Party Competition in the Italian General Elections of March 4 2018

In this paper we examine the structure of party competition in the Italian general elections of March 4 2018. We rely on the spatial approach to analyze the most salient dimensions of the policy space in the Italian context and to estimate political parties’ policy positions. Our analysis is based on original data from an expert survey following the Benoit and Laver format carried out by the authors in 2018. Although the focus is on 2018 general elections, this article investigates the changing structure of the Italian policy space over time as well as parties’ shifting policy positions, by using comparable expert survey data covering the 2006-2018 period. This study also provides an analysis of government formation in the aftermath of the 2018 general election grounded on the spatial approach to coalition formation.