Multi-level Party Politics in Italy and Spain Alex Wilson

387 Pages·2009·1.98 MB·English

Department of Political and Social Sciences
Multi-level Party Politics in Italy and Spain
Alex Wilson
Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of
Doctor of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute
Florence, June 2009
EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE
Department of Political and Social Sciences
Multi-level Party Politics in Italy and Spain
Alex Wilson
Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of
Doctor of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute
Examining Board:
Prof. Michael Keating (EUI, Supervisor)
Prof. Peter Mair (EUI)
Prof. Sergio Fabbrini (University of Trento)
Dr. Jonathan Hopkin (London School of Economics)
© 2009, Alex Wilson
No part of this thesis may be copied, reproduced or
transmitted without prior permission of the author
Wilson, Alex (2009), Multi-level Party Politics in Italy and Spain
European University Institute 10.2870/13381
Acknowledgements

There are many people to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude for their help with this
research, certainly too many to list here. This work is essentially a product of the
scholarly community at the European University Institute, and I am very thankful for the
input of professors and students at different stages and versions of the project. Their
detailed comments on my written work, or their valuable contributions in seminars,
workshops, and colloquia, have been crucial to the progress and completion of this thesis.

I would like to thank the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs for awarding me the
Salvador de Madariaga on three separate occasions, as well as the Political and Social
Sciences Department for providing me with additional research funds. These allowed me
to carry out in-depth interviews in four regional capitals, whose material contributed so
much to my findings. I would also like to thank all my interviewees, who despite busy
schedules nevertheless found the time to participate in this research project. I would
additionally like to thank various regional experts in the academic profession, who
provided me with invaluable perspectives on the specific nature of politics in their region.

I would like to thank Dr. Manuel Lopez for his wonderful hospitality in Santiago de
Compostela, as well as the frequent and enlightening discussions we had on Galician
politics. I would also like to thank Professor Massimo Marrelli, who was so helpful in
opening the doors to obtaining excellent interviews in the difficult region of Campania.

Finally, I would like to thank Ewa and my family, for putting up with me from start to
finish. And for tolerating my occasional bad humour along the way! Thank you.

Alex Wilson Florence, May 2009

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Wilson, Alex (2009), Multi-level Party Politics in Italy and Spain
European University Institute 10.2870/13381
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Wilson, Alex (2009), Multi-level Party Politics in Italy and Spain
European University Institute 10.2870/13381
Abstract

This thesis undertakes an empirical exploration of multi-level party politics in Italy and
Spain since the 1990s, with a particular focus on the regional level of party organisation
and electoral competition. It finds that statewide parties have adopted different territorial
strategies to confront the common challenge of multi-level coordination in a
decentralised political system. Regional branches of statewide parties increasingly
respond to the competitive pressures emerging from sub-national party systems, rather
than the preferences of the national leadership, although the interests of national and
regional elites may often coincide. Regional party systems in both countries are diverging
in their structures of competition, not only from the national level but also from each
other. This is closely related to the different types of electoral challenge posed by the
main non-statewide parties in these regions. The methodological design consists of two
national frameworks and four regional case studies, two in Italy (Campania, Lombardia)
and two in Spain (Andalusia, Galicia). These are linked through the use of comparable
empirical indicators over a similar timeframe. The national frameworks required the
compilation of a new data-set on regional elections in Italy and Spain, a detailed analysis
of party statutes and their evolution, and a full exploration of the secondary literature in
different languages. The regional case studies required extensive archival analysis of the
main national newspapers and their regional editions, reinforced by a series of in-depth
interviews with political actors in all four regions. The case studies found strong
empirical evidence concerning the distinctive character of presidentialism at regional
level; the continued importance of clientelism in shaping political relations at sub-
national levels; the pursuit of autonomist strategies by regional branches of statewide
parties; the variety of competitive strategies adopted by non-statewide parties; the role of
regional arenas as battlegrounds for national factional disputes; and the importance of
local coalition testing for subsequent coalitional choices at regional level. The
comparative conclusions serve to consolidate these findings, as well as to reflect on
further avenues for research in this rapidly developing field.

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Wilson, Alex (2009), Multi-level Party Politics in Italy and Spain
European University Institute 10.2870/13381
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Wilson, Alex (2009), Multi-level Party Politics in Italy and Spain
European University Institute 10.2870/13381
CHAPTER TITLE PAGES
Chapter 1.1 Introduction 3-10
Chapter 1.2 Literature Review 11-22
Chapter 1.3 Regionalisation and Party Strategies 22-28
Chapter 1.4 Methodological Design 29-32
Chapter 1.5 Regionalisation in Italy and Spain 33-49

Chapter 2.1 Multi-Level Party Organisation in Italy (1995-2007) 51-67
Chapter 2.2 Multi-Level Party Systems in Italy (1995-2007) 68-92
Chapter 2.3 Organisational and Systemic Linkages in Italy 92--94

Chapter 3.1 Multi-Level Party Organisation in Spain (1991-2007) 95-114
Chapter 3.2 Multi-Level Party Systems in Spain (1991-2007) 115-132
Chapter 3.3 Organisational and Systemic Linkages in Spain 132-134

Chapter 3.4 Concepts and Regional Case Studies 135-146

Chapter 4 Regional Party Politics in Italy 147-242
Chapter 4.1 Regional Party Politics in Campania (1995-2007) 148-194
Chapter 4.2 Regional Party Politics in Lombardia (1995-2007) 195-236
Chapter 4.3 Comparative Conclusions for the Italian Regions 237-242

Chapter 5 Regional Party Politics in Spain 243-337
Chapter 5.1 Regional Party Politics in Andalusia (1990-2007) 244-283
Chapter 5.2 Regional Party Politics in Galicia (1989-2007) 284-330
Chapter 5.3 Comparative Conclusions for the Spanish Regions 331-337

Chapter 6 Comparative Conclusions 339-354
Bibliography 355-370
Annexes 371-381
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Wilson, Alex (2009), Multi-level Party Politics in Italy and Spain
European University Institute 10.2870/13381
Wilson, Alex (2009), Multi-level Party Politics in Italy and Spain
European University Institute 10.2870/13381
Chapter 1.1: Introduction

This thesis examines the impact of state decentralisation to the regional level (hereafter
‘regionalisation’) on party politics in Italy and Spain, through the adoption of a multi-
level perspective that compares national and regional levels of party competition.
Focusing on recent changes to multi-level party organisations and party systems, this
research generates intra-national and cross-national comparisons. These will be of
particular interest for scholars of Italian and Spanish politics, but will have broader
implications for scholars of comparative politics. This research addresses the question of
whether political parties in Italy and Spain are diverging between territorial levels in
organisational or systemic terms, and in doing so highlights the mechanisms through
which regionalisation impacts on political parties. Existing studies of federal systems
have posited an interdependent relationship between decentralisation and political parties,
with more decentralised federations fostering more decentralised parties, while more
centralised federations foster more centralised parties (Elazar, 1987; Riker, 1975;
McKay, 2001; Filippov et al., 2004; Thorlakson, 2007). Yet we know little about the
transmission mechanisms through which state decentralisation affects political parties,
and this limits our understanding of recent processes of federalisation in Western Europe,
where centralised unitary states have undergone substantial processes of regionalisation
(Hesse and Wright, 1996), resulting in the creation of decentralised systems with federal
features (Stepan, 2001). Italy and Spain fit the profile of centralised unitary states
undergoing substantial processes of regionalisation, although this process is occurring for
rather different reasons (Moreno, 2001; Fabbrini and Brunazzo, 2003). Party politics in
these multi-level systems sheds revealing light on the territorial dynamics of state
decentralisation, because parties are not only responsible for shaping the institutional
reforms that lead to state decentralisation, but are also heavily affected by the competitive
and organisational pressures unleashed by the creation of new (or reinforced) levels of
elected sub-national government. The response of political parties to these pressures can
induce powerful centripetal or centrifugal dynamics into the process of decentralisation
(Keating and Wilson, 2009). However party organisations in Western Europe achieved
the ‘nationalisation’ of electoral politics precisely through the ‘vertical dislocation’ of
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Wilson, Alex (2009), Multi-level Party Politics in Italy and Spain
European University Institute 10.2870/13381
issues and allegiances (Caramani, 2004), so tended to develop rather centralised party
organisations (Katz and Mair, 1994), which they may be unwilling or unable to adjust in
response to changes in their external environment (Panebianco, 1988). The Italian and
Spanish cases provide substantial empirical evidence on the relationship between state
design and political parties, which can help to refine existing frameworks for analysing
multi-level politics in decentralised systems (Deschouwer, 2003; Hopkin, 2003; Hough
and Jeffery, 2006). This thesis argues that the territorial dynamics of multi-level politics
need to be evaluated in light of broader changes to political parties. These include the
weakening links of parties with civil society (Schmitter, 2001) and their closer
relationship to the state (Katz and Mair, 1995); the decline of party membership (Biezen
and Mair, 2001) and the rise of executive leadership (Poguntke and Webb, 2004); and the
increase in competitive bipolarism (Mair, 2006), despite partisan de-alignment and the
decline of traditional cleavage structures (Dalton and Watternberg, 2002). Existing
comparative studies of multi-level politics have considerably advanced our empirical
understanding in this field (Hough et al, 2003; Hough and Jeffery, 2006), but their
principal limitation has been a tendency to treat multi-level politics in relative isolation
from other processes of party change.

Multi-level politics in Italy and Spain is a vast area for theoretical and empirical research,
so this thesis necessarily focuses on comparable indicators that can measure change in
multi-level party organisations and multi-level party competition. The research focuses
on the main political parties that compete across the national territory (‘statewide
parties’), because these are primarily responsible for structuring political relationships
between territorial levels. This complements existing studies that have analysed
regionalist parties in Western Europe (De Winter and Tursan, 1998; De Winter et al,
2006), but rarely addressed the important question of how regionalist parties induce
change in statewide parties (SWP) and their regional branches (Roller and van Houten,
2003; Hepburn, 2007). Regionalist parties can have widely differing aims, from cultural
autonomy to full national independence (De Winter and Tursan, 1998), so the more
generic term ‘non-statewide parties’ (NSWP) is used to compare these political actors in
multi-level party systems (Pallares et al, 1997). The analysis of NSWP focuses primarily
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Wilson, Alex (2009), Multi-level Party Politics in Italy and Spain
European University Institute 10.2870/13381