Piero Ignazi

• Laurea
• Professor (Full) at University of Bologna

In recent years, academic literature has stressed the declining importance of social class and religion as determinants of vote. In particular, many scholars have found that the working-class vote is no longer mostly addressed to socialist parties, whereas religious people still massively support confessional and conservative parties. This article...

This article investigates the dimension and evolution of the financing of political parties. It focuses on 28 parties in the five major European countries (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain), analysing the parties’ budgets from 2002 to 2016. The article's assessment shows that the availability of funds increased until the beginning of the Great Rec...

The article argues that the persistent high level of dissatisfaction vis-à-vis parties comes from a mismatch between public expectations and parties’ performances. The present lack of confidence in parties is not attributable to failings in terms of representation or the fulfilment of policy promises. A more subtle process is apparently in operatio...

Political parties share a very bad reputation in most European countries. This paper provides an interpretation of this sentiment, reconstructing the downfall of the esteem in which parties were held and their fall since the post-war years up to present. In particular, the paper focuses on the abandonment of the parties' founding ‘logic of appropri...

This article discusses the state of agony parties are experiencing today. In a nutshell, I argue that parties are now at pains to retain their linkages with society, and that the compensation they envisaged has further damaged them. To respond to sociocultural and economic changes which had weakened parties both in their organizational standing and...

In this article we discuss Sartori’s party system typology and its eventual applicability to the Italian post-1994 party system. The first part of the article is devoted to an examination of the typology with particular reference to the case of the polarised pluralism which Sartori considered appropriate for the Italian party system until the late...

This analysis challenges the consensus that, in post-war Italy the Catholic party [Democrazia Cristiana (Dc)], actively supported by the Catholic Church, fostered a process of vote nationalization. The paper, drawing upon a more fine-grained level of analysis, different statistical measures, and within and across regional models, provides a more nu...

This article investigates the centre-periphery power relations within Italian political parties in the last twenty years. Following Katz and Mair approach in their study on party organization, the present work relies on the 'official story' of political parties: it analyses the parties' statutes, internal organizational regulations and balance shee...

This article presents an interpretation of the present malaise that afflicts the political party in established democracies. Today, parties are not only seen as inefficient or unscrupulous instruments, they are increasingly being labelled as illegitimate. The basic reason for this bad reputation lies in their detachment from society and their encro...

This article analyses the importance of socio-economic and religious factors in explaining the long-term electoral decay of the dominant party in Italy’s so-called First Republic – the Catholic DC – and the emergence of the regional autonomous Lega Nord (Northern League) from the DC’s remains. On the basis of a unique data set, this paper examines...

The Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia Cristiana, DC) constituted the centre of gravity in post-war Italian politics. The party collapsed after 1992, due to long-term changes in Italian society and the eruption of the Clean Hands investigation into political corruption. The DC lost more than half its vote in the 1994 elections: Why did the part...

The Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia Cristiana, DC) constituted the centre of gravity in post-war Italian politics. The party collapsed after 1992, due to long-term changes in Italian society and the eruption of the Clean Hands investigation into political corruption. The DC lost more than half its vote in the 1994 elections: Why did the part...

The authors examine the effects of modernization and secularization on the vote for the religious party in the Italian First Republic (1948-1992). In addition to modernization and secularization, they also introduce two new factors to the analysis: the importance of institutionalized Church and effects of the Church's Vatican II reforms. Italy is o...

Abstract will be provided by author.

This article investigates the centre-periphery power relations within Italian political parties in the last twenty years. Following Katz and Mair approach in their study on party organization, the present work relies on the 'official story' of political parties: it analyses the parties' statutes, internal organizational regulations and balance shee...

KEN S. COATES. A Global History of Indigenous Peoples: Struggle and Survival. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Pp. x, 297. £15.99 paper. Reviewed by Olive Patricia Dickason

This article analyses, adopting the well-known approach of Katz and Mair, the issue of organizational change within Italian political parties since 1990. In addition to an account of trends in membership, local units, finances, staff, and of changes in party statutes, the article aims at testing the widespread view in the literature that organizati...

The paper presents an interpretation of the present malaise regarding the political party in the established democracies. Today parties are not only seen as inefficient or unscrupulous instrument for representing and channelling the people’s will to the decision-makers: they are more and more rated as illegitimate. Why? In short because since almos...

This article has two aims. The first attempts to define the ‘extreme right’political family. The three criteria adopted — spatial, historic-ideological, attitudinal-systemic — have led us to identify two types of the extreme right party. One type comprises parties with a fascist imprint (old right-wing parties); the other comprises recently-born pa...

The French and Italian extreme right parties - Front National (FN) and Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) - seem to belong to two different traditions of contemporary right radicalism. The analysis of survey data from both parties' middle level elites, dealing with the level of political experience, the degree of integration/alienation vis-à-vis the...

This paper shows the long and prestigious intellectual tradition of anti-party arguments. Even before political parties emerged as unitary political actors, there were already well-developed arguments with which to express hostility towards them. The emphasis on unity and harmony in Western civilization moulded political thought. While this cultura...

From its position as the epitome of the ‘old’ post-war fascist extreme right party, the Movimento Sociale Italiano/Alleanza Nazionale (AN) has shifted towards the ideological centre and reinvented itself as a proto-conservative party to exploit the new institutional logic of the post-1993 Italian political system. Conversely, the Northern League ha...

The extreme right has consolidated its presence across Western Europe. This book presents a compilation of studies on the ideological meanings and political/partisan expressions of the extreme right, their post-war evolution, and the reasons behind the success and failure of various parties. It highlights the rise of a new type of parties that are...

From its position as the epitome of the ‘old' post-war fascist extreme right party, the Movimento Sociale Italiano/Alleanza Nazionale (AN) has shifted towards the ideological centre and reinvented itself as a proto-conservative party to exploit the new institutional logic of the post-1993 Italian political system. Conversely, the Northern League ha...

The extreme right has consolidated its presence across Western Europe. This book presents a compilation of studies on the ideological meanings and political/partisan expressions of the extreme right, their post-war evolution, and the reasons behind the success and failure of various parties. It highlights the rise of a new type of parties that are...

The extreme right has consolidated its presence across Western Europe. This book presents a compilation of studies on the ideological meanings and political/partisan expressions of the extreme right, their post-war evolution, and the reasons behind the success and failure of various parties. It highlights the rise of a new type of parties that are...

The extreme right has consolidated its presence across Western Europe. This book presents a compilation of studies on the ideological meanings and political/partisan expressions of the extreme right, their post-war evolution, and the reasons behind the success and failure of various parties. It highlights the rise of a new type of parties that are...

The extreme right has consolidated its presence across Western Europe. This book presents a compilation of studies on the ideological meanings and political/partisan expressions of the extreme right, their post-war evolution, and the reasons behind the success and failure of various parties. It highlights the rise of a new type of parties that are...

The extreme right has consolidated its presence across Western Europe. This book presents a compilation of studies on the ideological meanings and political/partisan expressions of the extreme right, their post-war evolution, and the reasons behind the success and failure of various parties. It highlights the rise of a new type of parties that are...

The extreme right has consolidated its presence across Western Europe. This book presents a compilation of studies on the ideological meanings and political/partisan expressions of the extreme right, their post-war evolution, and the reasons behind the success and failure of various parties. It highlights the rise of a new type of parties that are...

The extreme right has consolidated its presence across Western Europe. This book presents a compilation of studies on the ideological meanings and political/partisan expressions of the extreme right, their post-war evolution, and the reasons behind the success and failure of various parties. It highlights the rise of a new type of parties that are...

The extreme right has consolidated its presence across Western Europe. This book presents a compilation of studies on the ideological meanings and political/partisan expressions of the extreme right, their post-war evolution, and the reasons behind the success and failure of various parties. It highlights the rise of a new type of parties that are...

The extreme right has consolidated its presence across Western Europe. This book presents a compilation of studies on the ideological meanings and political/partisan expressions of the extreme right, their post-war evolution, and the reasons behind the success and failure of various parties. It highlights the rise of a new type of parties that are...

The extreme right has consolidated its presence across Western Europe. This book presents a compilation of studies on the ideological meanings and political/partisan expressions of the extreme right, their post-war evolution, and the reasons behind the success and failure of various parties. It highlights the rise of a new type of parties that are...

This chapter examines the development of right-extremism in Germany. It identifies a third wave of right extremism, which reflects the latent needs of a society emerging from structural/economic and value modification. The emergence of a ‘new axis of conflict,’ representing a non-material agenda ranging from national identity to authoritarianism, f...

The extreme right has consolidated its presence across Western Europe. This book presents a compilation of studies on the ideological meanings and political/partisan expressions of the extreme right, their post-war evolution, and the reasons behind the success and failure of various parties. It highlights the rise of a new type of parties that are...

This chapter aims at surveying the current terminology of the “extreme/radical/populist right parties,” stipulating criteria for the identification of such parties as a “party family” with its internal differiations, and underlining a set of hypotheses on these parties’ development with particular emphasis on the “political factors” and the general...

An analysis of the European party system shows that extreme right-wing political parties were basically nonexistent until the beginning of the 1980s. Looking at the results of the first European elections in 1979 (see table 10.1), only one extreme right-wing party entered the European Parliament: the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI). Other parties...

Giovanni Gozzini and Renzo Martinelli (1998) Storia del Partito comunista ‘italiano. VII. Dall'attentato a Togliatti all'VIII Congresso (Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore), pp. i‐xviii, 1–659, 80,000 lire.The publication of the seventh volume of the ‘History of the Italian Communist Party’ is a noteworthy event. In the party's often tumultuous history,...

Since the early to mid-1980s, West European party systems have broadened their spectra to include ‘new parties’. These newcomers are new in two different respects. First they are new because they have been founded (or have emerged from absolute irrelevance) in recent years; second because they do not belong to the traditional political families and...

This article analyses the recent transformation of the Italian neo‐Fascist party (Movimento Sociale Italiano‐ Italian Social Movement). The new party established by the former MSI, Alleanza nazionale (National Alliance), has been defined by its founders and many observers as a ‘post‐Fascist’ party. This article tries to highlight the continuities a...

This paper has a twofold aim: to disentangle the question of party decline, analysing the current meanings and the empirical evidence offered by the literature; to highlight the different and even opposite outcomes of such decline. As far as the party crisis is concerned, contrary to a shared knowledge it is difficult to give a final word. It is su...

La force des racines : la culture politique du Mouvement social italien au seuil du gouvernement. Piero Ignazi. Le Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), traditionnel représentant de l'extrême droite italienne, qui a pris lors des élections législatives du 27 mars 1994 le nom de Alleanza Nazionale (AN), a récemment fait une percée électorale et politiqu...

Introduzione I sistemi di partito dell'Europa occidentale stanno attraversando una fase di trasformazioni (Crewe and Denver 1985, Dalton, 1988, Dalton et al. 1984, Daalder e Mair 1983, Mair 1984, 1989a, 1989b, Wolinetz 1988). Questa trasformazione è individuabile a due diversi livelli di analisi, elettorale e partitico.

Introduzione Il recente passaggio da partito comunista a partito democratico della sinistra costituisce un interessante case study del mutamento di partito. In questo lavoro cercheremo di rispondere a due interrogativi di fondo: come si è sviluppata e chi ha favorito la trasformazione e quali sono i tratti valoriali caratterizzanti dei quadri inter...

Introduzione Il mondo politico-culturale della destra italiana del dopoguerra è stato trascurato, per lungo tempo, dalla comunità scientifica. A parte il pionieristico lavoro di Giorgio Galli, risalente alla metà degli anni settanta, è soltanto con l'inizio di questo decennio che si sviluppa una seria linea di ricerca su alcune componenti della des...

Au-delà d'un fond commun, et de divergences internes par tendance, les militants français et italiens se séparent nettement, au plan des orientations politiques et à celui des conceptions de l'action partisane. Par exemple, les militants du PSI ont une approche économique marquée par l'économie libérale, ceux du PS adhèrent aux conceptions socialis...

When studying religion and politics, Italy is of particular relevance because of the centrality of the Catholic religion in the Italian society and politics, and the domination of the religious party - the Christian Democracy (Democrazia Cristiana – DC) in the country’s party system until 1992. In this paper we analyze the impact on the vote for th...

Abstract will be provided by author.