The Italian regionalisation: a story of partisan logics

Abstract

The history of the Italian Republic's territorial structure has always been intertwined with party competition. Partisan logics have notably played a relevant role in the ways regions have been moulded, set up and run. This article illustrates the discourse of Italy's political parties on the ‘ordinary’ statute regions throughout the successive phases of regionalisation. After the consensus reached in the Constituent Assembly, a paralysis due to party contrasts followed. The Centre-left governments in the 1960s re-started the process, which culminated in the 1970s–also thanks to the Communists’ support–in the establishment of the 15 ordinary-statute regions. The 1990s inaugurated a period of further devolution, which reached constitutional status in the early years of the millennium. Once again, partisan motivations were of primary importance, notably because of the electoral threat posed to mainstream parties by the Northern League. In recent years, party positions have differentiated consistently according to inter-coalition competitive dynamics.

Italy: Still a Pro-European, but not a Fully Europeanised Elite?

“…It is perhaps surprising that regional identities are not able to score as high as the former levels. Regions represent a level of governance that has taken on a growing importance through the territorial reforms launched in the 1990s and known today as 'federalisation' (Baldi & Baldini 2008); moreover, even the parties that were rather reluctant to accept such a trend have joined the federalist side in the period of the Second Republic (Mazzoleni 2009). However, one should not overlook the fact that regions are not that 'natural' in Italy.…”

The ‘(party) politics of attention.’ Party competition and decentralist reforms: the Italian case

“…Parallel to agenda-setting literature, also scholars of decentralization have examined the role of party preferences on the dynamics of territorial reforms (Rokkan and Urwin, 1983;Rhodes and Wright, 1987), by showing how partisan logics often contribute to shape processes of decentralization, also in the Italian case (Bull and Pasquino, 2007;Mazzoleni, 2009;Massetti and Toubeau, 2013).…”

Ethno-regionalist Parties in Regional Government: Multilevel Coalitional Strategies in Italy and Spain

“…In Spain, for instance, this is the most salient dimension of competition in some autonomous communities, but is virtually absent from political debate in others. Variations may also be observed over time, as the cases of Italy (Mazzoleni 2009;Roux 2010) and Belgium (Deschouwer 2013;Hooghe 2004) show. In other words, this question can only be settled on empirical grounds.…”