italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies
Dear colleagues,
Duncan McDonnell (University of York), Felia Allum (University
of Bath) and I wish to organise a series of panels for the UK
Political Studies Association Conference in Lincoln, 5-8 April
2004. The panel(s) will be entitled ‘Political parties and party
system change in Italy: current states and future prospects’.
Anyone who wants to give a paper should e-mail me by 16th
November with a short abstract (circa 300 words) describing
the paper they want to present. The following paragraph
describes the intended focus of the panel(s) and the issues we
would wish papers to address.
Of the changes that have taken place in the Italian Republic since
the early 1990s, undoubtedly the most dramatic have related to
the political parties and the party system. As a consequence of
several factors (the most important being the organisational
collapse of most of the parties that had dominated national
politics since the war, together with the 1993 reform of the
electoral system) the party system has been transformed through
a process of bipolarisation. At the same time, while the
consolidation of bi-polar, left-right competition has become
widely accepted, caveats as to its stability continue to be made.
Moreover, even if stable, bi-polar competition does turn out to
represent the future of Italian party politics, the current make-up
of the two main coalitions appears in no sense to be set in stone.
For example, one of the most intriguing (if ultimately
unanswerable) questions that is often asked is: given the sheer
power of Berlusconi on the centre-right, what would happen to
his party and coalition if he were to go under a bus tomorrow?
Given all of this, and given that parties and party-systems are
central to the functioning of modern democratic polities, an
understanding of the characteristics and current trajectory of the
Italian political system as a whole is crucially dependent on an
understanding of the nature of the country’s parties and party
coalitions. In the light this, we are particularly interested in
papers relevant to one or more of the significant questions
researchers have been prompted to ask about the current state
of party politics in Italy, namely:
* how is the Italian party-system now best characterised in
terms of party-system models?;
* what are the main points of comparison and contrast between
each of the two main coalitions that will help explain their
respective dynamics?;
* what are the principal organisational and electoral challenges
currently being faced by the two main coalitions and their
constituent parties?;
* how are they responding to these challenges, and what do the
answers to these questions tell us about the likely outcome of
the so-called ‘Italian transition’?;
* what have been the most significant consequences of Italy’s
party-system transformation?;
* taking Italy as a case study, what lessons do recent
developments offer for the comparative study of parties and
party systems?;
* in terms of their behaviour, what comparisons can be drawn
between the parties of the ‘First Republic’ and ‘what we have
now’?
We are particularly concerned to attract offers of papers offering
in-depth analyses of individual parties – especially contributions
looking at how individual parties have developed their own
particular roles within their centre-left or centre-right coalition
and how these have changed over time. Papers of this kind will,
so far as possible, be grouped together within the framework of
two panels: one focussing on the governing parties and the
challenges facing them; the other focussing on the parties of the
Opposition.
Kind regards,
Jim Newell
Co-convenor, UK Political Studies Association, Italian Politics
Specialist Group
***********************************************
Senior Lecturer in Politics and member of the European Studies Research Institute (ESRI)
School of English, Sociology, Politics & Contemporary History
University of Salford
Salford M5 4WT
Tel +44 (0)161 295 5660
Fax +44 (0)161 295 5077
ESRI web site: www.esri.salford.ac.uk
***********************************************
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