The political culture of the Alleanza nazionale: an analysis of the party's programmatic documents (1995-2002)

The birth of the Alleanza nazionale and its rise to power in Berlusconi's 1994 and 2001 cabinets have attracted great interest. The evolution of the AN's political culture from 1995 to the present has received far less attention. The interest of scholars is dominated by concern over the number of fascist chromosomes inherited by the AN, and the way these influence its policy choices. The weight of history overlays the problems faced by the party in its attempt to establish an original identity. This article investigates the formation of the AN's political culture through an analysis of the official programmatic documents produced thus far by the party, putting each in the Italian political context at the time of its issue. The documents show that the AN is no longer a neofascist, extreme right or populist radical-right party, but its values and beliefs have not found a stable form.     

The nation of the people: An analysis of Podemos and Five Star Movement's discourse on the nation

This article empirically explores how populist actors talk about the nation. This is a research area mostly tackled in studies on right-wing populism, with other forms of populist politics usually left out of the analysis. To fill this academic gap, we focus on the Spanish party Podemos and the Italian Five Star Movement (M5S). The former is a paradigmatic example of radical left populism, whereas the latter is commonly considered as a catch-all populist party with no clear ideological connotation. Through a discourse analysis on leaders' speeches and official public declarations, we focus on the role that national identity plays in the strategies of Podemos and M5S and on the type of nation they discursively construct. Whilst Podemos' populist strategy purposely aims at contending to the right ideologically loaded concepts and signifiers to construct an idea of nation fitting the party's leftist values, M5S's strategy mostly aims at appropriating valence issues, such as the “Made in Italy” brand and the concept of “national interest”. Thus, our analysis contributes to clarify the differences between the leftist political culture of Podemos and the “post-ideological” one of M5S, as also reflected by survey data confirming strong differences in “nationalist” attitudes between their respective electorates.     

Re-examining a modern classic: does Putnam's Making Democracy Work suffer from spuriousness?

What makes democratic institutions work efficiently? Robert Putnam argued in Making Democracy Work that a mixture of political participation and immersion in associative and social networks in the community, conceptualised as ‘civic community’ or ‘social capital’, is the explanation. Ever since its publication, many questions have arisen about the validity of Putnam's theory. Among the most relevant concerns stands the influence of the Italian Communist Party on Putnam's empirical tests. This paper aims to fill the gap left in the literature by testing Putnam's hypothesis against the political party in the regional government and the PCI's electoral support. Supporting Putnam, this paper finds that variations in the quality of democratic governments in Italy's regions are a function of civic community even after adjusting for the presence of the Italian Communist Party.     

Introduction

The second Berlusconi government came to power at the end of a period of unprecedented change in Italian politics to which the term 'Italian transition' is frequently applied. While the new government's arrival has not brought the transition to an end, the manner of its election powerfully symbolizes the end of much of what was 'unique' about the Italian polity. Such uniqueness derived essentially from the tripolar nature of the country's party system and the 'blocked' character of its democracy. The crisis of the early 1990s gave rise to the onset of a regime transition whose phases can be described analytically by applying Flanagan's (1973) developmental framework and Linz's (1978) breakdown and re-equilibration model. Given the transition's 'stalling', the article considers what kind of and how much change has taken place in the Italian political system and the degree to which the second Berlusconi government might represent a new departure for it. The Introduction concludes by presenting the 'aspects of the Italian transition' discussed in the following five articles.     

Towards a chequebook democracy? Business,parties and the funding of politics in Italy and the United States

This article seeks to establish to what extent Silvio Berlusconi's entry into electoral politics as leader of Forza Italia signals an ‘Americanization’ of Italian politics. It argues that Italian party democracy is moving in an ‘American’ direction in two ways. First, Italian party organizations are declining, leading to a more candidate-centred type of electoral politics. Second, the decline of parties is enhancing the ability of business to use its financial clout to tailor public policy to its own requirements. However, these trends do not have identical effects in Italy and the United States. This article will also show that this process of ‘Americanization’ interacts with the existing political praxis and institutional framework of Italian politics to produce an outcome which differs from both the traditional Western European model and the American model of party democracy. It will be concluded that this outcome seriously undermines representative democracy in Italy.     

Power or policy: a comparative study of the cohesion of Italian coalition governments in the First and Second Republics

In the 1990s the Italian political system witnessed momentous changes that have severely impinged upon the country's political parties and party system. What has been the resulting effect on the cohesion of Italian governing coalitions? Has the effect on the nature and workings of governing coalitions been a product of the changing motivations of political parties? This article attempts to tackle the following questions by using the general framework of several formal coalition theories complemented with an analysis of the specific features of the Italian political context.     

The 2013 elections and the Italian political system

The February 2013 Italian general elections were characterized by the highest volatility to date. Although, thanks to the majority bonus, the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) obtained the absolute majority of seats in the House of Deputies, it could not be considered the winner of the elections. Lacking a majority in the Senate, it was obliged to form a government with Silvio Berlusconi's party and with the rather small number of parliamentarians elected in former Prime Minister Mario Monti's list. In spite of his last-minute surge, Berlusconi was a clear loser, having lost almost six million votes in respect of his 2008 victory. Comedian Beppe Grillo's Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Stars Movement) received the highest-ever number of votes for a new entry into any post-war European general election. Unwilling to play the coalitional game and made up of inexperienced and incompetent parliamentarians, Grillo's party has remained isolated and ineffective. The present Italian party system consists of three poles, the Movimento Cinque Stelle playing the role of anti-system party. Institutional reforms and especially reform of the electoral system, which has been struck down by the Constitutional Court, are again the focus of debate. Restructuring of the Italian political system is yet to come.     

The Democratic Party and the restructuring of the Italian party system

Abstract

Out of a quickly performed merger between the Left Democrats and the Daisy, a new party has made its appearance in Italy: the Democratic Party (Partito Democratico – PD). In the summer of 2007 three candidates, Walter Veltroni, Rosy Bindi and Enrico Letta campaigned in order to convince sympathizers and supporters of that, yet non-existing party, that they were worthy of the office of Secretary of the PD. The election of Veltroni contributed to the already existing tensions within the centre-left governmental coalition that led to the demise of Prodi's government and to early elections. In April 2008, though receiving 33 per cent of the vote, the Democratic Party suffered a serious defeat. This article explores the reasons of the defeat and analyses its consequences on the restructuring of the Italian party system and the future of the Italian political system. Unless the Democratic Party is capable of finding an adequate organizational model and of expanding its electoral support beyond the areas of the traditional entrenchment of the former Communist party, the centre-right seems destined to guide Italian politics for some time to come.     

Becoming the ‘party of civil rights’: the Radical Party, 1962–1979

ABSTRACT

The article reconstructs how the Italian Radical Party became, from the mid-1960s, the party of ‘civil rights’, and what its main battles for these rights were between 1967 and 1979. In the Italian political system the Party played a crucial role in the process of re-institutionalization that took place in the 1970s, helping to transfer demands formulated in social and cultural terms since the 1960s to the legislative-institutional level. Making the battle for civil rights the object of their own political action had a systemic meaning for the Radicals – namely, to undermine the dominion of the Christian Democrats and redefine the relations between the political sphere and society. This was closely linked to the political strategy of the party and to the organizational form it gave itself from 1967 onwards. These aspects, however, did not remain unchanged between 1967 and 1979; rather, they fed on the Radicals’ evolving vision of Italian society (on its social turmoil) on the one hand, and on the other they reacted to the evolution of the Italian political scenario, in particular to the possibility of building a parliamentary alternative to the Christian Democracy.     

Communists on the Brink: The Gorizian Comrades of the Early Post-War Period

Much is known about the early post-war history of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). However, considerably less attention has been directed to its later affiliations; those in regions at the time contested in terms of their national sovereignty and which were consequently integrated to the PCI national party structure at different stages over the course of the late 1940s and 1950s. They include the communist organisations in the former Venezia-Giulia region or the Julian March, on Italy's north-eastern border with Yugoslavia. Drawing on new empirical evidence, this paper looks at the singularly pragmatic nature of the contemporary communist movement in the Gorizian Province, as illustrated in its responses to a series of testing situations and paradigm-shifting developments. It examines these comrades' trajectory from revolutionary pro-secessionists intent on annexing their region to the new People's Republic of Yugoslavia, to ‘Italian’ communists' intent on superseding the majority Christian Democrats in the immediate context. Themes addressed in this analysis include those of agency, geopolitics, political and national identity.     

Children's projected political preference: transcending local politics

Traditionally, research on political preference has primarily focused on adults within their local political context. This research attempts to show that the perceived political preference of children is part of their national identity, and encompasses not only local politics but also the global and regional discourse. The present study surveyed 1187 Palestinian adolescents attending school, grades 5–7, in the West Bank to examine whether children's future political party preference is grounded in local/global discourse. The findings revealed a discrepancy between participants' perceptions of the local dominant political party and their projected political party preferences. This research argues that political party preference is facilitated through the transcendence of national identity embedded in children's geopolitical agency. The significance of the findings emphasizes that territorial boundaries are artificial; therefore, children's geopolitical agency is impacted by extraterritorial discourse and is able to transcend the local and regional context into a global politics.     

Language and politics in Italy: from Moro to Berlusconi

The article posits the existence of a nexus between some language dimensions on the one hand, and the type of party system and degree of electoral volatility on the other. The first part dissects the old language of Italian politics, these days contemptuously referred to as politichese , and argues that its cryptic character can be properly understood only if seen against both the functional requirements and systemic constraints of the Italian post-war political regime in general, and the functioning of its party system in particular. The second part examines the new language that emerged in the early 1990s, the so-called gentese , and argues that its populist characteristics are linked to the disintegration of old parties which meant that a sizeable portion of the electorate was up for grabs. Other important factors were the emergence of political actors who wished to differentiate themselves from those of the past and their perception that the Italian party system was changing. Il saggio esplora alcuni dei nessi esistenti tra varie dimensioni del linguaggio politico (lessico, complessitÀ sintattica, tono) da un lato, e dimensioni politiche (tipo di sistema di partiti e grado di mobilitÀ elettorale) dall'altro. La prima parte esamina il vecchio linguaggio della politica italiana, oggi sprezzantemente definito politichese , e sostiene che il suo carattere ermetico e complesso è da collegarsi ad alcune caratteristiche del sistema politico della Prima Repubblica e al suo sistema partitico in particolare. La seconda parte esamina il nuovo linguaggio politico italiano (il cosiddetto gentese ) e sostiene che le sue caratteristiche populiste vanno collegate all'aumento della mobilitÀ elettorale registrata all'inizio degli anni 90 (dovuta anche alla disintegrazione dei partiti tradizionali) e alla percezione, largamente errata, dei nuovi attori politici che la riforma della legge elettorale avrebbe condotto necessariamente a un sistema partitico bipolare.     

Containing containment: rethinking Italy's experience during the Cold War

This article examines the impact of the Cold War on the Italian political system. It compares the relations of the two main Italian parties - the DC and the PCI - with their external interlocutors and allies - the USA and the USSR - during the first decade of the Cold War. By doing so, the article rejects traditional interpretations of how post-Second World War international constraints limited Italy's sovereignty. It argues instead that the main Italian pro-western party, the Christian Democrats, deliberately opted for a policy of containment of American pressures. Such a policy was functional to the twin objectives of consolidating DC hegemony, and safeguarding Italy's new republican constitution.     

Ignazio Silone and the Fascist political police

Secondino Tranquilli (alias Ignazio Silone) was one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in January 1921. Esteemed by Moscow and the Comintern, Silone was given increasingly important functions in the clandestine PCI organization in the 1920s and was appointed to its Political Office. His political career, which ended with his expulsion from the party in summer 1931, was frequently recounted by Silone himself who, as a famous writer, felt obliged to come to terms with his political past. Recent studies by Mauro Canali and Dario Biocca of Silone's membership of the PCI have shown a rather different truth. The documents they have published show that ever since he was in the young socialist movement Silone was collaborating first with the Italian police and then with the Fascist police. Throughout, he was corresponding with a high-ranking official in the Italian police, Guido Bellone. Their relationship entered into a crisis that ended Silone's collaboration when in April 1928, following the explosion of a bomb in Milan that caused some twenty deaths, his brother Romolo Tranquilli was arrested and sentenced to twelve years' imprisonment. This clearly weighed on Silone's conscience and was probably the original cause of his eventual abondonment of politics and his own 'double' role, to become awriter instead. Thispainful journey involved frequent treatment in specialist clinics where Silone received intensive psychoanalytical treatment.     

The Italian resistance between history and memory

Abstract

Since the 1960s the Resistance has held pride of place in public ceremonial, political debate and to a point also in historcial writing in Italy. The emphasis on its popular and national character transformed the Resistance into the struggle of the whole country to rid Italy of the German invaders and the small number of Italian fascists who remained their allies, but in ways that took no account of the complexity of people's reactions and the different ways in which Italians experienced the years immediately after the fall of fascism. In the last decade, however, numerous accounts have been published that contradict the images of the Resistance that for 30 years have constituted the ‘official’ memory of the Italian Republic. As a result, the Resistance offers a classic example of the ‘public use of history’, in which historical interpretation has served primarily to justify party political, instutitional and idelogical ends. It is now clear, however, that the supposed unity against fascism was more the result of agreement that there were limits beyond which political differences could not be pressed rather than of a deeper political unity that might have provided the basis for the political and institutional reform of the Italian Republic. The contrasting memories and interpretations of that period that have recently re-emerged for the same reason make it more difficult to project a new Italian democracy for the future.     

Leaders,dreams and journeys: Italy's new political communication

This article argues that the modernization of Italian political campaigns and their relationship with the media have led parties and candidates to reconceptualize both their symbols and their rhetorical visions. In contrast to the past, Italian political communication now appears clearly 'Americanized' and candidate-centred. Candidates evoke symbolic visions stressing leadership and personal characteristics instead of referring to the ideological and party symbols that dominated the old campaigns. As in the USA, dreams and journeys are now used in Italy as political images, and communication focuses on the construction of leadership. The author argues, however, that despite these similarities, the Italian personalization of politics differs in many respects from that found in the USA, above all in the lack of institutionalization of political symbols in Italy.     

Berlusconi,strong government and the Italian state

Over the past decade, state capacity has increased at all levels, including that of central government, and the emergence of effective government in Italy has proved popular. A second trend has been the reassertion of party government since 1996. Given these two trends, the large parliamentary majority obtained by Silvio Berlusconi's alliance, the Casa delle LibertÀ, might be expected to result in strong party government. In fact, Berlusconi's triumph offers something more and something less than party government, challenging Italian democracy. Nevertheless, as a consolidated democracy, Italy should be able to withstand such a challenge. One stable, democratic outcome to Italy's political transformation would be the consolidation of a Schumpeterian model of democracy. This would require the anomalies of the right's accumulation of powers to be resolved, a process which the left could promote by accepting that strong democratic government is a public good, and by organizing itself to challenge Berlusconi by campaigning to provide Italy with such government through parliamentary competition.     

Silvio Spaventa and Marco Minghetti on party government

ABSTRACT

This article contextualizes, explores, and compares a selection of writings on party government and the modern State authored throughout the 1880s by two major representatives of post-Risorgimento Italian liberalism – Silvio Spaventa (1822–1893) and Marco Minghetti (1818–1886). Its comparative analysis unveils two alternative paths for taming factionalism and securing political freedom in modern representative governments: the strategy of monism pursued by Spaventa, revolving around the primacy of the State and its unity; and the strategy of pluralism championed by Minghetti, praising self-government and the multiple associations that enliven civil society. It connects these strategies to the intellectual background of the two authors – the importance of Hegel’s ideas for Spaventa; the implications of Tocqueville’s anti-Hegelianism for Minghetti – and maps them onto their visions of party government. In doing so, it retrieves an important chapter in the Italian debates on parties that has received scarce consideration among Anglophone scholars. It also helps to pluralize our understanding of Italian liberalism(s) in the aftermath of the Risorgimento. Finally, it draws the attention of Anglo-American political theorists and historians to Minghetti’s seminal book I partiti politici e l’ingerenza loro nella giustizia e nell’amministrazione (1881), which offered the first systematic analysis and defense of parties, and their difference from factions, in the history of modern Italian political thought.     

Constructing a national identity from a created literary past: Giosuè Carducci and the development of a national literature

Giosuè Carducci's conception of Italian literature differed from those of Francesco de Sanctis and Benedetto Croce. He argued that Italian literature, together with a concomitant cultural identity and political mission, developed along a continuous, progressive and evolutionary path. This study analyzes Carducci's creation of an Italian cultural and political identity through literary history and his construction of a plausible model for its historical development by incorporating literary,scientific and political theories. Carducci gave Italians a past of which they could be proud, proof of Italy's leading role in Europe's civilizing mission, and a strategy to accomplish it. Carducci's conception of italianitÀ, defined in terms of a historic mission of grandezza , was one of several brands of Italian nationalism. His linking of literary history to aspirations of national unity and aggrandizement implied that the mantle of the Risorgimento now belonged to the educated elite. This linkage of literature and national identity to aspirations of cultural and political hegemony explains why Carducci was so popular with the Nationalist Party whose leaders invoked his literary history to legitimize their political program and to discredit their political opponents prior to World War I and under Fascism.     

Party organisational change in Italy (1991–2006)

This article analyses, adopting the well-known approach of Katz and Mair, the issue of organizational change within Italian political parties since 1990. In addition to an account of trends in membership, local units, finances, staff, and of changes in party statutes, the article aims at testing the widespread view in the literature that organizational resources–hence power–are becoming more and more concentrated in the hands of party and/or parliamentary leaders, and correspondingly that the territorial presence of parties is declining. The analysis of the change over time of Katz and Mair's party organisational ‘faces’ leads to the confirmation, to a large extent, of the overall hypothesis of a decline of the party at ground level, and a concentration of party resources in the central office, and above all in the party in public office.