Italian Referendum on Constitutional Reform

The Italian referendum on constitutional reform that will be held on the 4th of December will be a turning point in Italian politics, and may have profound repercussions not only within the country but also across Europe.

In these blogs, originally published on the LSE EUROPP Blog, eminent scholars, who are member of the IPSG discuss the key issues at stake:

Fabio Bordignon (University of Urbino):
"Will Italy's constitutional referendum mark the beginning of a Third Republic?"

Gianfranco Pasquino (Emeritus Professor of political science at the University of Bologna and member of the Accademia dei Lincei) and Andrea Capussela:
"Italy's constitutional reform is ill conceived and can be safely rejected"

The Five Star Movement’s victories in Italy’s mayoral elections: A major blow for Renzi and the PD**

Italy's Five Start Movement secured victory in mayoral elections in Rome and Turin on 19 June. James L. Newell and Arianna Giovannini interpret the results as a major blow for Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Substantial problems now lie ahead for the Italian government, as the PM faces a looming referendum on constitutional reform on which he has staked of his political future.

On 5 and 19 June, Italians went to the polls for local elections with potentially extremely dramatic consequences for the Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, and the future of Italian politics. Although only about a quarter of the electorate were involved, the elections have created major difficulties for Renzi as he seeks to mobilise support for major constitutional reform which is due to be voted on in a referendum to be held this autumn.

In the second, run-off, ballot, his governing Partito Democratico (PD) lost, among others, the symbolically important municipalities of Turin and Rome where the anti-political Five Star Movement (M5S) scored significant victories beating the PD by 55% to 45% in the former case and by an astonishing 67% to 33% in the latter. In the previous elections in 2013, the PD’s mayoral candidate had won almost double that proportion.

In these two cities, the results tell the story of a revolt against the ‘ancient regime’ of Italian politics, and can be read as the product of a growing sense of rage among the electorate against the establishment and ‘professional politicians’. The fact that the two young women – Virginia Raggi in Rome and Chiara Appendino in Turin – winning the mayoralties have little political experience has been seen as a strength rather than a hindrance for them, giving citizens an opportunity to cast their votes for ‘new faces’ and a fresh start.

This seemed to be especially necessary in the capital where in recent years local government, led by the centre-left, had been tainted by a level of corruption that had left the city in complete disarray. In Turin, another centre-left stronghold, local government certainly worked better than in Rome, but decades of PD administration had coincided with a high level of clientelism, which had marginalised voices from the more radical and locally entrenched left as well as civil society.

By thus seeming to have mismanaged, although in different ways, two key Italian cities, ‘Renzism’ in the eyes of the electorate has turned into what it had promised to change, and it has been punished for this. In popular perceptions, Renzi’s PD has become equated with the Europeanist and financial establishment and with the ‘Caste’ it aimed at eradicating. The paradox is obvious and has wide ranging implications: Matteo Renzi, the ‘scrapper’ whose mission was to get rid of the old and stale political class and bring in a once-in-a-generation political revolution has been himself ‘scrapped’ by the electors in two of the biggest cities in the country.

Whilst it is refreshing to see two young women being elected as mayors of two major cities, Sunday’s vote carries a bitter taste for both the left and the right, showing that the M5S is growing as a credible political alternative, one able successfully to appeal to voters from across the political spectrum – with major implications.

This could be seen in the results relating to the 154 municipalities with over 15,000 inhabitants, accounting for the vast majority of electors called to the polls: in 121 cases, there were run-off ballots because neither of the two best placed candidates on 5 June had won 50% of the vote; and although the Movement made it through to the second round in only twenty of these cases, where it did so, it won in all but one of them. The reason is easy to appreciate. As an anti-political catch-all party able to mobilise significant support, when it finds itself in a straight contest with a competitor of either the centre left or the centre right the M5S will attract the ballots not only of its own habitual voters but also those of the supporters of more or less all the parties opposed to the candidate it is trying to beat.
As such a party, the M5S was able to act as an effective vehicle of protest against Renzi and the governing PD – whose officials had betrayed their awareness of this fact in their insistence, during the campaign, that the vote was very much a local matter from which no particular conclusions for politics at national level could be drawn. And yet these elections seem to have acted as second-order elections, perceived by voters as an opportunity to punish or reward national-level public-office holders, as much as any local elections in the past. Perhaps more so: institutional reform since the early 1990s has enhanced the weight of political actors at sub-national level; the growing use of primaries since then has added to the media attention such elections are able to command. And heightened media salience means heightened political salience.

So no one is under any illusion about the extent to which Renzi has been damaged by these results which, given the context in which they have come about, will have effects on the political class and system well beyond the elections that have generated them. First, they will make it much more difficult for the Prime Minister to keep control of the turbulence within his own party, especially that part of it which is driven by opposition to the new electoral law he has managed to introduce for the Chamber of Deputies. This too is based on the principle of run-off ballots – which, once conceived as a means of excluding the M5S from power, have just been confirmed as offering unrivalled opportunities for the Movement.

Second, they will make it harder for the Prime Minister to win the referendum on which he has staked his political career; for by saying he will resign if the vote goes against him, he has effectively framed it as a plebiscite on a premiership the strength of which the local election results have just served to diminish. And if the referendum is lost, then lost, too, will be the package of constitutional reforms hanging on it. This may be no bad thing; but what is certain is that in such a scenario the democratic crisis currently affecting much of Europe will continue in Italy – either because an opportunity to address it effectively will have actually been lost, or because it will be widely perceived to have been lost.

**This article was originally published on LSE's EUROPP Blog 

Matteo Renzi’s transition to power is a gamble not just for his party, but for the Italian political system as a whole**

Last week Italian prime minister Enrico Letta resigned, with the general secretary of the Partito Democratico, Matteo Renzi, expected to take over as the country’s new PM. Arianna Giovannini and James L. Newell assess Renzi’s transition to power and the stakes for both his party and the wider situation in Italy. They note that although Renzi was the obvious successor to Letta, he was expected to wait until new elections before making a bid to become prime minister. By moving now he is taking a calculated gamble that his image as a ‘reformer’ will not be undermined by the fractious coalition that hobbled his predecessor.

Nearly one year after Italy’s watershed elections – elections which produced no clear winner and led to the creation of a wavering grand coalition government – the country faces yet another unexpected political turn. After a mere ten months in office, the PM Enrico Letta was ousted by his own party (the Partito Democratico, PD) on Thursday last week, and tendered his resignation to the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, the day after. Matteo Renzi, the young and ambitious new general secretary of the PD – the main party of the centre left, and Italy’s largest – is now expected to receive a mandate to form a new government in the next few days, becoming the country’s youngest PM at 39. What explains this development, and what is its significance for Italian politics and more broadly?

Who is Matteo Renzi?

As far as the first (and, indeed, the second) of these questions is concerned one has to appreciate, in the first place, who Renzi is. He had first acquired attention at national level as mayor of Florence from 2009 – big-city mayors having been well-placed in recent years to cultivate very high profiles and considerable personal followings for themselves thanks to a 1993 reform giving them enhanced powers and enabling them to run councils on presidential lines. From such a position he had been able to build a considerable following within the PD, earning himself the nickname, il Rottamatore (“the scrapper”), with his calls for internal party reform based on a generational turnover among its leadership ranks. Though in 2012 he had been defeated by PD general secretary, Pierluigi Bersani, in primary elections to choose the centre left’s candidate prime minister for the general election of 2013, the fact that the PD failed, against expectations, to win, paved the way for an election to replace Bersani – for a challenge, that is, that Renzi was only too willing to take up.

Matteo Renzi, Italy's new PM

Victory at the 8 December general secretary elections, open to ordinary voters, had been a foregone conclusion: he was the “change candidate” promising to overturn the traditional oligarchies in a party born, a few years previously, from the simple merger of the bureaucratic apparatuses of its predecessors and which therefore struggled to appear to be something genuinely new. He successfully projected himself as a politician offering a “soft” form of the anti-political sentiments espoused by Beppe Grillo and the Five-star Movement, enabling him to articulate the centre-left electorate’s growing mistrust of the political class.

Unexpected challenge to Letta

In the second place, his successful challenge to Enrico Letta has come as a surprise to many. Not long ago, in a previous blog post, we argued that it would be unrealistic to expect Letta to cede place to the Florentine mayor without putting up a fight for the premiership, or to expect Renzi to lead a revolt against his own party’s PM. On the one hand, it seemed that the lifespan of the incumbent government had probably been shortened by the mayor’s emergence, since his credibility as an agent of change necessarily implied distancing himself from an executive which, by its very nature as a grand coalition, was driven by a constant search for compromise. After all, Renzi sought to project himself as a young and charismatic leader, one capable of delivering a Blair-style policy revolution which, by inaugurating a “third way” designed to appeal to both sides of the left-right divide, would also revolutionise Italian politics generally.

On the other hand, though winning the 8 December contest handsomely, Renzi had only minority support among PD members and it seemed he would want to avoid jeopardising his popularity outside the party by being seen to be responsible for an early government collapse. Biding his time as the leader of a reformed PD, a leader standing outside the Government, it seemed likely that he would be in a position potentially to lead the centre left into fresh elections, free of the burden of having to defend the record of an outgoing austerity administration in which his own party had been the senior partner. In January he appeared to have succeeded, where so many others before him had failed, in achieving cross-party agreement for much needed reform of the electoral law. The expectation was, then, the one he had encouraged in the aftermath of his coronation as PD secretary when he had publicly declared his hostility to “wide coalitions”, arguing that he wanted to become prime minister by winning an election, so as to assume office with a public mandate.

Renzi’s gamble   

In the third place, then, one has to have some answers to the question why, against these expectations, Renzi has chosen to take the risk of losing his credibility (and, as a consequence, any forthcoming electoral contest) by making a strategic move which is reminiscent, in a most alarming way, of the First Republic and its ruthless political class.

One possible answer is straightforward personal ambition. Media commentary since the move has been dominated by observations concerning the risks he is running. His actions have exposed him to charges that he has grabbed power by cunning rather than through an above-board contest following an electoral-law reform, and that he is therefore little different to the politicians he vowed to “scrap”. He has also faced the accusation that his sweeping reform proposals (which include a new electoral law, reform of the labour market, a revision of the bicameral system, and cuts in public spending) are unrealistic and indicative of personal arrogance, given they are dependent on a profoundly divided parliament and the same fractious coalition that hobbled his predecessor.

But, in an age of personalised and mediatised politics, perhaps such commentary in fact explains precisely why Renzi has made his move: he is a man with little ideological baggage; his popular appeal lies precisely in his reputation for wanting to take on and shake up the existing power structures against the odds. Adopting a strategy framed in the media as “foolhardy”, then, paradoxically adds to his stature as a politician – adding to a perception that he is someone in whom hopes for “salvation” can justifiably be placed, given his seeming preparedness to put his entire career at stake in the cause of breaking the power of the old guard, the hated “political caste”.

How the move took place

Finally, then, with a possible answer to the question of “why?”, one has to have a sense of how the change has come about. The first problem was Letta’s removal from office – which could not realistically be expected to be achieved through a parliamentary vote of no confidence at the hands of one of the governing parties, in the absence of a specific pretext for calling such a vote. It could only come through the first-hand actions of Renzi himself through the extra-parliamentary organisations of the party he now led. Of these organisations, the one chosen was the Direzione nazionale – the executive committee for the party’s supreme policy-making body, the Assemblea nazionale, elected in concomitance with the general secretary.

The motion proposed by Renzi spoke of “the urgent need to initiate a new phase with a different executive, one that has the political strength to deal with the issues confronting the country with a view to completing the legislative term together with the current governing coalition and a programme open to the requests of social and economic interest groups”. It was approved by 136 votes to 16 with 2 abstentions. Although it made no mention of the possibility of Renzi taking Letta’s place, this, given the context in which it was passed, was understood by all concerned to be the motion’s political significance. And there were several reasons for expecting this understanding to be borne out by events.

Renzi was gambling on being able to exploit his popularity to head an executive capable of lasting longer and being more incisive than that of his predecessor. He had persuaded the Direzione to back his gamble and thereby, indirectly, had persuaded his party’s parliamentary representatives to do so: the longer they kept their seats without facing fresh elections the more their pensions would be enhanced; they could be expected to fall in line with the wishes of a Direzione and general secretary on whom their political careers were more or less dependent.

Letta understood he had been deserted and resigned. Napolitano could be expected to confer a mandate on Renzi given that all the signs were that he would succeed in winning the confirmatory vote of confidence that all new governments must, constitutionally, ask for, once they have been sworn in. And the expectation concerning Napolitano’s conduct was reinforced by the stated ambition for the new executive to see out the legislative term (which would end in 2018).

What now for Italy?

If the latest turn in Italian politics has been driven by forces that can be more or less accurately reconstructed, then it is somewhat harder to pin down its likely future significance. Three things, however, seem clear. Renzi’s administration will be the third government in just over two years to have taken office as a consequence of events other than the winning of a parliamentary majority through victory in an election contest. This in itself will constitute an element of weakness the new government will have to contend with: a confirmation of the democratic deficit currently expressed by Italy’s political institutions.

Second, the associated risks seem especially great in the present as compared to the previous two instances. Mario Monti took office as a technocrat with the specific remit of dealing with an economic emergency. Letta took office as the head of a grand coalition aware that economic and political stability required it. Renzi, on the other hand, will take office thanks to a mere shift of power from one party faction to another: a shift orchestrated by Renzi and his team from within the ranks of the PD, with a degree of (indirect) support from the President. Moreover he will take over from Letta thanks to an extra-parliamentary decision for which – arguably – no real political explanation has been given other than the need put in office an individual deemed to be a good communicator, but of whose political principles and capacities for national office little is in reality known.

Finally, therefore, if Renzi fails in his reform programme, if he fails to reduce the pressures of Italian citizens’ disenchantment, lack of trust and occasional overt rejection of their political class, then the consequences could be very serious indeed: not just for himself and his party but for the political system as a whole. As the Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari points out, referencing a well-known song from the 1930s, before long Italy and Renzi may be heading for ‘stormy weather’. 

** this article was originally published by LSE's EUROPP blog.

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

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.