LA POLARIZZAZIONE QUARANT’ANNI DOPO "PARTIES AND PARTY SYSTEMS": TRA VECCHI E NUOVI INTERROGATIVI

The article aims to reason around some concepts proposed by Sartori, concerning the polarization of party systems, and to reconstruct the polarization trends in some democracies, already analyzed by the Sartori forty years ago. Adopting a similar method of analysis of Sartori, it was useful to compare and increase the number of cases analyzed in his study (4 more countries - 3 new democracies and a Nordic democracy with political overtones in many different aspects than in Finland, considered by Sartori). The main results confirm that for about twenty years the scenario outlined by Sartori was stable. Nevertheless, with the new Millennium, much has changed in terms of stability, especially where the stability of party systems has been more precarious and the new political actors are configured as radical, while the old ones are radicalized for electoral survival needs. These empirical findings introduce new questions about the configuration and the possible evolution of European party systems and the possible distinctions between polarization and radicalization.