FLASH
Shkruar nga Sabino Cassese
Declining turnout, weakening parties and fragmentation are reshaping the Italian political system
Due to the increase in abstention, the number of voters has almost halved. Party membership has been reduced to a quarter of what it once was. The index of party fragmentation has increased. Parties fail to absorb the demands of the electorate and unite the diverse aspirations of coalition components.
What is happening to the Italian political system? How is politics transforming in our country? To answer these questions, the author examines these elements of the political system one by one and then analyzes the way they interact.
Once upon a time, over 90 percent of the electorate went to the polls; today this percentage has fallen to just over 50 percent. This means that a large proportion of voters refuse to vote and be represented. This may depend on the weakness of the political offer or the electorate's lack of trust in the parties. As a result, today a government can gain the trust of a parliamentary majority even with a voter base slightly larger than a quarter of the electorate.
Parties have become increasingly limited collective actors; the connecting link is absent or weak, due to the lack of a common policy that would serve as a unifying element. They no longer have a loyal base on which to rely (membership in a party also represents a promise of votes) and have been transformed into small oligarchic groups, as a result of the erosion and then the emptying of their social base.
Oligarchization is the common result of the loss of a strong territorial and social rooting, as well as the lack of division of ideologies and programs. The territorial organization of parties is weak. The stability of the structure, which should be an organizational reflection of the division of programs born of the internal collective debate, is missing, because the internal life is almost non-existent. There are no more party newspapers. Provincial and national congresses are held less and less frequently and are not held according to a regular calendar.
The political system remains, as in the past, multi-party, but it is a very different kind of multi-partyism. There used to be two dominant parties and three middle-ranking ones; today there are more parties with considerable weight. There used to be a core party around which alliances were built; today it is absent. The multi-party system was once centralized; today it is fragmented.
Finally, the political offer arouses less and less interest in the electorate: the topics that are raised and emphasized are those of the moment, while society asks about the future. Major issues of collective interest are relegated to the background and small clashes take the stage. Through the media, debates and polemics mainly penetrate the public space.
The Fathers of the Republic had conceived a polycentric system, but if today we move from the national to the subnational level, it must be admitted that the presidentialization of the regions has reduced the weight of the collegial representative bodies, to the point that it is difficult to say what they deal with. Even the large cities, where today a third of the population is concentrated and which in other areas of the world have acquired an important role in the political system, fail to make their voice heard.
The effects of the four factors examined are obvious and can be summarized with the expression “the desertification of politics”. Party associations have been reduced to a minimum, both in terms of membership and in their internal life. Political programs and platforms are absent. Competition has been reduced to polemics, to the constant search for difference rather than to programmatic comparison, to the denial of the other’s positions rather than to the affirmation of one’s own.
Democracy, according to Joseph Schumpeter's interpretation, functions as a competitive system in which parties compete for electoral consensus and the electorate chooses between the alternatives offered. But in Italy today the actors and actions are weak; the halving of the electorate and the sharp reduction in party membership, as well as multiparty fragmentation without a concentration on a party with significant weight, produce mobility and fluidity of the electoral body and push leaders to act to gain uncertain support, hoping that their success depends on the weakness of their opponents. /Adapted from Corriere /
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