Parties’ Organisational Profiles and Policy Positions: The Italian Case

In comparative party research, the Italian case has traditionally been depicted as an “outlier”. In recent years, the high level of party mortality, the dealignment between parties and voters and the related volatility of voting behaviour have contributed to further increase the complexity of the Italian party system. Most of the parties born during the Nineties, or at the beginning of the new Millennium, have not been able to consolidate or expand their organizations nor their electorate. In the afterwards of the 2018 Parliamentary elections, an unpredictable governmental coalition between the victorious Five Stars Movement – a heterodox anti-establishment movement – and the Northern League – the most long-lasting party among the competing ones – has been formed and it is currently ruling the country. Interestingly, these two parties show very different organizational profiles as well as distant policy positions. The aim of this paper is to investigate what kind (if any) of relationship exists between party organizational templates and party policy positions. Our research question is the following: is it possible to associate the socio-economic and the cultural positioning of parties with peculiar ways of regulating 1) party membership, 2) the relationship with ancillary/collateral organizations, 3) party structural arrangements and 4) party leadership? Building on a broader reflection on the concept of internal disintermediation, our empirical analysis will consider five parties that entered the Chamber of Deputies in 2018 (Five Stars Movement, Northern League, Forza Italia, Democratic Party, Brothers of Italy). Our study will mix three sources of original data: the data collected through the Political Party Database Project, the most extensive research on party organizations worldwide, which will enable us to measure the level of party internal disintermediation; the data gathered through NavigatoreElettorale.it – a VAA launched before the elections – which will allow us to map party policy positions; and the results of an expert survey geared towards the Italian Political Science community, which will be used to validate the assumptions drawn through the organizational analysis and the results of the VAA. We expect to find patterns of convergence towards internally disintermediated party organizations: we also expect to identify a policy “simplification” for each party, i.e. a reduction in the range of policy positions covered by parties’ campaigning.