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Owner parties and party institutionalisation in Italy: is the Northern League exceptional?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2016

Michelangelo Vercesi
Michelangelo Vercesi*
Affiliation:
Center for the Study of Democracy, Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany
*
∗Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Studies on party institutionalisation commonly argue that parties with personalist leadership and weak organisation are unlikely to remain in power beyond leadership succession. In other words, these parties will rarely attain their own institutionalisation. From this perspective, the recent Italian political reality represents a conundrum. Three parties of this type – Northern League; Forza Italia; Italy of Values – confronted significant resignation issues concerning their leaders, but only the League, contrary to the theory, made a decisive step toward institutionalisation by removing its founding father and remaining an actor with national blackmail potential. This article addresses this challenge and provides a solution to this conundrum. In particular, the article demonstrates that an approach that considers both party factors and critical events is necessary to account fully for the variance of outcomes and, more generally, for party change.

Gli studi sull'istituzionalizzazione partitica sostengono che i partiti caratterizzati da leadership personaliste e deboli organizzazioni hanno scarse probabilità di sopravvivere alla successione del loro leader. In altre parole, essi incontrerebbero serie difficoltà nel processo di istituzionalizzazione. Da questo punto di vista, la politica italiana più recente ha presentato un puzzle teorico. Tre partiti assimilabili a questo tipo – Lega Nord; Forza Italia; Italia dei Valori – si sono trovati a fronteggiare eventi da cui sono emersi significativi presupposti per le dimissioni dei loro leader. Ciononostante, solo la Lega è stata in grado di deviare dagli esiti previsti dalla teoria e di compiere un passo decisivo verso la propria istituzionalizzazione, rimuovendo il padre fondatore e mantenendo un potenziale di ricatto a livello nazionale. Il presente articolo affronta la questione e fornisce una soluzione al puzzle. In particolare, esso mostra come un cambio di approccio capace di prendere in considerazione sia i fattori partitici sia gli eventi critici sia necessario al fine di spiegare pienamente la differenza negli esiti e, più in generale, il mutamento partitico.

Keywords

party institutionalisationpersonalist leadershipItalian party systemeventsForza ItaliaLega Nord
Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , November 2015 , pp. 395 - 410
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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