The vote NO (a defeat for the proponents) of the 2016 Italian referendum has been broadly attributed to a wave of protest politics sweeping Western democracies. Given that the government of Matteo Renzi proposed and supported the referendum, the resulting vote against government interests raises a crucial theoretical question: to what extent does the referendum vote reflect the characteristics of a protest vote? To disentangle the meaning and impact of protest, we distinguish two dimensions: the ‘system discontent’ and the ‘elite discontent’, referring to both general and focalized images: general sentiments towards the representational aspects of political institutions as compared to focused sentiments towards government performances. The circumstances surrounding the referendum provide a crucial test for whether these two forms of protest can be at odds with one another. We expect and find that elite discontented voters tend to reject this referendum. Vice versa, system discontent increased support for the referendum, as it would reform political institutions to which voters had negative sentiments. Findings suggest that analyses of political psychology and behaviour identify the conceptual foundations for protest and ask whether forms of protest work in parallel or at odds. Protest attitudes and their effects should be thought of as multidimensional.

2016年意大利公投的否决（支持者遭到否决）广泛地归因于席卷西方民主国家的一波抗议政治浪潮。鉴于Matteo Renzi政府提出并支持全民投票，最终反对政府利益的投票引发了一个至关重要的理论问题：全民投票在多大程度上反映了抗议投票的特征？为了弄清抗议的含义和影响，我们区分两个维度：“系统不满”和“精英不满”，分别指代一般和集中的图像：相对于对政府的关注感而言，对政治机构代表方面的一般感想表演。全民公决的周围环境为这两种抗议形式是否相互矛盾提供了关键的考验。我们期望并发现，精英不满的选民倾向于拒绝这次公投。反之亦然，系统不满增加了对公民投票的支持，因为这将改革选民对其怀有消极情绪的政治体制。研究结果表明，对政治心理和行为的分析确定了抗议的概念基础，并询问抗议形式是并行还是不一致。抗议态度及其影响应该被认为是多维的。