The 2018 South Tyrolean Election and the Consociational System of Democracy: Stability Amidst Change?

Abstract

This article explores the impact of the 2018 South Tyrolean election on the autonomous province’s consociational system of democracy. Implemented to tame centrifugal tendencies between the territory’s language groups (German, Italian and Ladin), this system has since the 1990s been losing its inclusive capacity. While the Italian-speaking electorate has increasingly been underrepresented in the main decision-making processes, the German-speaking intra-ethnic electoral arena experienced the rise of secessionist parties. The article shows that, despite major changes affecting party politics in South Tyrol, the outcome of the 2018 election contributed to restore stability to the consociational system.