Political and organisational reforms on the Italian left.
| Author | Vampa, Davide |
| Position | Post-social democracy |
Over the last twenty years the Italian left has undertaken a process of political reform even more radical and transgressive than that implemented by the British left. Indeed, the Italian Democratic Party (PD) is the European party that, by introducing open primary elections, has gone furthest in reforming the rules governing leadership selection (Kenig, 2009). Moreover, the PD emerged from the merger of two parties - the post-communist Left Democrats (PCI-PDS-DS) and the moderate centre party La Margherita (DL) - which openly broke with all the political traditions of the twentieth century and sought to create a reformist, post-ideological party.
Overall, the PD represents the most radical case of ideological change on the European reformist left. To be sure, all social-democratic parties have shifted to the right in the last twenty or thirty years and have modified some aspects of their original identity. Yet they still identify themselves as part of the social democratic family (Moschonas, 2002). In contrast, the Italian reformist left has shifted from communism to post-social democracy in less than twenty years.
However, despite being apparently anomalous or extreme, the Italian experience could be repeated in other European countries where the left is increasingly weak and unable to build solid majorities. In particular, involving not only party members but also voters and supporters in decision-making processes and in candidate and leadership selection is now regarded as a possible solution to the crisis of popular legitimacy faced by centre-left parties. After the PD, the French Parti Socialiste (PS) has also decided to adopt open primary elections to choose the next centre-left candidate for the presidential election. Indeed, in 2009 the premiere secretaire Martine Aubry called for organisational reform of the PS to promote new forms of political participation. More recently, the new leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, has also suggested that 'a party of declining membership' could survive only by opening up its organisation and giving the general public a say in Labour leadership contests (Helm and Asthana, 2010). Of course, this debate on organisational issues is also related to the wider debate on the crisis of identity of the moderate left in Europe. From a comparative perspective, a deeper analysis of the Italian extreme case can therefore help us to understand the impact of processes of democratisation and organisational (and ideological) reform on the identity of the left and on political activism.
I begin with an analysis of the events that led to the creation of the PD in 2007. I then describe the transformations that occurred within the Italian left in the last three years. Finally, I discuss some of the issues that have recently emerged in the debate on the future of the PD and the Italian left in general.
From PCI to PD: a radical shift
From 1948 to the early 1990s, the Italian left was regarded as an anomaly in Europe, because it was dominated by a Communist Party that in the 1980s still controlled almost one third of the vote and had more than one million members. Whereas in the rest of Europe socialist and social democratic parties were able to impose their hegemony on the left, scoring between 30 and 50 per cent of the vote, the Italian Socialist Party never went beyond 15 per cent. However, with the collapse of the old party system at the beginning of the 1990s, the conditions for the creation of a large Italian social democratic party seemed very favourable. The collapse of the Soviet Union prompted the Communist Party (PCI) to reform its organisation and identity, thus giving life to a new party of the reformist left. In general, between the late 1980s and early 1990s, it became clear that the PCI was consciously shifting towards an ideological affinity with social democracy (Abse, 2001, 61).
The creation of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) - which in 1998 became the Left Democrats (DS) - was aimed at filling the vacuum left by the crisis of the Communist tradition and the collapse of the old (and weak) Socialist Party. However, support for the left in the 1990s did not increase and this forced the PDS-DS (which never went beyond 21 per cent of the vote) to form a coalition with some moderate centre parties born from the ashes of the old Christian Democratic Party.
In 1996, the new centre-left coalition (L'Ulivo) led by Romano Prodi managed to win the election, but it soon turned out to be very unstable and was eventually unable to win the following election in 2001. Moreover, the success of 1996 caused new divisions among the various PDS-DS factions. The Ulivisti, led by Walter Veltroni, believed that a small social democratic party was not sufficient and that the Ulivo coalition could represent the first step towards the creation of a united reformist party, which would go beyond the social democratic tradition (Pasquino, 2003, 211). On the other hand, the 'traditionalists', allied with Massimo D'Alema, thought that the Ulivo should remain a plural centre-left alliance in which a greater left-wing party would constructively engage with the centre, thus strengthening the whole coalition. During the opposition years (2001-2006), the new leader of the Left Democrats, Piero Fassino, acted as a mediator between these two factions by strengthening the social democratic identity of the party while, at the same time, trying to transform the Ulivo into a more cohesive reformist block.
The return of Prodi as leader of the coalition in 2005 accelerated the process of aggregation on the Italian centre-left. Prodi tried to create a new centre-left party on the ashes of the old Ulivo whilst building a broader alliance with other left-wing and centre parties. Moreover, since Prodi was not formally affiliated with any party of the coalition, he tried to legitimise his leadership by appealing directly to centre-left voters. In 2005, the first open primary election to select the coalition leader was held and more than four million supporters cast their votes. Media attention on this event was intense and Prodi, who obtained the support of more than 70 per cent of the voters, became the unchallenged leader of the coalition.
Generally, his strategy proved successful in the short term, and helped him win the general election in 2006. Moreover, in the two years preceding the election, the DS and the Margherita (DL - a moderate party bringing together the former Christian Democratic Popular Party and other centre parties) had decided to create common lists for the regional and European elections. The relative success of these lists and Prodi's success in the primary election prompted the leaders of the two parties to go beyond a purely electoral agreement and to call for the creation of a new reformist party. As we have seen, Prodi warmly...
To continue reading
Request your trialCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
