The belief system of the Italian Democratic Party: before, during, and after Renzi

ABSTRACT

This article aims to explore why the ‘demolition’ of values promoted by Matteo Renzi had profoundly different effects on the factions within the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, PD). While several studies have examined the PD’s political culture, few have investigated the changing attitudes of its factions. We help fill this gap in the literature by analysing the PD’s intraparty divisions on the main dimensions of party competition in the new millennium. We draw inspiration from the theory of party change, arguing that changes in a party’s dominant coalition craft a new party image. Based on a unique dataset from PD delegates to national assemblies, this article offers new empirical evidence on intraparty cohesion. Our multivariate analysis offers fresh evidence that under Renzi intraparty divisions on economic issues widened, while cohesion on ethical issues increased. Our work indicates that opening the black box of party politics sheds light on new party images.

KEYWORDS:

• Party change
• factional divisions
• middle-level party élites
• belief systems
• Italian Democratic Party

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Scholars define a belief system as a combination of attitudes, opinions, and beliefs relevant to politics (Brandt, Sibley, and Osborne 2019).

2. The ‘Jobs Act’ and reform of article 18 of the Workers’ Statute stand for the labour-law reforms implemented by the Renzi government between 2014 and 2016 to deregulate the labour market.

3. Respondents who were never members of another party before joining the PD.

4. This article is the result of joint reflection by all the authors. However, Paola Bordandini wrote the introduction and section four, Rosa Mulè section two and the discussion, and Carlo Baccetti section three and the conclusion.

5. We are aware that the concepts ‘image’ and ‘identity’ have different connotations, however, we align with the literature that uses them interchangeably.

6. By ‘factions’ we mean groups of party members who act as distinct blocs within the party to achieve particular objectives (Zariski 1960).

7. The names included in the closed lists supporting each candidate are generally determined locally by the candidate’s local representatives.

8. For details of the Italian National Party Delegates Project, see Bordandini and Di Virgilio (2009–2013) and https://centri.unibo.it/osservatorio-sui-partiti-aldo-di-virgilio/en/national-delegates

9. The PD’s statute requires that half the delegates to national assemblies be female, although in our samples males were slightly over-represented.

10. Factor analysis explained 52% of the variance and had loadings in the range 0.608–0.766. Table 2 shows an analysis of the additive index of the economic dimension rather than of the factorial index because the former is more descriptive than the latter. The factor score index was used as a dependent variable of the economic dimension in the regression models presented in the next section. The same goes for the dependent variables related to the cultural and transnational dimensions illustrated in Tables 3 and 4.

11. Factor analysis explained 44% of the variance and had loadings in the range 0.598–0.751. Table 3 shows the first cultural dimension additive index.

12. Factor analysis explained 66% of the total common variance. The factor extracted had loadings in the range of −0.792 to 0.800.

13. Confirmatory factor analysis produced a total explained common variance of 40%. The factor loadings ranged from 0.441 to 0.742.

14. The factor analysis explained 51% of the variance. Factor loadings were in the range 0.667–0.757.

15. As mentioned in note 10 we used our factor score indices instead of the additive indices for the OLS regression models.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carlo Baccetti

Carlo Baccetti is Associate Professor in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Florence

Paola Bordandini

Paola Bordandini is Associate Professor in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna

Rosa Mulè

Rosa Mulè is Associate Professor in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna