The election of Matteo Renzi as the leader of the PD might herald a ‘New Labour’ style revolution in Italy’s centre-left *

Matteo Renzi was elected as the new general secretary of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) in Italy. Arianna Giovannini and James L. Newell assess the implications of the election for the PD and the wider political landscape in the country. They note that Renzi has generally been portrayed as a similar figure to Tony Blair in the UK due to his youth and ‘reformer’ image. They argue however that Renzi’s most immediate challenge will be to win control over the Italian premiership from current prime Minister Enrico Letta.

On 8 December, the election of Matteo Renzi as general secretary of the centre-left Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, PD), Italy’s strongest political formation, was more a coronation of a leader whose succession had been certain, than a genuine victory. Everyone, including observers on this side of the Channel, expected it. Consequently, while until a few months ago very little attention was devoted to the election or to the candidates, all of a sudden the British media turned their spotlights on the presumed winner. Indeed, already on 7 December, the BBC and the Guardian published political profiles of Renzi, defining him, de facto, as the new leader of the centre left and without even mentioning his rivals.

In fact, Renzi won the contest – which was open not just open to party members but also to ordinary voters, making Italy a unique case in Europe – with 67.6 per cent of the vote, against 18.2 per cent and 14.2 per cent for his two rivals, Gianni Cuperlo and Giuseppe Civati, respectively.

Though Renzi had an absolute majority in every region, it was noticeable that his best results were all obtained in the four so-called red-belt regions of Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria and Marche. His lowest percentages all came from the South and islands. This can be interpreted as a reflection of his status as the “change candidate”. More than any other candidate, Renzi stood for a dismantling of the traditional factions and the power of party notables, and it is in the South that these have their greatest influence. 

Their power could be seen in the run-up to the elections where, to be admitted as a candidate, the aspiring general secretary had to win the votes of at least 15 per cent of PD party members and the same proportion in at least five regions, or be among the top three candidates and have at least five per cent of party votes. In these internal party ‘pre-elections’, Renzi had achieved 45.4 per cent, compared to Cuperlo’s 39.4 per cent and Civati’s 9.4 per cent. 

Who, then, is Matteo Renzi, and what does his election mean for Italian politics generally? Renzi is probably best known, in Italy and abroad, as the young charismatic mayor of Florence who earned himself the nickname, il rottamatore (or “the scrapper”) thanks to his insistence that the PD needed to undergo fundamental renewal based on a generational turnover among its leaders and principal spokespeople. In November 2012, he took 39.1 per cent of the vote in primary-elections to decide who would be the centre left’s candidate for the premiership in the general election of February 2013.

Although he failed to defeat the then PD general secretary, Pierluigi Bersani, he had clearly staked his claim to the succession. When Bersani managed to lose the general election – or, rather, failed to win, by getting only a wafer-thin majority – it became evident that the centre left needed a new leader, one with the necessary charisma to enable the PD to rise from its ashes. So when, in April, Bersani resigned over the issue of the formation of the post-election government, Renzi was ready to take up the challenge.

From this point of view it is interesting to note that the image of the new party secretary conveyed by Italian, British and European media has tended to revolve around a comparison with two controversial political personalities: Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi.

On the one hand, Renzi has been compared, rather appropriately, with Tony Blair of the 1994 New Labour revolution. Renzi is young, as Blair was at the time, with the appearance of a well-mannered schoolboy. He is ambitious, charismatic, a very good communicator and is liked by the media. Similar to Blair, Renzi has a precise objective: to change not only the image of the centre left, which has been incapable of winning for years, but also its ideology, inaugurating a “third way” designed to appeal to both sides of the left-right divide and to distance his party from the trade unions.

On the other hand, the Florentine mayor has also been compared to his – perhaps now former – principal competitor, Silvio Berlusconi. This is due to his charismatic speaking, but also to his way of communicating, which comes across as straightforward and seductive. Crucially, such style appeals to ordinary people out on the hustings and has a big impact on television. Besides, Renzi and Berlusconi share the same battle cry: the reduction of taxes.

The next generation of Italian politicians? 
Another feature political commentators have focused on is Renzi’s age. At 38, he is viewed as an almost bizarre exception in a country where politics is largely ‘grey and old’. So, between his gifts of charisma, his communication skills and his post-ideological ‘catch-all’ approach to politics, Renzi has been defined by many as the ‘necessary change’, the redeemer of all the ills of Italian politics, and a sort of ‘last hope’ not only for the PD and the centre left but for the country as a whole. In this sense, the election of Renzi as leader of the PD is likely to have a significant impact not only within the ranks of his party, but on the wider political landscape in Italy.

This was reflected in the turnout of the 8 December election, where 2,814,881 Italian residents and Italians living abroad came out to vote. In order to participate, voters had to be EU citizens with the right of residence in Italy. They also had to be willing to donate two euros and to make a declaration of support for the party and its programme. The turnout allayed fears that the time of year and the apparent certainty of the outcome would depress participation.

It seemed to support the view of Ezio Mauro, editor of the leading daily, la Repubblica, that, in the face of widespread anti-political sentiments, the election combined the demand for change with a surprising and comforting manifestation of faith in democracy and democratic processes. In fact, voter turnout was comparable with the 3,102,709 who had participated in the last such election, held in the warmer month of October in 2009, and the 2,802,382 who had participated in the second round of the centre-left primary of 2012, which had been open to a larger constituency of electors and whose outcome had been much less certain.

Second, it seems likely that the victory of Renzi will send shockwaves throughout the political system, bringing changes of political personnel, government and policy. He has given a voice to the demands for political renewal and has linked it to the idea of generational change. His election has coincided with the emergence of younger party leaders, such as the 43 year-old Angelino Alfano, on the centre right, and the 40 year-old Matteo Salvini, elected general secretary of the Northern League. In this respect, he has raised expectations for a significant turnover of the political class, with the likely result of a further marginalisation of the 77 year-old Berlusconi.

Third, the election of Renzi as the new leader of the PD means that the lifespan of the incumbent government – a centre-left/centre-right coalition under fellow PD spokesperson, the 47 year-old Enrico Letta – has probably been shortened. On the one hand, with minority support among PD members, Renzi, whose opinion-poll ratings currently far exceed those of all other party leaders, will almost certainly want to avoid jeopardising his popularity outside the party by being seen as responsible for an early government collapse. However, his credibility as an agent of change necessarily implies distancing himself from a government which by its very nature is driven by a constant search for compromise.

Furthermore, with the centre right in disarray, it is widely expected that Renzi will use this as an opportunity to push forward with his Blair-style policy revolution. Through policy measures such as tax cuts and restrictions on public-sector salaries, this may enable him to achieve what his British predecessor did, that is to extend his party’s appeal beyond its traditional basis.

All that being said, Renzi’s biggest challenge still lies ahead of him and revolves around his relationship with Enrico Letta. For the moment, the mayor of Florence has been elected general secretary of the PD, but he will not be the fully-fledged leader of the centre left as a whole until he achieves his ambition of becoming Prime Minister.

Ostensibly, Letta claims to support Renzi, but at the same time it is unrealistic to think that the incumbent premier will be willing simply to cede place to the new secretary without batting an eyelid. Seeing off Gianni Cuperlo and Giuseppe Civati has been relatively easy for Renzi, but the quiet, subtle and capable Enrico Letta belongs in another league. The real fight has yet to begin and it is the one that will see the Florentine mayor vying with Letta for the premiership.

  

* this article was originally published by the LSE EUROPP Blog. A shorter version of the article was also published in Italian by the SISP (Italian Political Science Association) Standing Group Candidate & Leader Selection

2013 Italian General Election – Italian Politics at a Crossroads?

 

One-day conference, 17 January 2014, University of Birmingham

Organised with the support of the Political Studies Association, the PSA’s Italian Politics Specialist Group and the Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham

Registrations are now open for the conference "2013 Italian General Election: Italian Politics at the Crossroads?".

 .
Attendance to the event is free of charge and refreshments will be provided.

However, places are limited and participants need to register online by Tuesday 10 December. 

Details of the conference, including the programme for the day and the online registration form, can be found at this link.

For further information about the event, please contact: ipsg.conference@gmail.com

Conference Group on Italian Politics and Society – Call for Papers for the annual conference of the American Political Science Association (APSA): “Retrenching States versus expanding societies: civic sense, public engagement and citizens' ability to hold power to account in the digital era” 

The recent economic crisis has generated unprecedented political challenges for Italy, other Western democracies, new or transition democracies outside Europe and for the European Union. In Europe, governments struggle to boost the economy and contain unemployment levels, and seem unable to meet citizens' demands for more inclusive and responsive policy-making. Political instability and fragmentation, the strengthening of populist and nationalist parties, the rise in social and territorial inequalities, increasing questioning of the goodness of the European construction, all appear to indicate an erosion of both representative democracy and State capacity.

Yet, as governments retrench from the economy and wane in popularity, grass-root civic engagement, often focused on local problems, appears to gain momentum. The new technologies and social media are a key development in supporting this process. At the same time, however, they are also breeding new tensions, for instance in relation to opportunities divide, manipulation of political messages, and the public's ability to discern and decipher digital information and use it to influence decision-making and hold governments to account.

The panel invites papers that: (i) explore issues related to State capacity and representative democracy crisis in Italy and in other countries in an age characterized by the widespread use of digital technologies; (ii) examine the causal inter-linkages between the high political flux and the role of the new digital media; (iii) consider the extent to which the challenges above described are acting as a catalyst for grass-root policy solutions outside traditional government and, more generally, for a redistribution of power within national and subnational polities (and, potentially, the role played by the new digital media in this); (iv) reflect upon how the digital technologies have revolutionized citizen mobilization; and (v) explore the likely future evolution and possible institutionalization of such recent developments.

Comparative papers - particularly those which compare and contrast Italy with other EU Member States, with the United States and with Latin American countries - will be favored, but work with a pure Italian focus, if couched in a comparative framework, will also be well received. 

Abstracts must be uploaded online on APSA's website by 15 December 2013.

Further details can be found at the following link:

http://www.apsanet.org/content_56690.cfm 

2013 Italian General Election – Italian Politics at a Crossroads?

 

One-day conference, 17 January 2014, University of Birmingham

Organised with the support of the Political Studies Association, the PSA’s Italian Politics Specialist Group and the Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham

Registrations are now open for the conference "2013 Italian General Election: Italian Politics at the Crossroads?".

 .
Attendance to the event is free of charge and refreshments will be provided.

However, places are limited and participants need to register online by Tuesday 10 December. 

Details of the conference, including the programme for the day and the online registration form, can be found at this link.

For further information about the event, please contact: ipsg.conference@gmail.com

The PD and the elections for its next leader -- reflections from the other side of the Channel...

Arianna Giovannini and James L. Newell

Seen from here in Britain, the elections to decide the next leader of the PD, due to be held on 8 December, suggest that the party is attempting to undergo a process of profound, but also very difficult, change. Certainly, it has to be said that the British media have not so far given much space to the debate surrounding (s)elections of this type. The reason is simple. On the one hand, newspapers and other media outlets on this side of the Channel often discuss Italian politics in negative terms. They focus on elections without winners and with too many winners; on Berlusconi and his court cases; on scandals and political corruption etc. The election of the next leader of the PD represents a contrast to all of this – an attempt to restructure the PD and the Italian political system more broadly. Probably, therefore, the results will be discussed once they are known; but, reflecting a degree of British cynicism, little space is currently being given to the mechanisms and power games that have been taking shape during the organisational phase preceding the elections.

On the other hand, primaries and “secretaries” (to use the neologism coined by Marco Valbruzzi) are interpreted differently in the United Kingdom. Here, this type of election is used mainly by the Labour Party (the Conservatives have introduced them only recently), but with procedures and aims that are very different as compared with Italy. In particular, they are (especially) closed. In fact only Labour Party members and members of the affiliated trade unions can vote, and the party conference has significant weight in the selection process. For this reason, primaries and “secretaries” are for the most part seen as procedures internal to the party – whose purpose is to give “appropriate weight” to the various political and trade-union stakeholders and which are only partially open to ordinary members. In Italy, by contrast, they have a completely different significance – having been conceived principally as instruments which have become almost necessary in order to (re)legitimise the principles, structures and values of the country’s weak system of representative democracy.  The PD thus uses them as a device for reinforcing its links with the electorate as a whole, and to (attempt to) increase the level of citizens’ trust in politics. The British media then say little about Italy’s primary and “secretary” elections but also about their own, perhaps because, in accordance with traditional guiding principles, they tend to look at other cases from the perspective of their own, without grasping the significant differences of meaning and procedure.

From an academic point of view, however – as the authors are members of a group of die-hards obstinately seeking to understand the Italian political system from a base in the United Kingdom – debate surrounding the elections has given rise to certain reflections worthy of attention.

Seen from Britain, the most striking aspects of the elections are two-fold, one negative, the other positive. The negative aspect concerns what the competition tells us about the depth of the divisions within a party that is attempting (almost desperately) to re-engage with its voters and supporters. As the PD was a party that came into existence as the simple merger of two bureaucratic apparatuses rather than through any real process of organisational or ideological innovation, the dominant coalitions within each of the two parent parties agreed tacitly to share positions of power within what, as a consequence, has always been a highly factionalised entity. In the aftermath of the February general election, internal divisions were exacerbated by the failure to forge any kind of governing alliance with the Five-star Movement; by the failure to act compactly in the election of a new President, and by the consequent formation of the government of larghe intese which Bersani and his supporters had very much opposed, convinced as they were that Berlusconi’s conflict of interests made him and his party inherently illegitimate as contenders for public office. Recently, internal conflict has even led to exchanges of accusations among the leadership candidates concerning artificial inflation of the party enrolments that will help them through the pre-election phase of the leadership contest and provide the ground troops for their campaigns.

More positively, by embracing elections for leadership selection open to the participation of citizens as well as members – thus making it a unique case in Europe – the PD has made a downward concession of power, one that is interpretable from a cross-national perspective as part of a family of changes designed to address the “crisis of party”. It is significant, then, that the last leadership contest, held in October 2009, was a clear success: genuinely competitive, it was able, despite scandals and recent national and European election defeats, to secure the participation of over 3 million voters.

This time, however, the fact that the contest is being held in December and looks like being a foregone conclusion must throw at least a question mark over the likely turnout. In other words it is legitimate to ask whether, in this situation, Italian citizens who are PD members or supporters will be mobilised in large numbers – showing a desire to (re)legitimise the PD and the institutions of representative democracy – or whether they will take refuge behind anti-political sentiments or simple apathy.

One must also wonder about the impact of the likely outcome: Renzi wants a dismantling of the party factions, but also a party that devolves power to local-level leaders. While a less centralised party might make it easier to attract votes from outside the party’s traditional catchment areas, the two aspirations together arguably point in different directions in terms of party cohesion. And while the Florentine mayor mobilises the support of those hoping he will revolutionise the party’s fortunes by an attack on its traditional oligarchies, the latter have already begun to jump on the Renzi bandwagon. Party renewal therefore seems now to be less of a priority than some months ago for a politician who knows that he will need to have all wings of the party united in their support of him if he is to retain the charisma he needs to satisfy his ambition to become Italy’s next prime minister.       

In short, it is difficult when viewed from Britain to disentangle the various knots underlying the debate surrounding the election of the next PD leader. On the one hand, the prospects do not seem especially rosy, a number of issues and problems remaining unresolved. On the other hand, if the PD is able genuinely to overhaul itself, starting with its top leadership groups, and to open itself to influence from below, then these elections for the party secretary could represent an important turning point, and not only for the centre-left. They could signal the first step towards the re-legitimation of the Italian political system in the eyes of its citizens – and, perhaps, also in the eyes of the publics that observe Italian politics from abroad. 

 

This article was originally published in Italian by the SISP (Italian Political Science Association) Standing Group Candidate &Leader Selection.

Berlusconi’s surrender: the 2 October confidence vote in Italy

James L. Newell

On 2 October, the Letta government won a vote of confidence that seemed considerably to strengthen it following months of uncertainty about its future and the sense that it was highly fragile. The vote had been engineered by Silvio Berlusconi, and the sense of drama associated with it was considerably heighted when, during the preceding debate, the entrepreneur entered the Senate chamber suddenly to announce a humiliating climbdown: he and his followers would oppose the no-confidence motion. Just a few days previously the Government’s survival had been put in doubt by the announcement that ministers belonging to Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (Popolo della Libertà, Pdl) would resign. They had apparently been instructed to withdraw from the Government by the entrepreneur in protest at a 27 September Cabinet decision to postpone discussion of a series of matters in the area of economic and fiscal policy including Value Added Tax. Thereby it became clear that the Government would almost certainly be unable to achieve a promised postponement of the VAT increase decided by the previous Monti government due to come into effect on 1 October.

The VAT issue cited as the reason for the ministers’ resignations was widely regarded as a pretext. Berlusconi claimed that the Government’s decision violated the agreement on which the coalition was based. Prime Minister Enrico Letta replied that the postponement decision had been made necessary by the earlier announcement on the part of Pdl parliamentarians that they would resign en masse out of solidarity with Berlusconi whose future was to be the subject of a vote by the Senate elections committee on 4 October. On that date the committee would decide on whether to recommend to the Senate that it vote in favour of Berlusconi’s expulsion following his 1 August conviction for tax fraud. Letta had argued that the Pdl parliamentarians’ threatened resignation created such uncertainty about the Government’s capacity to pursue its programme that there needed to be clarification, in Parliament, about whether it could carry on. Then, when announcement of the ministers’ resignation came, Letta echoed a view widely shared among media commentators that the gesture had actually been motivated by Berlusconi’s personal interests.

These personal interests arose from the position Berlusconi found himself in following his conviction. He had been caught up in numerous judicial investigations into his business affairs over the years. What made this case different was that for the first time, charges against him had been upheld by the Court of Cassation, Italy’s highest court. In the past, he had always managed to take advantage of the automatic right of appeal from courts of first instance to the Appeal Court and from there to the Court of Cassation. This had enabled him in some cases to avoid prosecution by exploiting his great wealth and the relative slowness of the Italian judicial process to ensure that proceedings were ‘timed out’ thanks to the statute of limitations. In other cases, he had used his position as Prime Minister to secure the passage of legislation aimed at rendering the work of the judiciary more difficult, or decriminalising the acts of which he was accused. Now, however, he was out of office and faced with charges that he had bought the rights to screen American films through a series of offshore companies that had resold them to each other at inflated prices each time allowing him to evade taxes and pocket the difference. On 26 October 2012 he had been sentenced to four years in prison, a decision upheld by the Appeal Court on 8 May 2013 and by the Court of Cassation on 1 August. In the meantime, the Monti government, driven by deep popular dissatisfaction with standards of probity in public life as well as awareness of the actual costs of office holders’ abuses, had passed the so-called Severino Law. This bans those convicted of crimes carrying a penalty of two years or more from being members of Parliament or holding other offices and renders them ineligible to stand as candidates for such offices for at least six years. In deference to the separation-of-powers principle and in accordance with article 66 of the Constitution which reserves to Parliament the power to determine the eligibility of its members, the Senate itself would have to decide whether Severino applied in Berlusconi’s case.       

Berlusconi presumably calculated that if he succeeded in bringing the Government down he could provoke fresh elections, which might enable him to avoid the consequences of 1 August: though the outcome of a new poll could not be taken for granted, voting intentions data were not discouraging either and his Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, Pd) opponents on the centre left were in trouble. The party’s decision to join Berlusconi in coalition following the inconclusive election outcome in February was deeply unpopular among its supporters. On the other hand, it might suffer most from any government collapse if Berlusconi could frame the event as “a battle against moves by the centre-left to raise taxes as part of [the following] year's budget discussions” (The Guardian, 2013). The risk was that collapse might provoke turmoil in the financial markets, for which Berlusconi himself might be blamed, and bring a decline in the share value of his companies.

And it was presumably the awareness of this risk that led each of the ministers “ordered” to resign, one by one to line up to express their misgivings until it became apparent that the threat to bring the Government down might provoke a major party split. From this it became apparent that, notwithstanding Berlusconi’s stance, the Government would survive the confidence vote anyway. Berlusconi’s dramatic last-minute U-turn was therefore the consequence of an awareness that he no longer had the power and authority to call the shots on the centre right – presumably because his age (77) makes him a rapidly wasting asset. The widely held assumption when the Government had taken office was that it would be weak because it depended on the cooperation of Berlusconi who had the power to withdraw the support of his followers any time he wished. Now that power had been put to the test and found wanting – and this was a dramatic new development in Italian politics: for the first time, Berlusconi, the leader of a “personal party”, created by him and for him, had been forced to bow to the will of his followers. Though his political demise had been predicted and disconfirmed many times in the past, now more than ever before his career as a political leader seemed to be drawing to a close.

For the past twenty years Berlusconi himself – his role in politics, his legal difficulties, his conflict of interests – has been the main cleavage structuring political conflict in Italy. Therefore, Letta’s description of the events of 2 October as “historic” could well turn out to be much more than a politician’s hyperbole: we may indeed be witnessing the end of an era.

Reference

The Guardian (2013), “Silvio Berlusconi insists he will stay in politics”, 18 September, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/18/silvio-berlusconi-politics.

2013 Italian General Election (and beyond) - Italian Politics at a Crossroads? -- CALL FOR PAPERS

The Italian politics specialist group invites paper submissions for a one-day conference focussing on the future of Italian politics after the general election of February 2013, which will be hosted by the University of Birmingham in January 2014. 

Attendance to the conference is free of charge but registration will be required (details on how to register will be provided in due course).

Further details on the event can be found below:
 

2013 Italian General Election (and beyond) – Italian politics at a crossroads?

One-day conference, 17 January 2014, University of Birmingham

Organised with the support of the Political Studies Association, the PSA’s Italian Politics Specialist Group and the Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Italian general election of February 2013 can fairly be described as a watershed event, resulting as it did in a political stalemate. With the country more or less divided into three equal segments among which there appeared to be no viable governing combination it was not until the end of April that a government could be formed, and then it was only thanks to the fact that the election’s aftermath coincided with the need to elect a new President of the Republic. The centre-left appeared to have won the election by a wafer-thin margin – but it had no Senate majority and, most importantly, it emerged in front only by virtue of the fact that the haemorrhage in its votes was slightly smaller than the haemorrhage of votes for the centre right. Support for the populist Five-star Movement (M5s), at its first general-election outing, exploded dramatically, to make it the largest single party. As a consequence of the outcome, neither of the logics on which government formation had been based in the ‘First’ and ‘Second Republics’, the consensual and the majoritarian respectively, was any longer available. If therefore, the election seemed to mark the end of an era, the one that appeared to be being ushered in pointed in the direction of a highly uncertain future. The grand coalition that was eventually formed had as its main protagonists two parties that had hitherto found it difficult in the extreme to accord each other legitimacy as potentially governing actors while they were under pressure as never before to bring about reform of the institutions whose mal-functioning had to a significant degree been responsible for the 2013 crisis in the first place.

Against this background papers are invited which in one way or another provide reflection on the long-term effects that such a momentous election have had and are still having on the Italian political system and beyond. The organisers are keen to encourage submissions focussing on a wide range of perspectives/topics related to the elections and any other relevant poltical issue post-February 2013, but conceivably proposals might offer to examine:

• specific parties, their performances and prospects, the most obvious examples to mention here being the M5s, PdL, PD;
• political campaigns – e.g. strategies (including the use of new-media) and impact;
• the wider relationship between media and politics;
• the party system as a whole – bearing in mind the extent to which the events leading up to the election, and its outcome, were so closely bound up with the parties’ loss of authority thanks to disappointment of the expectations that had arisen from the political upheavals of the early 1990s and the initiation of the so-called ‘Second Republic’;
• popular attitudes – and especially the anti-political sentiments to which the parties’ loss of authority had given rise;
• government and policy-making, including the formation and programmes of the governments that immediately preceded and followed the election – both executives, in their different ways, representing novelties;
• post-electoral scenarios and current developments (inlcuding the most recent government crisis); 
• reflections on what many claim to be 'the end of the Second Republic', and future perspectives;
• the personalisation of politics and its long-term impacts on the italian political system;
• the role of Italy’s place in Europe (and beyond) – both from the perspective of its significance as a campaign issue and a factor in the election run-up, from the perspective of the implications for it of the election outcome, and under the Letta government.     

Paper proposals (max 300 words) should be submitted by 18 October to Jim Newell (j.l.newell@salford.ac.uk), Arianna Giovannini (a.giovannini@leedsmet.ac.uk) and Daniele Albertazzi (d.albertazzi@bham.ac.uk) from either of whom further details about the conference can be obtained. Abstracts and papers must be submitted in English but, due to the specialist focus of the conference, this event will be bilingual and papers can be presented either in English or Italian.

The event is supported by the Italian Politics Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association (PSA), the Department of Modern Languages of the University of Birmingham and the Political Studies Association (special activities fund).

PSA ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2014 - CALL FOR PAPERS

The Italian Politics Specialist Group is promoting two Call for Papers for the next PSA annual conference, which will be held in Manchester (14-16 April 2014).

Details of the CfPs can be found below:

1)

‘The Day After Tomorrow’ – Italian politics and the long transition

Convenors&Chair:  Arianna Giovannini, Leeds Metropolitan University (a.giovannini@leedsmet.ac.uk); Antonella Seddone, University of Turin, Italy (asedd@tiscali.it)

Discussant:                             Daniele Albertazzi, University of Birmingham

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Italian general election of February 2013 can be described as a watershed event. Its results have been not only unexpected and indecisive – they have also put into question the very key values (and meaning) of the Italian political system.

As many commentators have argued, the startling outcome of these elections has provided ‘a shock to the system’ of Italian politics, especially for what concerns the ‘majoritarian bi-polarism’ which was achieved through a long and thorny process during the so-called Second Republic. And yet, whilst the precepts of the Second Republic may have started to crumble after February 2013, so far there has been no sign either of a clear break with the past, or of an emerging Third Republic. Instead, Italy seems to be muddling through a ‘long phase of transition’ – without a clear path and/or objective.

The aim of this panel is to develop a timely reflection on the Italian political system at this critical conjuncture, focussing on the idea that the current phase of transition is characterised on the one hand by new developments and on the other by strong signs of ‘resistance’ towards the radical change that much of the Italian electorate seems to be asking for.

Against this background, we welcome papers that will help to throw light on this momentous point in Italian politics, by exploring such issues as:

• New tendencies—looking in particular at: i) how traditional parties have tried to respond to the current climate, especially by redefining their organisational structures (e.g. primary elections within the PD; or the extent to which the PDL is trying/will have to develop strategies to overcome its over-personalisation, especially in light of Berlusconi’s recent trials); ii) the emergence of new movements/forms of parties (e.g. M5S) which have more fluid organisational dynamics, and use new-media as means and channels of participation/discussion
• The electoral law and its reform—focussing on the proposals put forward by the main political actors within the current government and the long-term effects these may have
• Political communication and its changing forms/dynamics—looking in particular at the relationship and/or the tension between new social media (such as twitter and facebook—which, many argue, are gaining more and more prominence) and TV and newspapers (which played a crucial role during the Second Republic and still provide a key source of political information for the electorate)
• Institutional change—looking at the effect that the recent reform of meso-level bodies (i.e. the disbandment of Provinces and re-allocation of their powers to Regions) will have on the decentralised structures/measures previously put in place and on the power geometry inherent to these
• The role of Europe and the changing attitudes towards the EU—focussing on how, whilst the Second Republic started with a strong emphasis on Europe (in spite of the austerity measures imposed by the parameters of the Maastricht Treaty), twenty years later the EU seems to have lost its appeal (and to some extent its legitimacy) amongst the Italian electorate, giving rise to more controversial feelings and perceptions of the European dimension.

Paper abstracts (250 words) should be submitted via email by 17 October to Antonella Seddone and AriannaGiovannini, from either of whom further details about the panel can be obtained.


2)

The Italian Politics Specialist Group (IPSG) and the Greek Politics Specialist Group (GPSG) intend to co-organise a panel at the 2014 PSA Annual Conference (Manchester 14-16 April 2014) under the theme “Economic and Political crisis in Greece and Italy in the context of Europe”.

In the last few years, Europe has faced its deepest crisis in decades. The crisis is predominantly economic in nature, but it has wider political and social implications. The countries of the South of Europe have been particularly hit by it and they have consequently been asked to implement tough austerity measures under mounting political and social pressure. The crisis has been discussed at length both within academia and the media. However, much less attention has been paid to the possible ways out of it and the extent to which the crisis itself might constitute a chance to ameliorate the long-standing politico-economic issues of the countries concerned. This panel aims at filling this gap.

Italy is the biggest country in both economic and population terms in the South of Europe and a key state in the European Union. Greece has been the country hit the hardest by the crisis and has faced the deepest austerity measures and reactions to them. Hence, comparing the experience of these two countries could yield some interesting insights on the ‘way forward’.

We thus welcome papers on the economic and political crisis in Greece and Italy against the background of Europe. The papers should follow a comparative approach and may discuss, but are not limited to:

• Policy reforms in Greece and Italy
• New political parties/forces that have emerged as a response/reaction to the crisis
• The way in which traditional parties have reacted to or adjusted their strategies in light of the crisis
• The role of media in the two countries in portraying the crisis and in spreading  specific perceptions of the EU and austerity measures
• The emergence of anti-politics feelings and their impact on the institution of democracy in Italy and Greece
• The future role and place of Italy and Greece in the EU

Proposals should include: title and name, e-mail address and affiliation of each author, and a paper title and abstract of not more than 250 words. Paper proposals should be sent by Thursday 17 October 2013 to Vasilis Leontitsis (Vas.Leontitsis@gmail.com) and Arianna Giovannini (a.giovannini@leedsmet.ac.uk) from either of whom further details about the panel can be obtained.

CALL FOR PAPERS

21st International Conference of Europeanists, organised by the Council of European Studies, 14-16 March 2014,  Washington DC.

CONGRIPS are organising a panel at this event and are looking for abstract proposals centred on the theme of the conference: ‘resurrections’ (full conference call here: 

http://councilforeuropeanstudies.org/conferences/2014-ces-conference/2014-conference-call).

We are looking for contributions from a variety of perspectives (from Italian politics in general, to political economy and public policy, territorial politics, party and electoral dynamics etc.), but comparative papers, which contrast and compare Italy with other European and also non-European countries will be favoured.

If you are interested in presenting a paper at this conference, please send the title and brief abstract of your proposed paper (max 250 words), by Monday 30 September to

laura.polverari@strath.ac.uk

This is the end of Berlusconi, right? Probably, yes

by Duncan McDonnell (EUI) 

(This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.) 

Colpevole. Guilty. On a hot August Thursday evening in Rome, after two decades of investigations and trials – many of which he escaped due to laws passed by his own governments – Silvio Berlusconi was finally and definitively convicted of a crime. It is a massive moment in modern Italian history. The man who has dominated the country’s politics since he formed his own party and won the 1994 general election is, according to Italy’s legal system, a criminal.

At a quarter to eight, several hours later than anticipated, the judges of the Court of Cassation – the final level of the justice system to which Berlusconi could appeal previous rulings in the case – confirmed the conviction for his role in tax fraud by his Mediaset group in the early part of the last decade (while he was prime minister). He won’t go to jail, but it seems certain he will spend a year either under house arrest or doing community service. He gets to choose which and has previously indicated that he would prefer house arrest.

The irony of this outcome is that Berlusconi has been undone by his failure to tackle his huge personal conflict of interests. If he really had given up control of his media empire when he entered politics in early 1994, he would not find himself liable now for its actions. Instead, the judges decided that he had retained a level of involvement in his companies which made him responsible for their misdeeds. His need to be the boss – the only real boss of his businesses and his political party – ultimately undid him.

Huge political problems

What the wider effects on Italian politics of this verdict will be remains to be seen. A second part of the sentence, barring him from public office, has been sent back to a lower court due to a technical issue over the ban’s length (this is likely to be reduced to no more than three years). But whatever the result of this, the verdict and sentence already pose huge problems not only for his own party – the Popolo della Libertà (PDL – People of Freedom) – but also for the centre-left Partito Democratico (PD – Democratic Party) which has been a reluctant coalition partner of the PDL since February’s inconclusive general election. Two parties which have despised one another for years have been forced to govern together.

It is hard to overstate Berlusconi’s influence on Italy’s political system during the past 20 years. He has been its fulcrum, with elections at national and even regional level based on whether you were for or against him. As the most recent centre-left coalition election slogan “L’Italia giusta” (“a just Italy”) suggested, their main unifying point has been that they are opposed to Berlusconi. On much else, they are bitterly divided. Likewise, for the smaller parties of the centre and right-wing, the key question in alliance strategies has been whether they could stomach standing alongside Berlusconi. Taking him out of the party system is therefore a bit like removing the bottom block of a jenga tower. We have no idea how the pieces might fall.

End of the PDL?

One possible outcome is that we are moving towards the end of the PDL. As a personal party, it has never had a “plan B” in which the “B” does not stand for “Berlusconi”. In a recent articlefor the academic journal Political Studies, I discussed what makes up a “personal party” and presented material from interviews conducted across Italy between 2009 and 2010 with PDL elected representatives and members. From these, two things were abundantly clear. The first was that Berlusconi’s authority was unquestioned and that no other party figures came even close to him. The second was that many in the party felt it was unlikely to survive the end of his time in politics. Even those that were more optimistic acknowledged that there was no obvious replacement for the founder-leader. As the 2008 campaign song “Thank goodness for Silvio” underlined, the spotlight has always been firmly on the leader, with little room for anyone else.

In the short term in Italy, we will see outpourings of joy from some and indignation from others. Berlusconi is an extremely divisive figure who attracts strong emotions, both negative and positive. Those who thought that he was a crook will see their views vindicated by this verdict. But so too will those who thought he was a dynamic individual persecuted by left-wing judges. This is a perception of Berlusconi which finds little favour abroad where he is better known for his gaffes and sexual antics. But it is one that is firmly rooted among a considerable minority of Italians for whom Berlusconi is a victim, not an offender.

So, as someone rang to ask me earlier, “this is the end of Berlusconi, right?” Probably, yes. But you can be sure he will go down fighting. Whether it is an appeal to the European Courts, orchestrated political turmoil or some other ingenious strategy entirely, he will come up with something. Because, for all his flaws, what Berlusconi has – and has always had in abundance compared to his weak-willed adversaries – are guts, stamina and invention. Expect to see these out in force in the weeks ahead. The Italian summer just got even hotter.

2013 Italian General Election – Italian politics at a crossroads?

One-day conference, 17 January 2014, University of Birmingham

Organised with the support of the Political Studies Association, the PSA’s Italian Politics Specialist Group and the Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Italian general election of February 2013 can fairly be described as a watershed event, resulting as it did in a political stalemate. With the country more or less divided into three equal segments among which there appeared to be no viable governing combination it was not until the end of April that a government could be formed, and then it was only thanks to the fact that the election’s aftermath coincided with the need to elect a new President of the Republic. The centre-left appeared to have won the election by a wafer-thin margin – but it had no Senate majority and, most importantly, it emerged in front only by virtue of the fact that the haemorrhage in its votes was slightly smaller than the haemorrhage of votes for the centre right. Support for the populist Five-star Movement (M5s), at its first general-election outing, exploded dramatically, to make it the largest single party. As a consequence of the outcome, neither of the logics on which government formation had been based in the ‘First’ and ‘Second Republics’, the consensual and the majoritarian respectively, was any longer available. If therefore, the election seemed to mark the end of an era, the one that appeared to be being ushered in pointed in the direction of a highly uncertain future. The grand coalition that was eventually formed had as its main protagonists two parties that had hitherto found it difficult in the extreme to accord each other legitimacy as potentially governing actors while they were under pressure as never before to bring about reform of the institutions whose mal-functioning had to a significant degree been responsible for the 2013 crisis in the first place.

Against this background papers are invited which in one way or another provide reflection on the effects that such a momentous election have had and are likely to have on the Italian political system and beyond. The organisers are keen to encourage submissions focussing on a wide range of perspectives/topics, but conceivably proposals might offer to examine:

• specific parties, their performances and prospects, the most obvious example to mention here being the M5s;

• political campaigns – e.g. strategies (including the use of new-media) and impact;

• the party system as a whole – bearing in mind the extent to which the events leading up to the election, and its outcome, were so closely bound up with the parties’ loss of authority thanks to disappointment of the expectations that had arisen from the political upheavals of the early 1990s and the initiation of the so-called ‘Second Republic’;

• popular attitudes – and especially the anti-political sentiments to which the parties’ loss of authority had given rise;

• government and policy-making, including the formation and programmes of the governments that immediately preceded and followed the election – both executives, in their different ways, representing novelties;

• the role of Italy’s place in Europe (and beyond) – both from the perspective of its significance as a campaign issue and a factor in the election run-up and from the perspective of the implications for it of the election outcome.     

Paper proposals (max 300 words) should be submitted by 18 October to Jim Newell (j.l.newell@salford.ac.uk), Arianna Giovannini (a.giovannini@leedsmet.ac.uk) and Daniele Albertazzi  (d.albertazzi@bham.ac.uk) from either of whom further details about the conference can be obtained. The event is supported by the Italian Politics Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association (PSA), the Department of Modern Languages of the University of Birmingham and the Political Studies Association (special activities fund). Journalists from the Italian, the UK and international media will be invited to attend, together with prestigious keynote speakers.