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The Parliamentary Elite in Transition

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The Parliamentary Elite in Transition European Journal of Political Research 34: 121–150, 1998. 121 © 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. The parliamentary elite in transition LUCA VERZICHELLI University of Siena, Italy Abstract. Only two years after the critical elections of 27 March 1994, the Italian parliamen- tary election of 1996 marks another important step in the transformation of the political class. The extent of turnover is declining, and the renewal of the parliamentary elite shows some signs of stabilization. This article inquires into the differences in the sociological configuration of the new elite, and whether this means that new consolidated pathways to the parliamentary elite now already exist. The article analyzes the distribution of freshmen in the political class, the return of old backbenchers in the new political parties, the social and occupational back- ground of MPs and, finally, their local and political experiences. In the final section, the article discusses some hypotheses about the perspectives on the recruitment of Italian MPs, focusing in particular on the effects of the structural crisis of political parties and the introduction of the plurality system. An empirically-derived typology of professionalization patterns is also provided. 1994–1996: A complex period of renewal The recent Italian transition has re-opened questions that in recent years had been ignored by political analysis, such as the transformation of the political class and of its selection and career models. The central question to be posed here is whether a new political class already exists, and if so, what are its characteristics? The difficulty in finding answers to such questions appears paradoxical in a country where, for almost half a century, the degree of con- tinuity recorded in the characteristics of political elites often frustrated the researcher’s work (Mastropaolo 1994). Moreover, it is a complex problem, whose solution must be sought in social and political phenomena far removed from the beginning of the Italian transition. These phenomena have, in fact, been identified by analysts, and the theoretical framework of reference can be divided into three major arguments. First, the link between parliamentary change and the decline of mass parties – a phenomenon already evident at the end of the last decade – which has impelled analysts to propose new theoretical models of party forms (e.g. Katz & Mair 1995). The second and third streams are linked to the evolution of the Italian case in particular, and refer respectively to interpretations of the recent crisis and the transition that followed, and the effects of the electoral reforms. 122 LUCA VERZICHELLI More specifically, the organisational crisis of mass parties in Italy cul- minated with the collapse of consensus that swept away the protagonists of the old political order, and forced the principal actors of the opposition to undertake a drastic restructuring at both leadership and programmatic levels (Morlino 1996), and from the recent literature dealing with these themes within the Italian transition we can see a variety of interpretations which focus particularly on change in the political elite. Thus, for example, many ‘negative’ explanations of change emphasise the weakness or lack of useful- ness of the former political class (e.g. Pasquino 1995; Cotta & Verzichelli 1996). By contrast, other authors underline new elements that were already evident for some time, such as the idea of leadership democracy,whichin some way accelerated the decline of elites based on the old party apparatus (Zincone 1995), or the growing demands for change which were illustrated during the fifteen years preceding the elections of 1992 by protest votes or abstentionism, and which developed into the complex of the anti-political class (Pizzomo 1996). Despite their differences, however, all contributions to this discussion are agreed that, from the point of view of the consolidation of the political elite, 1994 was the starting point of the transition, and not the end. The rapid de-legitimation of the old political class had favoured the sort of change centering on an anti-partitocrazia reaction which held the old political formations responsible for transforming Italian democracy from a participa- tory to a protective system (Pizzorno 1996), and an initial way of observing the effects of the anti-party thrust on the construction of the new elite is simply to count the number of movements in the electoral market from 1992 that abandoned both the label of ‘party’ as well as the classic party organisa- tional structure. Indeed, detailed studies have already outlined how anti-party sentiment permeated the entire political spectrum, obliging many actors to emphasise their break with the past, and creating the conditions for new and sometimes anomalous coalitions (Bardi 1996). In more general terms, the ‘re- newal of politic’ became the buzz-words shared by proposals for overcoming the crisis as well as by the competing actors – ranging from the newest to even some of the most experienced leaders of the old order who sought refuge from the decimation of the early 1990s. On the other hand, it is also necessary to take into account other constraints and the opportunities, and particularly those associated with the new electoral laws, which are discussed in this is- sue and elsewhere (e.g. D’Alimonte & Chiaramonte 1994), and which had a major impact on the redistribution of political career opportunities and on the organization of the competing alternatives. In other words, and with the help of the four-variable model described by Pedersen in his classical work on the long-term transformation of Danish THE PARLIAMENTARY ELITE IN TRANSITION 123 elites (1976), it could be suggested that the different profiles which can now be identified in the composition of the political class may be due to ‘medi- ated effects’ by virtue of both changes in the opportunity structures within the various parties and the new distribution of seats between the parties. In Pedersen’s model these two intervening factors, intra-party and inter-party change in elite factors, vary together when the independent variable is rep- resented by a complex series of social and political changes, and this may well be the case in the 1990s Italian transition. What is important to note, however, is that although they were intense, the social and political changes did not have any revolutionary consequences, in that the 1948 constitution and parliamentary form of government remained unaltered. Moreover, other planned reforms concerning administrative and fiscal decentralization have yet to be implemented. The uncertainty of the situation therefore generates a series of reactions that further affects the two processes of change noted above, so much so that in three rounds of voting in only four years, changes at both the intra-party (leadership change, internal organization and strategy) and inter-party levels (electoral mobility, mergers, splits) continued to occur. We should also be cautious with respect to any ‘strong’ hypotheses re- garding the disappearance of the recruitment models characteristic of the historical experience of Italian democracy. Rather, it is perhaps more useful to differentiate the possible scenarios which might follow from the real impact of the above mentioned variables on the stabilization of the new political class. In particular, and with relevance to the role of party recruitment, we might hypothesise that the acquisition of public positions will be less depen- dent upon internal political socialization and the experience of a party career. But it is also important to see if the decline of the party role will be arrested during the transition, and above all, if such decline is uniformly spread across the different political formations. Different hypotheses can also be constructed in relation to the effects of the majoritarian electoral law. The idea of a total overthrow of traditional, centralized candidate selection procedures was already undermined by initial analyses of the 1994 elections, when the need for renewal and the experience of organizational disarray may have served to enhance the triumph of territo- rialization (Mattina 1994; Lanza 1995). That said, the recourse to majoritarian competition and to single-member candidatures have led to profound changes in party strategies (Katz 1996), and we can now verify earlier hypotheses on the potential effects of a learning process in the single-member constituency system (Verzichelli 1994) which suggested the possible emergence of a par- liamentary class that would be relatively independent of the national political class, and more influenced by the social and economic structures at the local level. 124 LUCA VERZICHELLI Finally, the real effects of the complex Italian crisis, and of anti-party sen- timent in particular, must be measured. For reasons discussed above, the par- liamentary elite were transformed in just a few years from being the symbol of Italian stability to being the leadership class most susceptible to change. At the same time, this is still a political class in transition, that is, it remains a heterogeneous group, which includes old and new politicians, as well as elements based on traditional recruitment and those deriving from attempts at innovation, and which also includes persons who are themselves in transit. Successive studies of the 1994 elections illustrated above all the dimension of change, while often expressing doubts as to the homogeneity and stabil- ity of the new political class. These studies also inevitably generated more questions than answers. Now, however, following two majoritarian rounds of voting, the perspective has begun to change, and the problem today is to understand if the transitionary political class is being consolidated on a different basis to that which prevailed before, and if innovation can in fact be discerned. Hence, a two-fold comparison is required. On the one hand, we need to see how the profiles of the political class in transition differ from those of the old leadership.
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