Selecting the leader, Italian style

ABSTRACT

This article examines the promotion of open and direct procedures for selecting party leaders by focusing on the case of Italy. These inclusive procedures are presented as adaptive strategies adopted by political parties to deal with the deep-rooted anti-party sentiments that are spreading among citizens, and to enable them to re-connect with their own supporters, regardless of whether they are formally enrolled in the party or not. Even though these inclusive approaches serve to enhance the party’s image, their impact on the party organisation is often overlooked. In this regard, scholars have argued that the involvement of party members or external supporters in key decisions, such as candidate selection by primary elections, could lead to a weakening of the party organisation in favour of the strength of the party leader. This issue has to be carefully taken into account, especially in light of the personalisation of politics characterising Western democracies. Open approaches to selection of the party leader produce strong, direct connections between selectors and the candidates for party office, but they endanger the cohesion of the party organisation, diminish the role played by the party in central office and marginalise the party on the ground, whose voice is absorbed into a larger selectorate mainly composed of non-members. Taking the Italian Democratic Party (PD) as a case study, this article aims to understand the extent to which the introduction of such inclusive methods may affect the party organisation, by looking at the capacity of the party to mobilise supporters within and outside the party, and by looking at the relationship between the party and its members.

Keywords:

• Party leader selection
• intra-party democracy
• personalisation
• political parties
• Italian politics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For a detailed summary of the three party-leader elections, see Valbruzzi (2015). For a systematic insight into each of them, see Pasquino (2009), Pasquino and Venturino (2010) and Pasquino and Venturino (2014).

2. In more detail, at the first stage the members of the party select the candidates for direct election as party leader, and at the second stage the three highest-voted candidates from the first stage (with at least 5% of the valid vote) are in competition to be chosen by a selectorate that includes activists, sympathisers and potential party voters.

3. In this case, the delegates to the National Assembly elect the party leader through a runoff by secret ballot, among the two candidates holding the largest numbers of Assembly members’ votes (Venturino 2015; Hazan and Rahat 2010, 36–37). The National Assembly may also be involved in selecting the party leader outside of this procedure and, in other ways, by appointing an interim leader. So far, two out of the five Democrat leaders have been selected in such a way after the incumbent leaders resigned: Franceschini and Epifani were selected by the National Assembly, in 2009 and 2013, respectively, and remained in charge for a few months until the next primaries could be held.

4. It was impossible for Secretary Bersani to secure a majority in Parliament, having sufficient seats in the Chamber of Deputies, but not in the Senate.

5. Specifically, the PD did not gain the required majority to elect Prodi to the Quirinale, lacking 101 votes from among Democrat MPs and regional delegates in the secret ballot. This episode was decisive in the resignation of Bersani.

6. For a more detailed diachronic analysis of participation in absolute terms, at both the national and regional levels, see Rombi (2015).

7. It should be noted that Uniti nell’Ulivo took 11,928,362 votes in the 2006 election for the Chamber of Deputies, while the PD took 12,095,306 and 8,644,523 votes at the subsequent, 2008 and 2013, elections respectively. So the trend in the OPOV participation rate reflects the level of support for the party. In this sense, the minimum score of 2009 (25.4%) mainly reflects the good electoral performance in 2008.

8. Note that Puglia is not the only case indicating a discrepancy between those participating in the vote and those actually entitled to vote. The number of voters exceeded the number of members in many provinces in the South, such as Caserta (participation rate equal to 134%), Crotone (156%), Siracusa (128%) and Agrigento (314.3%)! See Anastasi and De Luca (2014).

9. Puglia was not taken into consideration, for the reason mentioned above.

10. The three exit poll surveys carried out during the selection of the PD leader in 2007, 2009 and 2013 were based on 3,143, 3,246 and 3,502 interviews, respectively, covering nearly all the regions of Italy. The CAWI survey was sent to all PD members who provided their email addresses (N = 100,000). It was carried out immediately after the centre–left coalition primaries to select the prime ministerial candidate for the 2013 general election.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luciano M. Fasano

Luciano M. Fasano is Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Milan. He teaches Political Science, and also Political Institutions and Decision Making. His main research interests include parties and party systems, intra-party democracy, electoral behaviour, primary elections and the presidentialisation of politics.

Antonella Seddone

Antonella Seddone is Post-Doc fellow at the European School of Political and Social Sciences of the Catholic University of Lille. She also teaches in the Department of Culture, Politics and Society at the University of Turin. Her main research interests include political parties, intra-party democracy, political communication and election campaigns. Recently, she co-edited Party Primaries in Comparative Perspective (Ashgate, 2015).