The Birth of the Democratic Party

1 THE BIRTH OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY Marc Lazar On 14 October 2007, primaries took place to elect the representatives and political secretary of the Democratic Party (PD). According to official figures provided by the organizers of the election, 3,554,169 people voted, with 75.79 percent choosing Walter Veltroni as secretary. He, along with Romano Prodi and their friends, celebrated the results in Rome on the same evening. The PD seemed to see the light of day under the best possible conditions, but it also did so under peculiar conditions. The electors who chose the leaders of the party were not necessarily its future members, and they knew almost nothing about the party’s status, organization, program, or strategy. The PD primaries thus reflect a deep-seated trend that affects Western parties, yet they also diverge from this trend. Although there is an increasing ten- dency for primaries to be organized, they are usually held by parties already in existence and, in the vast majority of cases, involve only the members of that party.1 In Italy, the PD primaries were open to everyone and represented a decisive step in the creation of a new party through the merger of the Left Democrats (DS) and the Margherita-Democracy Is Liberty (Margherita). Such a merger is a risky and relatively rare undertaking in party systems that are characterized by division and fragmentation. The PD aims to rationalize the Italian political system by consolidat- ing bipolarism or, according to some of its creators, by eventually establishing a two-party system that would not only enable Italy to Notes for this chapter begin on page 66. 52 Marc Lazar be governable, as public opinion desires, but also provide a response to the profound sense of malaise about contemporary democracy. Finally, for the left, the PD is part of a specifically Italian logic in that it aims to consolidate moderate forces and thereby prevent the reconstitution of a powerful political center. But it also claims to serve as an example to the whole of the European left. Piero Fassino, the DS party secretary from 2001 to 2007, explains it as follows: “The old tripolar framework, with the right, left, and center all trying to defeat each other, no longer works.”2 It is therefore important to retrace the gestation of this new, intriguing political party. The Gestation of the Project and Its Acceleration at the Turn of 2006–2007 The origins of the PD can be traced back to the Olive Tree coalition (Ulivo), which emerged in February 1995 and gathered momentum in 2005–2006.3 The Ulivo was conceived as an adaptation to the new electoral law of 1993, which encouraged the formation of coalitions, and as an attempt to banish the ghosts of the 1994 defeat of the Progressive Alliance and the centrists of the Pact for Italy. On the one hand, the Ulivo expected electoral success by bringing together heterogeneous forces, with the risk, in case of victory, of encountering greater dif- ficulties in governing. On the other hand, it wanted to construct an original edifice with the former Christian Democrats and ex-Commu- nists, as well as with the socialists and Greens. The Ulivo had electoral successes (in the 1996 political elections, ambivalently in the 2002 administrative elections but more clearly in 2003 and 2004, in the 2004 European elections, and the 2005 regional elections), setbacks (in 1998 with the fall of the Prodi government), and outright failures (in the 2000 regional elections and 2001 political elections) due to recurrent internal splits. However, many actors worked for increased unity. From the DS, Michele Salvati proposed the creation of a democratic party, as did Giuliano Amato and Arturo Parisi, as early as 2003. In the summer, Prodi pushed for this to be in place for the European elections. In these elections in 2004, the United in the Olive Tree list—an alliance of the DS, the Margherita, the Italian Democratic Socialists (SDI), and the European Republicans Movement (MRE)—won 31.1 percent of the votes. The march toward unity continually came up against obstacles as the DS and the majority of the Margherita preferred a federation of parties. On 11 October 2004, Prodi proposed the formation of a Grand Democratic Alliance, which would present joint candidates in the 2005 regional elections. Within this alliance, the DS, the Margherita, the SDI, The Birth of the Democratic Party 53 and the MRE launched the Olive Tree Federation with its own presi- dent (Prodi), a presidential advisory group, and a federal council of 60 members. However, the parties remained hesitant. In April 2005, unitary lists of the Unione (the new name for Prodi’s alliance) were present in only 9 out of 14 regions holding elections. They were victorious, but this had a pernicious effect as results were positive both with and without unitary lists.4 The parties wanted to negotiate with a view to victory in 2006. Thus, the overwhelming majority of delegates from the Margherita lined up behind Francesco Rutelli to defend the autonomy of their organization against the advice of Parisi and the “Ulivisti.” The DS was more favorable to the idea of a merger but was nonethe- less very cautious. Moreover, there were striking divisions within the federation, for example, over the referendum on medically assisted procreation, which revealed the scale of conflict over secularism and led the socialists to withdraw from the move toward unity. To overcome these conflicts, Prodi suggested holding primaries to designate the candidate to stand against Silvio Berlusconi. A favorable ballot result on 16 October 2005 encouraged him to increase the pressure for unity for the 2006 elections. The Margherita and the DS were forced to follow. Prodi’s victory in the 2006 political elections, in which the unitary lists of the Unione won 31.3 percent of the votes for the lower house—more than the total of votes for the DS and the Margherita in the Senate—and the formation of united groups of representatives in the two houses led Prodi to increase the pressure in favor of a single party. His position was approved by the DS and the Margherita in July 2006. Some organizations from “civil society” were created in order to participate in the formation of the new party and joined it. On the instigation of Prodi, and with the approval of the leaders of the DS and the Margherita, a meeting was held on 6 and 7 October in Orvieto with the leaders of the Ulivo, who were now ready to form a new party. The meeting was boycotted by the left of the DS, while the former members of the Italian Popular Party (PPI) within the Margherita remained reticent. Introductory reports were presented by three academics from the three main factions of the future party and from three different generations. The Catholic historian Pietro Scop- pola dealt with the theme, “Why we need a new party”; the historian Roberto Gualtieri, the deputy director of the Gramsci Institute and a member of the DS, spoke of the new party’s “cultural and program- matic profile”; and Salvatore Vassallo, a professor of political science with Ulivista leanings, spoke about “party organization.” Vassallo’s proposals—in particular, on the use of primaries to designate the members of the constituent assembly of the new party—were criti- cized, mainly by the DS, whose leaders, especially Fassino, opposed 54 Marc Lazar what they called a “light party” several times over the months that followed. They defended the existing parties and the procedure of designating the candidates for the constituent assembly themselves. In other words, they wanted to preserve their roles and promote their own party officials.5 Following this, Prodi, who managed to reach an agreement with the leaders of the DS and the Margherita, named a committee of 13 (later reduced to 12) “wise men,” chosen because of their reputation and skills. Given the task of writing the manifesto of the Democratic Party, the committee members were also carefully chosen to represent the different political tendencies present. Published on 12 February 2007, the manifesto begins with the words, “We, the Democrats, love Italy.” In it, the center-left defends a vision of the nation that is open to Europe and the world and tolerant of immi- grants. The PD sees itself as a response to the risk of the decline threaten- ing Italy, the challenge of globalization, and the crisis of the left in both Italy and Europe. It claims to renovate not only Italian but also European political life, “giving life, with the PES [Party of European Socialists] and other reformists, to a new structure of political forces that will overcome the lack of political direction at the Continental level.” The fundamental values of the party are liberty, equality, peace, and the dignity of the per- son—core principles that “inspired the Republican Constitution” and are considered to be “the common patrimony of the whole country.” These values are the result of the convergence of several traditions—liberal, socialist, democratic Catholic—and the integration of proposals from the ecological, feminist, and civil rights lobbies. In setting out its vision of European, international, and domestic politics, the manifesto aims to encourage individual initiative while ensuring social justice, which requires welfare reform. It also defends secularism, “not as an anti-reli- gious ideology, nor even as the site of a presumed but illusory neutrality, but as the way in which respect and honor are given to the pluralism of cultural orientations and moral convictions; and as the recognition of the full citizenship … of all religions.” Finally, the manifesto announces that the open and federal PD will organize primaries to choose its leaders (with its national leader being the candidate to run the country) and its various candidates for the highest offices (as had become habitual for the center-left in the choice of its candidates in the regional and administrative elections or for the office of prime minister).

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