The chaos that followed the Italian elections might be the foretaste of bigger changes to come. But which ones?
With no clear winner emerging out of the election, a new era of uncertainty opens for Italian politics. How can the country get out of the post-electoral impasse?
The Italian election resulted in a deadlock with no clear winner. But while Italy is stuck between politics as usual and a sterile protest vote, the seeds of a ‘liberal revolution’ have discretely been sown. Could this mark the beginning of an Italian spring?
There is no telling what the outcome of today's remarkably uncertain Italian elections will be. But the real story might just be Beppe Grillo's Movimento 5 Stelle, which could become the third political force in the country, and set a model for others in Europe to follow.
Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement has often been called a shake-up for Italian politics. But what if 'M5S' really obeyed an established paradigm that is far from the revolutionary ideas it claims to convey?
If they are anything like what has happened so far, we can expect the last two weeks before the Italian elections to be eventful, and full of surprises.
As the Italian elections draw closer, all contestants have taken their places for the final straight. Yet, the final outcome of the race is as uncertain as ever.
In November 2011, Mario Monti, an academic and former European Commissioner, was seen as the providential man to save Italy from its troubles. Now, only one year and a few months later, he is trailing behind in the polls and set to lose the upcoming elections. What happened?
Silvio Berlusconi has survived ejection and scandal to return to the centre of Italian politics. But it is his opponents more than the man himself who carry the blame for his continuing influence, says Geoff Andrews.
This Saturday's election saw the victory of former PM Milos Zeman over current Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg. The duel between a decried populist and an old-school aristocrat revealed a division previously unseen in modern Czech society.
On Saturday, the Czechs elected Miloš Zeman, an important figure of the democratic transition of the 1990s, to be their new president. Although this role is mostly a symbolic one, expectations were high for a change in public policy. Are Czech voters bound to be disappointed?
The run-up to the next national elections in Italy (to be held on 24/25 February) is marked by two trends that have already troubled the country's political life in the past years: fragmentation and political instability.
