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- John Agnew, M. Shin and G. Bettoni. City versus metropolis:
The Northern League in the Milan metropolitan area. Forthcoming
in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.
Metropolitan areas are often seen as increasingly important components of the emerging
global space-economy. The national and global roles of central cities, however, may
lead them in fundamentally different economic and political directions from their
hinterlands, if the functions of the cities are decreasingly complementary to those
of their surrounding areas. In particular, the political complexions of city
and hinterland may come to reflect different cultural and economic orientations as a
result of divergence in political-economic trajectories between the two. This possibility
is explored using the example of the northern Italian city of Milan and its hinterland,
taken as the provinces of Bergamo. Como, Lecco, and Varese, with respect to
geographical patterns of support for the regionalist/separatist movement,
the Northern League, over the course of three national elections: 1992, 1994, and 1996.
Putatively a movement representing the interests of northern Italy as a whole, the
Northern League's stands on issues tended increasingly to represent the identities and
interests of the small manufacturing firms that dominate the fringe of the
metropolitan area, whereas Milan itself has an economic base of advanced services and
national-oriented manufacturing firms that would lead to the expectation of a very
different political orientation. Analysis of election returns suggests a divergence
between city and hinterland that is in large part accounted for by their distinctive
economic trajectories. There is no simple identity between a city and its metropolis.
- Shin, M. and John Agnew. The geography
of party replacement in Italy, 1987-1996 (uncorrected proofs).
Forthcoming in Political Geography.
With the disappearance of the two largest political parties and the emergence of
several new ones over the last decade, a new electoral map of Italy has emerged. We explore how
these ongoing changes to party politics in Italy were manifest spatially
between 1987 and 1996. In particular, the geographical aspects of party replacement
are examined in central and northern Italy. First, the parties that have succeeded
the Italian Communist Party (PCI) are examined in Tuscany, where the Italian left
has historically enjoyed high levels of electoral support. Second, we look at how
the regionalist Northern League has replaced the Christian Democratic Party (DC)
in the Veneto. Exploratory spatial data analyses (ESDA), and in particular,
local indicators of spatial autocorrelation (LISA), indicate that the processes
and patterns of replacement are more complex than the simple substitution of one
party with another in both of these regions, and illustrate the need to frame
geographically electoral change in Italy.
- Shin, M. "Whatever happened to Italy's 'red peasant'?":
Geographic refections upon la zona rossa.
Forthcoming in BelGeo.
The adjacent Italian administrative regions of Emilia-Romagna, Toscana, Umbria
and Marche constitute what is frequently referred to as la zona rossa, or
'the red zone'. This naming of the north-central area of the Italian peninsula
stems from the historically high levels of support that the Italian Communist Party
(PCI) enjoyed for much of the post-World War two period. Notwithstanding the
dissolution of the PCI, and the subsequent reconfigurations of the Italian left that
took place throughout the 1990s, voters within la zona rossa still exhibit leftist
tendencies. This article examines the socio-historical roots of la zona rossa and
presents the contemporary electoral geography of this area.
- Shin, M. Measuring economic globalization:
Spatial hierarchies and market topologies. Forthcoming in
Environment and Planning A.
Measuring the degree and extent of economic globalization is subject to a variety
of issues ranging from theoretical conceptualization to the selection of appropriate data.
This examination of economic globalization underscores the importance of a geographic
perspective that is necessarily situated within a temporal context. International
trade data and exploratory spatial data analyses (ESDA) are used to assess patterns
of economic globalization between 1970 and 1997. Results indicate that preserving
topological relationships between states in the global economy can guide, inform and
extend future studies of the processes and patterns of economic globalization.
- Shin, M. 2001. The politicization
of place in Italy. Political Geography 20: 331-352.
In electoral geographic studies,
the role of the political party is frequently overlooked in favor of analyses
that concentrate on the attributes of voters. This research examines the
organizational evolution of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) in Italy,
and in particular, the geographic structure and organization of the PDS.
Analyses of a 500-respondent survey show how the geographic variation of party
activities corresponds to electoral support, and underscore the significance
of informational networks to the continued success of the Italian Left
within its territorial stronghold referred to as la zona rossa, or 'the red zone'.
- Shin, M. and M. Ward. 1999.
Lost in space: The political geography of the defense-growth trade-off.
Journal of Conflict Resolution 43: 793-817.
This study examines the political geography of the linkage between military spending
and economic growth for the period from 1985 to 1995. Exploratory spatial data analyses
are used to determine how the spatial arrangement of countries influences the
defense-growth trade-off. The authors discover a strong spatial component to the
linkage between guns and growth.
- O'Loughlin, J., M.D. Ward, C. Lofdahl, J. Cohen, D. Brown, D. Reilly, K. Gleditsch
and M. Shin. 1998. The Diffusion
of Democracy, 1946-1994. Annals of the Association of
American Geographers 88: 545-574.
We examine the relationship between the temporal and spatial aspects of democractic
diffusion in the world system since 1946. We find strong and consistent evidence of
temporal clustering of democratic and autocratic trends, as well as strong spatial
association (or autocorrelation) of democratization. The analysis uses an exploratory
data approach in a longitudinal framework to understand global and regional trends in
changes in authority structures. Our work reveals discrete changes in regimes that run
counter to the dominant aggregate trends of democratic waves or sequences, demonstrating
how the ebb and flow of democracy varies among the world's regions. We conclude
that further analysis of the process of regime change from autocracy to democracy,
as well as reversals, should start from "domain-specific" position dis-aggregates
the globe into its regional mosaics.
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