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Abstract
The article describes the primaries held by the Italian centre left in 2012 to choose its candidate for the premiership. After a short history of previous primaries and ‘pseudo’-primaries (national contests to choose the party secretary) held by the centre left (or by its main party), the article deals with the internal debate about whether or not to hold primaries and about the rules that would govern them. The article proposes looking at this debate in a ‘realistic’ way, as a struggle between political actors fighting to conquer or maintain power. The third section analyses the results. The data presented show a large increase in turnout in the North and in the ‘Red Belt’ and a decrease in the South. The article sketches some hypotheses to explain these variations, discussing in particular the relevance of social capital. The conclusions consider the contest as a temporary success for the centre left: it attracted great media attention and had a conditioning effect on voter intentions, but did not lead to the definitive institutionalisation of primaries.
Notes
1. The arguments against primaries were many. For some (e.g. many of the leaders of the PD, who expressed a more traditional view of the party), the primaries were a threat to party unity. For others (e.g. the political scientist Giovanni Sartori), they would inevitably lead to the supremacy of the most radical part of the coalition. For still others, they were a surrendering to populism rather than a democratic response to this phenomenon. This point of view can be found in many articles published by the left-wing journal, Democrazia e Diritto, or in Prospero (Citation2012).
2. For Cassese, the primaries were ‘not a proof of democracy, but a proof of weakness’.
3. The PD was created as a result of the merger of the DS and the Margherita (literally, ‘the Daisy’). The DS were heirs to the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) which in 1991 had become the Democratic Party of the Left (Partito Democratico della Sinistra, PDS) before becoming the DS in 1998. The Margherita was a party born out of the left wing of the former Christian Democrats (Democrazia Cristiana, DC).
4. Traditionally, political scientists have divided Italy into four geopolitical areas; hence the ‘Red Belt’ is the area of Central Italy (including the regions of Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Marche and Umbria) where, historically, a socialist and communist subculture has been dominant.
5. For reasons of space, the programmes of Vendola, Puppato and Tabacci are not discussed here.
6. For this purpose we have used the votes obtained in the European elections of 2009, whereas other studies (e.g. Emanuele Citation2012) have used the votes obtained in the parliamentary elections of 2008. We prefer the European elections for two reasons. First, they are more recent. Secondly, in 2008 SEL did not exist and the PD was allied with IdV.
7. We have based our calculations on the total number of registered members for 2009 and only the members of the PD. Taking into account the membership of SEL would have given us a more accurate measure, but their small numbers do not influence the values of the index very much.
8. The Valle d’Aosta is a very small region, and so the data are only relatively important.
9. All the correlations presented here are calculated at a provincial level.
10. Some local newspapers and websites reported cases of centre-right activists voting (or attempting to vote) in the primaries. See, for instance: http://www.ravenna24ore.it/news/ravenna/0030964-primarie-PD-denuncia-elettori-infiltrati-dal-centrodestra (for the case of Ravenna), http://ciociaria.ogginotizie.it/192277-elettori-di-centrodestra-alle-primarie-caos-negato-il-voto-al-aquot-fascistaaquot/ (for the case of Frosinone), and http://www.ilmessaggero.it/roma/campidoglio/primarie_liti_e_accuse_tra_chi_in_fila_ai_seggi_anche_elettori_del _PDl/notizie/234090.shtml(for the case of Rome). The PD parliamentarian Luca Sani complained that there had been cases of centre-right voters participating with a disruptive intent, but added that their number was ‘not significant’. Actually, we must distinguish between two different cases. The first is the case of centre-right activists who voted in the primaries with the intention of being provocative. That could be a good subject for a newspaper article, but the number of such votes was not enough to influence the results. The second is the case of former centre-right voters who decided to participate in the centre-left primaries because they were disenchanted with their former coalition and/or were attracted by the PD or by one of the candidates. The relevance of these cases can probably be assessed in light of the February 2013 general election results by asking whether the variation in support for the centre right is correlated with the turnout for the centre-left primaries.
11. Only in a handful of cases have primaries been organised by the centre-right coalition.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Piergiorgio Corbetta
Piergiorgio Corbetta was, until his retirement last year, professor of social sciences methodology at the University of Bologna; he is now research director of the Istituto Cattaneo in Bologna. His main research interests are in the fields of political participation, elections and political parties. Recent publications include ‘The 2010 Regional Elections in Italy: Another Referendum on Berlusconi’ (South European Society and Politics 2010), ‘Job Precariousness and Political Orientations: The Case of Italy’ (South European Society and Politics 2012; with P. Colloca), and Il partito di Grillo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013; with E. Gualmini).
Rinaldo Vignati
Rinaldo Vignati is post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Social and Political Science of the University of Bologna. His main research interests are in the fields of political parties, electoral behaviour and public opinion. His recent publications include chapters in Il partito di Grillo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013), Il divario incolmabile (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013), and Politica in Italia: Edizione 2013 (Bologna: Il Mulino, forthcoming).