With or without parliamentary primaries? Some evidence from the Italian laboratory

ABSTRACT

In the last 10 years, Italy has slowly and quite unexpectedly become the European home of primary elections. On the eve of the 2013 legislative elections, three political parties decided, for the first time, to use primaries as the main method of candidate selection. The aim of this article is to analyse some of the characteristics and consequences of the parliamentary primaries in terms of the socio-demographic composition of Parliament and the behaviour of MPs. The evidence provided by the Italian experience shows that inclusive selectorates seem to promote a higher level of female representation in the assembly and the inclusion of younger people. As far as the legislative behaviour of MPs is concerned, parliamentarians selected through primaries show the highest rates of attendance. Finally, with regard to the level of productivity and the frequency of rebellion, the results of our analysis do not lead to any clear conclusions. However, interestingly enough, MPs selected through inclusive processes demonstrate a lower propensity to vote against the agreed positions of their parliamentary groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Parliamentary primaries
• candidate selection
• inclusiveness
• legislative behaviour
• party cohesion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The small regionalist South Tyrolean People’s Party (SVP) held (closed) primary elections, in January 2013, for the selection of its candidates, but we decided to exclude it from our analysis.

2. Openpolis is an independent association that aims at monitoring the political activities of local, regional, national and European parliamentarians.

3. This explains why the number of MPs considered is higher than the actual plenum of the Assembly (630 deputies and 315 senators).

4. However, our analysis is not sufficient to assert that primaries bring more women into Parliament because those parties are also right-wing parties, which usually elect fewer women in any case.

5. ANOVA is used to determine whether there are any significant differences among group means. It tests the hypothesis that the means of two or more populations are equal. The null hypothesis states that all population means are equal while the alternative hypothesis states that at least one is different.

6. This difference between parties is statistically significant as determined by one-way ANOVA (F = 16.51, p = 0.0000).

7. The difference is statistically significant as determined by a one-way ANOVA (F = 12.6, p = 0.0004).

8. There is a statistically significant difference between these two groups as determined by one-way ANOVA (F = 197.52, p = 0.0000).

9. The difference is statistically significant as determined by a one-way ANOVA (F = 17.67, p = 0.0000).

10. See table at http://indice.openpolis.it/info.html.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marta Regalia

Dr Marta Regalia holds a PhD from the Italian Institute of Human Sciences (SUM). During her PhD, she was appointed a Visiting Student Researcher by Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. She is now Post-Doc at LUISS University (Rome).

Marco Valbruzzi

Marco Valbruzzi is a PhD Researcher at the European University Institute. His research focuses on political parties and party systems, political competition and participation. He is the author of Primarie. Partecipazione e leadership (BUP; 2005). His most recent books are L’Italia e l’Europa al bivio delle riforme (Istituto Cattaneo, 2014, co-edited with R. Vignati); and A Changing Republic. Politics and Democracy in Italy (Epokè 2015, with G. Pasquino).