Decentralization and Party Organizational Change: The Case of Italy

Abstract

This chapter examines the relationship between the process of political decentralization in post-war Italy and the Italian party system, and, in particular, the impact of decentralization on parties’ internal organizations. The Italian Constitution of 1948 established a regional tier of government which was immediately established in selected territories, and extended to the rest of the country a little over two decades later. Further reforms in a decentralizing direction were made in the 1990s and 2000s. This evolution of the territorial shape of the Italian state has changed the institutional context in which Italian party politics is conducted, and territorial politics has become a central part of the political debate. Our aim here is to provide a preliminary analysis of the effects of these developments on the parties themselves and the distribution of power between national and subnational party leaderships. We proceed by generating some basic hypotheses on the impact of decentralization on party organizations, then go on to summarize the process of institutional change itself. The rest of the chapter examines how party organizations have reacted to the changing institutional context.

Thanks go to Gianfranco Baldini, Robert Leonardi, Raffaella Nanetti and Salvatore Vassallo for helpful comments and suggestions for this paper. The author acknowledges the support of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Devolution and Constitutional Change Programme (grant number L219252105).