Piero Ignazi

The Crisis of Parties and the Rise of New Political Parties

This paper has a twofold aim: to disentangle the question of party decline, analysing the current meanings and the empirical evidence offered by the literature; to highlight the different and even opposite outcomes of such decline. As far as the party crisis is concerned, contrary to a shared knowledge it is difficult to give a final word. It is suggested that the crisis concerns more a type of party rather than the party per se. Second, the challenges to the party are analysed. In the last decade a convergent attack against the traditional parties has been carried on: on one side, by the new social movements and their partisan representatives, the left-libertarian or New Politics parties; on the other side, by the newly emerged extreme right parties. This paper tries to demonstrate that both types of party are the by-products of the same structural conditions and both provide a (different) answer to the crisis of the partys expressive function.

The Extreme Right

This chapter aims at surveying the current terminology of the “extreme/radical/populist right parties,” stipulating criteria for the identification of such parties as a “party family” with its internal differiations, and underlining a set of hypotheses on these parties’ development with particular emphasis on the “political factors” and the general (Europe-wide) and particular (country-specific) timing.

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 Mairs 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.

Legitimation and Evolution on the Italian Right Wing: Social and Ideological Repositioning of Alleanza Nazionale and the Lega Nord

From its position as the epitome of the ‘old’ post-war fascist extreme right party, the Movimento Sociale Italiano/Alleanza Nazionale (AN) has shifted towards the ideological centre and reinvented itself as a proto-conservative party to exploit the new institutional logic of the post-1993 Italian political system. Conversely, the Northern League has shifted from its position as regionalist protest party to an actor more akin to other European extreme right parties, particularly in its authoritarian and anti-immigrant rhetoric. While the ANs evolution under Gianfranco Fini has seen it reintroduced into the political mainstream and included in the Forza-Italia-led government, this article examines the residual extremist views, such as support for fascism, found among the voters and members of the party. Moreover, despite the centre convergence and nationalization of the AN, the implantation of the Northern League in extremist ideological space demonstrates that there is a potential pool of voters receptive to anti-immigrant and populist-authoritarian appeal.

Power and the (il)legitimacy of political parties An unavoidable paradox of contemporary democracy

This article presents an interpretation of the present malaise that afflicts the political party in established democracies. Today, parties are not only seen as inefficient or unscrupulous instruments, they are increasingly being labelled as illegitimate. The basic reason for this bad reputation lies in their detachment from society and their encroachment on the state. Parties tried to counteract the difficulties they faced in extracting resources from society (members, party identifiers, militants, money) by turning toward the state, which offered financial support, paid personnel, physical structures and patronage benefits. This shift reinvigorated the parties, which are now richer and more powerful, but it has further diminished citizens’ confidence in the parties themselves. In order to recover their dwindling legitimacy, parties have recently introduced changes, giving members more say in the decision-making process and in the selection of candidates and leaders. However, these innovations have not succeeded in revitalizing them, nor improved their image. Thus, parties continue to be unbalanced: powerful and yet distrusted. In this sense, they resemble a sort of mighty but unsteady Leviathan.

From neo‐fascists to post‐fascists? The transformation of the MSI into the AN

This article analyses the recent transformation of the Italian neo‐Fascist party (Movimento Sociale Italiano‐ Italian Social Movement). The new party established by the former MSI, Alleanza nazionale (National Alliance), has been defined by its founders and many observers as a ‘post‐Fascist’ party. This article tries to highlight the continuities and the changes that are manifested in the new party. This goal is achieved by framing the recent events in the long history of the MSI and by analysing the party manifestos, documents and survey data on the party cadres’ attitudes, collected in the last two national congresses.

NEW CHALLENGES: POST MATERIALISM AND THE EXTREME RIGHT

Since the early to mid-1980s, West European party systems have broadened their spectra to include ‘new parties’. These newcomers are new in two different respects. First they are new because they have been founded (or have emerged from absolute irrelevance) in recent years; second because they do not belong to the traditional political families and pose an important challenge to them. The following analysis seeks to understand the origins of these new party families and to consider their significance. After an initial discussion of family membership, we proceed to consider their electoral performance and development, and several explanations for their initial appearance and subsequent growth: socioeconomic transformation and new social alignments; a crisis of democratic legitimacy; value change in society; and the failure of traditional political parties to respond to new demands and issues.

Votes and Votive Candles Modernization, Secularization, Vatican II, and the Decline of Religious Voting in Italy: 1953–1992

The authors examine the effects of modernization and secularization on the vote for the religious party in the Italian First Republic (1948–1992). In addition to modernization and secularization, they also introduce two new factors to the analysis: the importance of institutionalized Church and effects of the Church’s Vatican II reforms. Italy is of particular relevance because of the centrality of the Catholic religion in the Italian society and politics, and the domination of the religious party—the Christian Democracy (Democrazia Cristiana; DC) in the country’s party system until 1992. The authors analyze the impact on the DC vote of a series of indicators of modernization and secularization and of Church organization and reform. The uniqueness of the analysis rests on the exceptional detailed and historical data for the Italian commune (N = 6,140) across this time period and the use of advanced quantitative techniques. The analysis confirms the traditional interpretation of secularization but also stresses effects of the failure of the Church’s reforms of Vatican II. These reforms, which deemphasized the institutionalized Church in favor of a more individualized, spiritual view, were intended as a response to modernization. Instead, the reforms hastened the decline affiliated organizations and the religious party.

Sartori’s party system typology and the Italian case: the unanticipated outcome of a polarised pluralism without anti-system parties

ABSTRACT In this article we discuss Sartori’s party system typology and its eventual applicability to the Italian post-1994 party system. The first part of the article is devoted to an examination of the typology with particular reference to the case of the polarised pluralism which Sartori considered appropriate for the Italian party system until the late 1970s-early 1980s. In the discussion of the typology, particular attention has been attributed to the variable ‘ideology’, suggesting the relevance of the component ‘temperature’ which has been frequently mistreated compared to the other component, the more widely used ‘distance’. The final part of the article deals with a tentative assessment of the pertinence of polarised pluralism to the post-1994 Italian party system.

Religion, Rurality and Voting: Secularisation, Landownership and Italian Electoral Behaviour, 1953–2008

This article analyses the importance of socio-economic and religious factors in explaining the long-term electoral decay of the dominant party in Italy’s so-called First Republic – the Catholic DC – and the emergence of the regional autonomous Lega Nord (Northern League) from the DC’s remains. On the basis of a unique data set, this paper examines the effects of modernisation and secularisation of the DC electoral decline with particular reference to the change over time of the religious and rural constituencies, i.e. the two main DC reservoirs of votes; and the attraction of former DC voters to the Lega Nord, particularly in the old DC territorial bastion of support, characterised by high religiosity and concentration of farmers. The research demonstrates the relevance and persistence of structures profondes such as religion and rural property in electoral behaviour over a long span of time ranging from 1953 to 2008.