Party-group disentanglement in the Italian case: an introduction

Change of government and interest groups' preference attainment on the formulation of the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP): from Conte to Draghi

“…In this case, a high level of ideological proximity between such groups and Berlusconi cabinet countered the pressures coming from public issue salience, playing a relevant role in ensuring business influence. This latter case is particularly interesting, because it seems to contradict the idea, repeatedly argued in the recent literature, that Italian political parties have largely lost their role as policy gatekeepers (Lizzi, 2014;Pritoni, 2017bPritoni, , 2019, and therefore their ideological orientations no longer matter that much for interest groups' chances to reach policy results.…”

“…In the end, according to the reviewed literature, the degree of political salience and technical complexity, combined with the features of the government – i.e., its decision-making capacity and its partisan composition (and, in turn, ideological orientation) – emerge as key factors in shaping interest groups' preference attainment in Italy. However, while on the role of issues' characteristics there is a substantial academic consensus, the importance of party-group ideological proximity for interest groups' preference attainment in the policymaking is more controversial (Lizzi, 2014). All this makes the formulation of the Italian NRRP a crucial case to be studied.…”

“…Second, it can help add empirical evidence to a topic that, in recent literature, has regained momentum: that of ideological proximity and policy alignment between groups and parties (Allern et al ., 2021a, 2021b, 2023). The international literature, on this point, has shown contradictory empirical results (Otjes and Rasmussen, 2017; Røed 2022), and the Italian case is no exception (Lizzi, 2014). Therefore, it becomes relevant to assess the correspondence between the change in the political colour of the executive, on the one hand, and the change in interests (not) appreciating the contents of the Plan, on the other.…”

“…Thus, focusing on these players appears as relevant and appropriate. Second, the Italian interest system greatly changed in recent years (Capano et al ., 2014; Lizzi and Pritoni, 2017) and several authors argued that parties lost most of their role in structuring the policy process (Lizzi, 2014; Pritoni, 2017b). Therefore, it is crucial to assess whether the dynamics characterizing the NRRP formulation can be reasonably inserted within this ‘big picture’ of change and party-group disentanglement or, on the contrary, government partisan composition still matters for interest groups' preference attainment.…”

Party–group interactions in Southern Europe: evidence from an expert survey

“…There is also an unbalance between the scholarship that focuses on Italy (e.g. Morlino, 1991;Lizzi, 2014;Pritoni, 2018) and Spain (Chaqués and Muñoz, 2016;Molins et al, 2016;Chaqués et al, 2020), and the two remaining countries (Greece and Portugal), which have not been the object of more comprehensive and systematic investigation. In addition, we employ a new methodological approach based on an expert survey, which allows us to systematically compare countries by collecting several indicators on party-group linkages.…”