The failure of mainstream parties and the impact of new challenger parties in France, Italy and Spain

Abstract

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 appropriateness’ based, on the one hand, on the ethics for collective engagement in collective environments for collective aims and, on the other hand, on the full commitment of party officials. The abandonment of these two aspects has led to a crisis of legitimacy that mainstream parties have tried to counteract in ways that have proven ineffective, as membership still declines and confidence still languishes. Finally, the paper investigates whether the new challenger parties in France, Italy and Spain have introduced organizational and behavioural changes that could eventually reverse disaffection with the political party per se.

Looking through the mirror: representativeness of the Italian party system before the 2018 General Election

“…The existing literature has noted that Italian parties and their voters tend to have similar positions on the left-right scale and on single policy positioning (Bellucci & Pellegata 2017), while the ideological congruence is less noticeable on the left side of the political spectrum (Pedrazzani & Segatti 2021). At the same time, in line with previous research, the presence of new challenger parties seem to reduce representation shortcomings only partially and only on some specific aspects (Ignazi 2020). Other studies investigated the congruence between Italian MPs and citizens, finding that legislators pay close attention to public opinion shifts and preferences of the citizens they represent, especially those in government (Visconti 2018).…”

“…Since the late 1980s, political parties entered a path of decreasing trust and confidence. Many reasons contributed to this decline, with the results that, today, the decline of these organisations can be seen from many different points of observation (Ignazi 2020). One of the reasons behind this drop in confidence has been explained by a process of detachment of parties from voters' social bases, whereas parties have progressively become similar to public agencies, losing their linkage with society (Mair 2013).…”

Hacking the representative system through deliberation? The organization of the Agora party in Brussels

“…This is normal since they need each other. One cannot function without the other and by interacting with each other in a critical and deliberative way we make sure not to abandon our ideological mission to spread deliberation - Respondent 6 This suggests that the stratarchical separation of power is one factor that renders the party more robust to leadership domination than other parties that adopt deliberative practices such as M5S and Podemos (Ignazi 2021 ). Due to the stratarchical separation of powers, Agora requires and stimulates deliberation between entities on equal footing.…”

Losers together? Grand coalitions in the EU member states

“…They are clearly defined in the literature as parties that already participated in government at the national level (Sartori, 2005; Shamir and Rahat, 2017: 22). However, according to Ignazi (2021: 1) ‘the expression mainstream parties has never been precisely defined in the literature. It usually refers to established and “relevant” (in the Sartorian sense) parties, irrespective of their political alignment and location on the political spectrum’.…”