Realignment and Entrenchment: The Europeanisation of Rifondazione Comunista

Abstract

This study explores the impact of European integration on Rifondazione Comunista, through a conceptual approach that draws upon the Europeanisation literature and evaluates two sub-processes: (1) positional realignment towards European integration and (2) the entrenchment by the party of an EU dimension of issues and activities. The empirical evidence and analysis presented draws upon the party's functions of patterns of party competition, programmatic change and affiliations beyond the national party system. Findings show that Rifondazione gradually increased the use of the issue of European integration in an attempt to differentiate its European vision, thus presenting the EU as a necessary terrain of struggle. Second, it underwent slight programmatic and attitudinal realignment towards a softer approach. The intervening variables conditioning each sub-process reflect a nuanced picture, with most identified factors playing a role. These factors also reflect the wider patterns of Italian politics observed so far, allowing us to highlight the significance of national and party specificities in party-based Europeanisation.

Key Words:

• Italian
• Rifondazione
• Europeanisation
• political parties
• entrenchment
• realignment

Acknowledgements

This article is a much revised and expanded version of a paper presented at the 58th PSA Annual Conference at Swansea on April 2008. The author thanks the participants of the panel on ‘Democracy in Southern Europe and Institutional Adaptation’, Fabrizio di Mascio and four anonymous referees for critical and constructive comments on previous drafts.

Notes

¹This argument was first posited by Bomberg (2002).

²Unfortunately, the area of party–government relations has yet to receive attention from the literature (for a review, see Ladrech, 2009, section 2).

³The areas of organisational change and party–government relations are not considered autonomously for three reasons. First, because of the existing space limitations. Second, the area of organisational change is not significantly and directly affected by issues of political orientation. Third, Rifondazione's leaders have not participated in EU forums, as government officials, long enough to allow for the empirical wealth needed to pursue in depth any impact on party–government relations.

⁴Concurrently, it should be noted that differentiating between attitudes and programmatic positions is not an innovation of this article. Ladrech (2002, p. 396), after all, identified the function of patterns of party competition as a possible container of Europeanisation-led change, because as the EU becomes politicized, each party is expected, first of all, to adopt a general stance that aims at stabilising its political base and, therefore, targets its voters in an opportunistic manner. Similarly, Conti and Verzichelli (2003, p. 4) make the distinction between party elites' general views on the integration process and the ‘formation’, or policy-specific discourse, that touches more elaborately on individual sub-themes. Attitudes then indicate change more publicly and quickly than programmatic positions do.

⁵Rifondazione contained a large part of Berlingueriani, the pro-Soviet tendency, led by Armando Cossutta, Democrazia Proletaria (DP), an ex-New Left group, a significant part of the parliamentary ‘extreme left’, PduP (Partito di Unita Proletaria) and the anti-Khruschev, Partito Comunista d'Italia Marxista-leninista (PCI (m-l)).

⁶The European Unitary Left Group in the EP was established in 1989 by the Italian Communist Party (PCI), the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) and the Greek Synaspismos (SYN).

⁷The PdCI's attitude and positions on the EU and political integration have been more moderate than those of Rifondazione, for instance, prioritising political integration and thus voting in favour of the European Constitution (Dunphy, 2004, pp. 90–91; see also Bordandini and Di Virgilio, 2007).

⁸It is interesting to remind that during the ELP Congress in Athens, Bertinotti said: ‘to fight against neo-liberalism, it is not necessary to be either communist, or socialist, or ecologists. It is enough to be free men’ (quoted in Bocconetti, 2005).

⁹Yet again, one could argue that this process was similar, in nature and pace, to the European path followed by the former PCI in the 1980s (see Dunphy, 2004, pp. 47–48).