Voting Behavior, Coalitions and Government Strength through a Complex Network Analysis
Carlo Dal Maso, Gabriele Pompa, Michelangelo Puliga, Gianni Riotta and, Alessandro Chessa

TL;DR
This paper applies complex network analysis to parliamentary voting data to uncover community structures, measure polarization, and assess government stability, providing a novel methodological framework with broad applicability.
Contribution
It introduces new network-based metrics for analyzing political coalitions, coalition stability, and party contributions, demonstrated through a case study of the Italian Parliament.
Findings
Revealed unexpected political debate structures not aligned with established parties.
Identified the impact of party splits on community structures and individual deputies' positions.
Developed a general method to track government coalition stability over time.
Abstract
We analyze the network of relations between parliament members according to their voting behavior. In particular, we examine the emergent community structure with respect to political coalitions and government alliances. We rely on tools developed in the Complex Network literature to explore the core of these communities and use their topological features to develop new metrics for party polarization, internal coalition cohesiveness and government strength. As a case study, we focus on the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament, for which we are able to characterize the heterogeneity of the ruling coalition as well as parties specific contributions to the stability of the government over time. We find sharp contrast in the political debate which surprisingly does not imply a relevant structure based on establised parties. We take a closer look to changes in the community…
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