https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0573-4153
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ABSTRACT
We examine the middle-level élite of the Italian Democratic Party (Partito democratico, PD) and its founding parties, Democrats of the Left (Democratici di Sinistra, DS) and The Daisy (La Margherita, DL), over fifteen years (2004–2019). Our original dataset on national delegates comes from 2373 questionnaires collected at eight national party congresses. Inspired by Whiteley and Seyd’s concepts of low and high-intensity participation, we evaluate the relative weight of the various types of incentive in the two (internal and external) forms of party activism. Party activism is central to understanding the profound cultural, organisational, and electoral crisis that has put the PD at a crossroad and has led current secretary Letta to call for a ‘Constituent Congress of the New PD’.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. For details on the Italian National Party Delegates Project, see Bordandini and Di Virgilio (Citation2009–2013 and https://centri.unibo.it/osservatorio-sui-partiti-aldo-di-virgilio/en/national-delegates.
2. Third DS National Congress, Rome, 3rd–5th February 2005 (DS05); Fourth DS National Congress, Florence, 19th–21st April 2007 (DS07).
3. Second DL National Congress, Rimini, 12th–14th March 2004 (DL04) and Third DL National Congress, Rome, 20th–22nd April 2007 (DL07).
4. Second PD National Assembly, Rome, 7th November 2009 (PD09), Third PD National Assembly, Milan, 15th December 2013 (PD13), Fourth PD National Assembly, Rome, 7th May 2017 (PD17) and Fifth PD National Assembly, Rome, 17th March 2019 (PD19). The absence of data from the first PD national assembly held in Milan on 27th October 2007 is partly mitigated by the fact that many of the national delegates who took part in the PD constituent assembly were also present at the last two congresses of the DS and DL just six months earlier (Bordandini & Di Virgilio Citation2009–2013).
5. The factor extracted by PCA explained 40 per cent of the variance.
6. The factor extracted by PCA explained 43 per cent of the variance.
7. The variable was measured on a 1 to 6 scale and recorded as a dichotomous variable by assigning value one to respondents who scored 5 or 6, zero otherwise.
8. National delegates who answered that they were active in at least 2 associations out 4 were active in the local associations.
9. The wording of the question was: Do you hold or have you held steering roles in the associations listed above? Answers were: yes (coded 1) or no (coded zero).
10. The factor extracted by PCA explained 42 per cent of the variance.
11. Agreement with the idea of state intervention in the economy was measured on a 1 to 6 scale and recorded as a dichotomous variable with a value of one for respondents who scored 5 or 6, and zero otherwise. Note that this question was slightly different in the questionnaire used at the DL04.
12. Position on the political spectrum was measured on a 1 to 7 scale and recorded as a dichotomous variable by assigning value one to respondents who scored 1 (radical left) or 2 (left). It should be noted that the percentage of respondents who scored 1 was 4 per cent at DL04, 66 per cent at DS05, 3 per cent at DL07, 56 per cent at DS07, 29 per cent at PD09, 40 per cent at PD13, 21 per cent at PD17 and 37 per cent at PD19.
13. As stressed in note 11, the key question about state intervention in the economy, used to construct our ideological incentives index, did not have the same wording in all questionnaires, supporting the choice of separate models.
14. It should be noted that social incentives were also significant and positively correlated with internal participation at PD13.
15. In , the control variable results indicate that: a) men were more likely to have a internal participation index than women at 5/8 congresses (gender was not statistically significant at DL07, PD09 and PD17); b) age was associated negatively with internal participation at 5/8 congresses (age was not statistically significant at DL04, PD09 and PD19); c) delegates who worked in the public sector were more likely to have a internal participation index than delegates who worked in the private sector at DL04, DL07 and PD09. Education was marginally relevant in the present model.
16. Research shows that PD membership has been greatly penalised by the institution of open primaries (Sandri & Venturino Citation2020; Seddone, Venturino & Sandri Citation2021).
17. In the national elections of 2018, the PD obtained 18.8 per cent of the vote, the worst result in the history of the Italian left and centre-left, and well below the 25 per cent obtained in 2013 and the 33 per cent obtained in 2008.
18. The PD actually won 19.1 per cent of the vote (+0.3% with respect to 2018), while losing about a million votes in absolute terms. In the 2022 national elections, Italy recorded the lowest voter turnout in its history (63.9 per cent).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Paola Bordandini
Paola Bordandini is an Associate professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna, where she teaches Methodology of Political and Social Sciences and Italian Political System. Her work focuses on political culture, social capital and political parties.
Carlo Baccetti
Carlo Baccetti is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Florence, where he teaches Politics, Policies, Governance and Political Culture and Social Work. His work focuses on political parties, political culture and local government.
Laura Sartori
Laura Sartori is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna. Since her Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Research from the University of Trento (2002), she has worked on various aspects of the social and political implications of technology.