Guido PANZANO

- Doctoral Project: "Roots of Ethnic Authoritarianism: Autocratizing Plural Societies in the Contemporary World" (2020-2024)

This doctoral project aims to examine phenomena of autocratization (namely, democratization in reverse) in contemporary political regimes characterized by ethnic cleavages.      

In my thesis I shall answer the following research question: how do autocratization and ethnicity interact? Through a multi-method approach, combining quantitative and qualitative techniques, I shall in detail investigate phenomena of autocratization (dependent variable) in plural societies through factors (and their combinations) associated with ethnicity (independent variable): in short, ethnic drivers of autocratization in plural societies. 

The main argument of the doctoral thesis will thence be that ethnic factors associated with sociocultural, socioeconomic, institutional, party and leadership-centered variables shall foster or increase polarization in plural societies. This exacerbation of the ethnic cleavage, in turn, will cause autocratization processes in these contexts, by either disconnecting inequal groups, or incentivizing government aggrandizement, or also through the rise of nondemocratic parties or political elites.

- Minority Representation in National Societies (2020-2021)

The integration to the project ‘Minority Participation and Representation in National Societies’ (Principal Investigator: Timofey Agarin, Queen’s University Belfast) shall analyze ethnic parties and party systems in 4, ethnically divided, European border regions (South Tyrol, Northern Ireland, Schleswig Holstein and Southeast Lithuania).

The analysis (presented at the IPSA RC 14 Colloquium of December 2020 and to be presented at the PSA Conference in 2021) will scrutinize 4 ethnic parties: Sinn Féin (SF), South Tyrolean People’s Party (SVP), South Schleswig Voters’ Association (SSW) and Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania-Christian Families Alliance (LLRA). With a primary analysis of 14 party manifestos, the research will focus on party positioning on old and new issues of sovereignty and self-determination. It shall thus consider the characteristics of these political actors, propose a new typology of ethnonational (inclusive/exclusive) parties, map party system format and dynamics and explain their change in the contemporary period.

Project supported by the European Academy of Bolzano (EURAC Research). Contract as a research assistant (1 month) for data collection (2020).