. Reflecting on what constitutes an anti-system party appears to be of unprecedented relevance, particularly in the light of the electoral success of populist parties such as the French Front National, the Five Star Movement in Italy and Syriza in Greece. This article highlights two crucial questions that remain unsolved if we follow existing conceptualizations: What are the boundaries of the concept? When does a party cease to be anti-system and how can it be reclassified thereafter? In order to overcome such limitations, this article develops a revisited concept of anti-system party and provides a set of guidelines for its empirical application. Furthermore, a novel typology capable of investigating the evolution of anti-system parties and classifying political parties in general is presented.

The Persuasiveness of a Message and the Problem of Legitimacy

The author analyses several selected speeches of Italian politicians: the founder of the Forza Italia party, Silvio Berlusconi; the founder and leader of the Five Stars Movement, Beppe Grillo; and the current Prime Minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi. The study makes it possible to evaluate whether the conditions for the ideale Sprechsituation (the ideal speech situation) of Jürgen Habermas are fulfilled in analysing the public discourse. Particular attention will be given to the relationship between the persuasiveness of the communication and the problem of legitimacy.

Proper motions of five OB stars with candidate dusty bow shocks in the Carina Nebula

We constrain the proper motions of five OB stars associated with candidate stellar wind bow shocks in the Carina Nebula using HST ACS imaging over 9--10 year baselines. These proper motions allow us to directly compare each star's motion to the orientation of its candidate bow shock. Although these stars are saturated in our imaging, we assess their motion by the shifts required to minimize residuals in their Airy rings. The results limit the direction of each star's motion to sectors less than 90 degrees wide. None of the five stars are moving away from the Carina Nebula's central clusters as runaway stars would be, confirming that a candidate bow shock is not necessarily indicative of a runaway star. Two of the five stars are moving tangentially relative to the orientation of their candidate bow shocks, both of which point at the OB cluster Trumpler 14. In these cases, the large-scale flow of the interstellar medium, powered by feedback from the cluster, appears to dominate over the motion of the star in producing the observed candidate bow shock. The remaining three stars all have some component of motion toward the central clusters, meaning that we cannot distinguish whether their candidate bow shocks are indicators of stellar motion, of the flow of ambient gas, or of density gradients in their surroundings. In addition, these stars' lack of outward motion hints that the distributed massive-star population in Carina's South Pillars region formed in place, rather than migrating out from the association's central clusters.

Spatializing Populism: Taking Politics to the People in Italy

Political parties with conventional memberships and hierarchical structures are under challenge across electoral democracies from movements and candidates that claim they are “going to the people” directly for their support. Italy has been a laboratory for this populism even as the term itself is used more widely. The basic question of what the people are to whom populism refers has not received much, if any, empirical examination. After surveying usage of the term populism, three facets behind the rise of Italian populism since 1990 are examined using a geographic perspective. First, the geography of voter turnout and rising abstention is considered to be emblematic of dissatisfaction with existing parties and the expanding pool of nonvoters available for mobilization by populist movements and candidates. Second, the role of the leader as an alternative focal point to the party is shown to be central to such populist movements. Silvio Berlusconi is the primary actor in this account, although other similar figures are identified. Third and finally, the rise of the Internet-based 5 Star Movement and the promise of going to the people without any institutional or geographical mediation is assessed. The Movement's dual identity as having strong roots in some places as a civic organization and a remarkably uneven geography as a protest movement shows how much even it cannot engage with a singular people. When examined closely, the promise of politics without mediation made by populist movements proves beyond realization.

“Sun Marker”

“Sun Marker” is a contemporary work of art and science located at an archaeological site in the Southwestern United States. Its origins come from the study of Ancestral Puebloan culture and life-ways and its creation was influenced by the architecture, traditions and observational methods of these prehistoric people, relating celestial movements of Sun, Moon and stars to calendar-keeping. The artist, Joe Pachak, designed “Sun Marker” so that it demonstrated natural light-and-shadow interactions with symbolic rock art images at the times of equinoxes and summer and winter solstices. In doing so, it became apparent that this modern-day piece of art could be used as a tangible laboratory to study light-shadow-icon events of the types being reported as having possibly been created hundreds of years ago. Having noticed interesting events of the types “discovered” by researchers, but not planned by Pachak, the authors joined the artist in a 15-year exploration of his “split boulder-representational” device. Our most important discovery is that completely unintended features, similar to ones passionately reported by researchers, were just as interesting as those carefully engineered into the sculpture. This work resulted in the formulation of vital research questions along with eight criteria offered here for more rigorous field research, with the hope that they might help guide cultural astronomy along the pathway toward becoming a scientifically mature discipline.

Big Text Corpora & Mixed Methods – The Roman Five Star Movement Blog

This paper presents the most significant results of a study into the political communication of the Rome branch of the M5S, or Five Stars Movement, conducted through analysis of its blog, a big text corpus, comprising posts, comments and images, which brought together between the period immediately prior to the May 2013 administrative elections and the present day. This corpus was subjected to advanced statistical text analysis, and targeted hermeneutic and content analysis. Semiotic analyses of visual material were also performed, in addition to network analyses of blog contributors and analyses of communicational efficacy. Research team members from several disciplines and a variety of institutions, worked in constant collaboration, adopting a mixed-method approach.

The 2016 Municipal Elections

The importance of the 2016 municipal elections in Italy was a consequence not only of the number and relevance of the cities involved, including Rome, Milan, Naples, and Turin, but also of their timing, occurring in the middle of the 2013–2018 electoral cycle. These elections were thus perceived as a mid-term test for the national government, acquiring a relevance that went beyond their specific local context. This chapter analyzes the electoral supply, voter turnout, electoral results, and vote shifts, focusing on a synchronic and diachronic comparison of the performance of the candidates and the parties. The evidence presented shows that despite winning the plurality of municipalities, the Democratic Party clearly paid the cost of ruling at the national level. The number of its mayors was halved, and it was defeated in Rome and Turin by the Five Star Movement, the true winner of these elections.

EUROSCEPTISM AND POPULISM IN ITALY: THE EXAMPLE OF “FIVE STARS” MOVEMENT

Nowadays in Europe there is an increasing number of political forces who call themselves eurosceptics. Italy, as a countryfounder of the EU, is no exception. Today, public opinion polls and the voting results indicate that the Five stars Movement (“MoVimento 5 Stelle”) is the most popular party in Italy. Among other things, the Movement stands on the position of euroscepticism, in particular, it is in favour of holding a referendum on the country’s withdrawal from the Euro zone. The paper examines the place and role of the party “MoVimento 5 Stelle” in the political landscape of Italy, its’ history and general points of party programme.

From Dreams to Reality: The Challenges of Italy's Five Star Movement

Since its birth in 2009, the Five Star Movement has achieved incredible growth, accompanied by important electoral successes. This has resulted in concrete responsibilities and influential positions in the system. Grillo's movement was born as an anti-system and populist force with interesting peculiarities, and the main challenge it is now facing is to prove itself able to govern and to transform problems into solutions. So far the promised revolution has not taken place: a mixture of inexperience, internal divisions, scandals and contradictions has already damaged the image of the movement, which is facing many challenges and a difficult transition. The evolution of the Five Star Movement shows all the weaknesses of populist movements facing reality. The best strategy to confront them is to ensure that all their contradictions emerge and, at the same time, to regain the citizens’ trust by providing credible solutions to their problems.

Political Communication in the (Iconic) Trump Epoch

Whatever the result of the 2016 US presidential election, it will signal a new era of political communication. Candidate Donald Trump defeated 16 contenders in the Republican primaries, most of them Republican Party insiders. There are several reasons for this unexpected turn of events. One of them is the different kind of communication that Trump employs. Trump's communication method, like that of the Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle) in Italy, uses a high number of icons (signs that represent objects by their similarity, such as images) instead of the indexes (signs that indicate their object by contiguity, such as tags, labels and proper names) that have characterised the last 20 years of political communication. This change encourages politicians to focus on communication as a ‘complete gesture’, and as a meaningful action that creates an ambience rather than stressing the role of the leader. This paper deals with the semiotic characteristics of this new kind of communication and explains the consequent key features of successful political communication in the coming years.

Political Parties and Participative Approaches to Democracy

Representative democracy is currenty facing strong social criticism for its incapacity to envolve people in a way that makes them part of the decision-making process. An existing gap between the representatives and the represented is hereby emphasized. In this space, the role of political parties is central in order to bridge society with institutions. How much are parties concerned about this issue? How and in which context do they interact more with their electorate and the wider society? Participatory democracy is emerging throughout the world in different forms and with different results, but the dominant pattern of democracy remains the liberal western democratic paradigm in which people can contribute barely through electing candidates. In order to achieve what Boaventura de Sousa Santos calls ‘democratisation of democracy’ the role of political parties is therefore fundamental in particular to achieve a more participative democracy within the representative model. This article approaches this theme through a bibliographic review comparing social movements and political parties with a focus on the innovation of the Five Star Movement in Italy. Finally, it provides a reading of the relationship between political parties andparticipation, including good practice and perspectives.KEYWORDS: Participation, political parties, social movements, political movements, representative democracy, participatory democracy.

Candidati, eletti e temi del M5S in Toscana

The 2015 Italian local elections strengthen significantly the presence of the Five Star Movement (M5S) in Tuscany with the entry of new faces into more than 150 council members, including the city of Livorno. Both nationally and locally, the fall of 2014 brought about internal disputes within the political movement, and were followed by the resignation of many Tuscan councilmen and the leaving of many activists. Despite contrasting definitions, the M5S successfully manages this internal unrest and elaborates its political offer for the regional elections. The article wishes to reconstruct this political offer in light of the 2015 regional elections in Tuscany. It specifically analyses the following: the process of selection, the background of candidates, the main issues of the electoral campaign and their results. What are the territories where the M5S was rooted the most? What are the profiles of the elected? What are their political stances? The methodological frame is based on materials collected from the movement's website, media coverage, public initiatives and face-to-face interviews with M5S candidates (elected and not).

The Five Star Movement

The success of the Italian party Five Star Movement (M5S) has been broadly attributed to its ability to occupy the space of radical protest against “old politics”. Due to the party’s criticism, its charismatic leadership, and its aggressive electoral campaigns, the M5S has been labeled as a populist. The unexpected result of 2013 election raises crucial theoretical questions: To what extent does the M5S electorate reflect the characteristics of a protest vote? To what extent was it also a vote driven by values, by individual evaluations on a specific political issue? The first part of the article aims to investigate the extent of negative political feelings among M5S’ voters. To disentangle the meaning and impact of protest, we distinguish two dimensions: the “system discontent” and the “élite discontent,” referring to both general and focalized images, sentiments toward and the representation of political institutions, voter power, and government performances. In the second part, we bring to the analysis a further explanation based on the theory of issue voting. The goal is to measure whether voters have chosen M5S purely because of their political resentment or also given that they shared a similar position on a number of crucial policies emphasized in the electoral campaign.

Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement: Organisation, Communication, and Ideology. Edited by Filippo Tronconi. Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2015. 254p. $107.96.

Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement: Organisation, Communication, and Ideology. Edited by Filippo Tronconi. Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2015. 254p. $107.96.

The regional primary elections in Italy: a general overview

ABSTRACTPrimary elections are frequently used by Italian parties, particularly those of the centre-left. Primaries are used not only at the local and national levels, but also at the regional level. Until 2013, primary elections had been held in a limited number of regions where there were presidential and legislative-assembly elections. The 2014–15 period, however, has seen an explosion in the use of primaries with eight taking place in a few months, almost as many as in the previous 8 years. To these should be added the closed and online primaries of the Five Star Movement. These, given their characteristics, can hardly be compared with the primaries of the centre-left. This article will look at the 17 regional primaries organised by the Italian centre–left parties. We analyse the level of participation of the selectors, the results and the level of competitiveness. Finally, particular attention will be paid to the performances of the primary-election candidates and those of the selected candidates in the subsequent elections. This will help us to understand whether the primaries affected the outcome of the regional elections.

IDEOLOGICAL AND STRATEGIC EUROSCEPTICISM IN EU POLITICS

After the 2014 European Parliament elections the voices of Eurosceptic forces have become increasingly louder, with their activity beginning to have direct infl uence on the EU politics, which can be proved by the results of the 23rd June UK’s EU referendum. Consequently, the interpretation of the term “Euroscepticism” and its typology is of a particular interest in the academic world. This article compares such varieties of Euroscepticism as “ideological” and “strategic”. Basing on the defi nitions, given by N. Sitter, P. Kopecky and C. Mudde, the author analyses the policies of the United Kingdom Independence Party and the Italian “Five Star Movement”. While both parties, calling for the withdrawal from the EU and the Eurozone respectively, and being members of the same European Parliament political group (Europe for Freedom and Direct Democracy) are considered anti-EU forces, Euroscepticism is not playing the same role in their policies. This can be explained by different historic attitude of the British and the Italians towards the European integration as well as different problems which the countries have to face being the EU members. Through examining the process of the parties’ institutionalization, their structure, and analyzing their initial aims, election programs, party leaders’ speeches and voting tactics in the European Parliament the author consistently proves that while in case of UKIP Euroscepticism is ideological and completely defi nes the party policy, in case of M5S it is purely strategic and aimed at attracting the electorate.

L'euroscetticismo e la critica politica ed economica all'Unione europea. Un confronto tra Front national, Movimento 5 stelle e L'altra Europa con Tsipras

In the academic literature and the media the positions of political parties on European politics are represented as a field polarized in pro-European and eurosceptics. Euroscepticism is thus considered a dimension of the political competition that absorbs the left-right cleavage. Is it appropriate to include in a single political front parties which are alternative to each other on the ideological and programmatic angle? The article addresses this issue by comparing the manifestos for the European elections of 2014 of three political forces differently positioned along the left-right axis: the Front National, the Five Star Movement and The Other Europe with Tsipras. Evidence of this analysis goes in a different direction from that currently prevailing in literature: euro-criticism and opposition to the integration principle cannot be overlapped, and the differences between left and right are not reabsorbed by an europeanism or anti-europeanism cleavage. The criticism towards EU stated by the radical right, the radical left and a political movement that defines itself as extraneous to the traditional political categories, such as the FSM, takes on the traits of a request for a return of the political, opposed to the apparent becoming technics and administration of the national and supranational politics.