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italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies Dear colleagues, Those of you whose research interests cover Italian politics will, I hope, be interested in the following: CALL FOR PAPERS: PSA 60TH ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE, EDINBURGH, 29 MARCH - 1 APRIL 2010 Title: Party leadership in Western Europe: Strictly Personal? Convenors: Duncan McDonnell (Turin) and James Newell (Salford) For several years there has in most western European democracies been a growing 'personalisation' of political leadership as a result of well-known processes of change having to do with * the role of the mass media in rendering the lives of the individuals who walk on the public stage 'much more visible than they ever were in the past' (Thompson, 2000: 6) and allowing politicians to present themselves not just as leaders, but as 'one of us'; * the switch from 'party-' to 'candidate-centred' campaigning - declining ideological conflict having shifted attention from position to valence issues and thus to candidates' competence; television and other electronic media, by allowing candidates to appeal directly to voters, having diminished the requirement for good party organisation and thus the attention to party itself in campaigns; * the role of declining ideological conflict in shifting the political battleground to the terrain of morality - with parties increasingly attempting to compete by fomenting scandal - and thus a growing focus on matters of personal integrity. * the rise of 'personal parties' (Calise, 2000), founded (or re-launched) and led by individuals, with political communication strategies being almost entirely focussed on these leaders. But while the causes and concomitants of personal leadership have been much explored, much less attention has been paid to its possible effects in terms of the significance of individual leaders. Consequently, fundamental questions remain unanswered - not least the question of whether the heightened focus - in political competition - on leaders and their personal qualities has been accompanied by any growth in their actual power. This raises a range of closely related questions, such as: If their power has increased, to what extent, in seeking to understand political processes and processes of political change, must we now pay greater attention than we once did to matters of political agency as compared to matters of structure? What are the factors that account for the emergence and growth of unusually powerful party leaders? That is, what are the factors that obstruct and enhance their efforts to act as significant agents of change? We invite papers exploring, from a single-country or a cross-national perspective, any of these themes. We are especially interested in studies of personal party leadership which could shed light on the Italian experience and the extent to which the role of an unusually powerful leader like Silvio Berlusconi represents a uniquely Italian phenomenon as opposed to being merely a rather extreme example of a more widespread, cross-national phenomenon. However, papers that explore the foregoing themes by drawing on alternative comparisons in Western Europe are equally welcome. Paper abstracts (circa 250 words) should be e-mailed by 1 September to: Duncan McDonnell ([log in to unmask]) and Jim Newell ([log in to unmask]) For more information, please visit the conference website at: http://www.psa.ac.uk/2010/ <http://www.psa.ac.uk/2010/> ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join italian-studies YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave italian-studies to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/italian-studies.html