Search

The article argues that the persistent high level of dissatisfaction vis-a-vis parties comes from a mismatch between public expectations and parties’ performances. The present lack of confidence in...

This article discusses 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.

The Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia Cristiana, DC) constituted the centre of gravity in post-war Italian politics. The party collapsed after 1992, due to long-term changes in Italian society and the eruption of the Clean Hands investigation into political corruption. The DC lost more than half its vote in the 1994 elections: Why did the party lose so much? And where did its votes go? Our answer highlights the effects of modernisation and secularisation as key causes in the demise of the DC vote and in the dispersion of its vote to other parties: parties claiming a lineage from the DC, either truly DC-legacy parties (the PPI, the CCD, the CDU, the UDC and the Margherita), or newcomers on the centre right (Forza Italia and the Northern League), or, finally, the by-products of the party-system’s transformation (the PD and PdL). This article shows that the DC-legacy parties and the Northern League were the most effective in attracting former DC voters. It also demonstrates, once more, the importance of...

Giovanni Gozzini and Renzo Martinelli (1998) Storia del Partito comunista ‘italiano. VII. Dall'attentato a Togliatti all'VIII Congresso (Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore), pp. i‐xviii, 1–659, 80,000 lire. The publication of the seventh volume of the ‘History of the Italian Communist Party’ is a noteworthy event. In the party's often tumultuous history, few periods were as difficult as the one covered in this volume: 1948–56 embraces the crushing defeat of the Left in the 1948 elections, and covers the depth of the Cold War, when the PCI's subjugation to the Soviets was never seriously in question. The Journal of Modern Italian Studies therefore believes that it is more than justified to devote more attention than usual to this volume. The result is a series of extended reviews by four students of various aspects of Italian Communism. Stephen Hellman underscores the insights that the work provides concerning the party organization, and notes how basically unflattering is the portrait of Palmiro Togli...

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.