How Italian Parties Select Their Leaders

• In Event: Leadership, Media, Politics, and Pandemics: The Italian Case

Abstract

Since decades most European parties are making use of internal democracy in order to contrast the growing citizens’ detachment. Largely inspired by American politics, these practices – besides referenda among members about policy positions and coalition participation – involve the use of primary elections to select both candidates to public offices and party leaders. From this point of view the Italian case is extremely intriguing, because recently some parties have empowered ordinary people in addition to formal members by adopting open primaries. Moreover, since the end of World War II the Italian party system features a great number of parties differently organized which make up a first-rate field of research.
This paper takes in account the methods used by the Italian parties to select their leaders in the years 1948-2020. Using an extended database originally based on the Cospal (Comparative Study of Party Leaders) project and collected through a content analysis of the statutes, it aims to describe the changes of the selectorates related to the spread of the internal party democracy. To give a realistic picture, the paper also examines the mixed selectorates involving more than a party actor, the alternative selectorates to be used under pressure, and the effective selectorates actually operating, sometimes contrary to the statute.

Author

• Fulvio Venturino, University of Cagliari