Radicalization of the Party System in Italy: an Empirical MMeasurement

This paper is interested in analyzing the process of radicalization of party systems in Western Europe and, in particular, in Italy, in most recent times. The analysis is developed starting from the following research questions: 1. RQ1: How can the radicalization of party system be empirically measured? 2. RQ2: To which extent the contemporary Italian party systems is undergoing a process of radicalization? The matter of party systems’ radicalization is particularly relevant nowadays since several parties in Western European are moving towards radical positions on a number of issues (e.g., immigration control, environment protection, economic saving, ext.). This can be read as a reaction to the major challenges parties are currently facing, such as the severe economic slowdown, the growth of refugees flows and the most recent environmental changes. The literature about parties and party systems has been dealing with the issue of radicalization since several years already (Dalton 2008; Derks 2006; Kitschelt 1995; Lanza and Memoli 2017; Morlino 1981; Sartori 1976). However, we still have both conceptual and operational uncertainty about this term. Namely, in conceptual terms, the definition of party systems’ radicalization is difficult to distinguish from that of other similar concepts, in primis that of polarization (Sartori, 1976). Moreover, attempts to empirically measuring radicalization are even more rare, except for a few cases, like the operational definition provided by Morlino in 1981 (Lanza and Memoli 2017; Morlino 1981). In the face of the existing limitations in the literature, this paper pursues two main objectives. First, it aims at providing a proposition for an empirical measurement of radicalization of party systems. Starting from that, it wants to build an Index of radicalization which is valid and reliable for future research. In second place, the paper aims at testing the proposed measurement by applying it to an empirical case, i.e., the Italian party system the time-span between 2013 and 2018. In order to conduct the analysis, I rely on a qualitative content analysis of the main political parties’ manifestos in both the 2013 and the 2018 Italian national political elections. While it is mainly focused on the Italian case, this work provides researchers with an analytical tool to measure radicalization in several other party systems as well, avoiding conceptual and operational confusion. This is intended to contribute to the broader discussion about radicalization and its empirical measurement.