Party Organizations and Legislative Turnover: Signals of an Unstable Parliamentary Class?

Parliamentary turnover is an important question in political science due to its connection to salient topics like elite circulation and parliamentary roles, legislature institutionalization, executive-legislative relations, and the quality of the policy-making process. In this article we contribute to the debate by focusing on the Italian case from a longitudinal perspective. The 2018 general election was conducive to a relatively high level of turnover. This level is roughly equivalent to two previous electoral rounds. However, the empirical evidence shows that the conditions usually thought to account for another two exceptional elections seem not to apply to 2018. After introducing the literature on legislative turnover and arguing that this topic is worth tackling, we stress the use-fulness of the Italian case for comparative research and we provide a picture of our case study, presenting the theoretical puzzle and research questions. Subsequently we tackle this issue, claiming that the usual explana-tions fit only partially with our case. In particular, we argue that neglected intra-party factors can be a viable explanatory alternative. The article ends with a brief discussion of the findings