Abstract
Alcide de Gasperi — the leader of the Italian Democrazia Cristiana (DC) in the immediate postwar period, and Prime Minister from 1945 to 1953 — once defined his party as ‘a party of the centre moving towards the left’. Today, just as then, Italian Christian Democrats do not like being called ‘conservatives’, a term with negative connotations in Italian political language. Nevertheless, the DC has represented and still represents the centre-right pole in the Italian party system vis-à-vis the two other large parties, the Socialist party (PSI) and the Communist party (PCI). During 35 years of post-war elections the DC has frequently exchanged voters with the parties of the right and has increased electoral support only in this direction, while regularly losing ground to the left.
This is a substantially revised version of an article which appeared in the European Journal of Political Research: F. Belloni, M. Caciagli and L. Mattina, The Mass Clientelism Party: The Christian Democratic Party in Catania and in Southern Italy’, EJPR, ix (1979) pp. 253–75.
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Notes
Alan Zuckerman, The Politics of Factions: Christian Democratic Rule in Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979).
Ruggero Orfei, L’occupazione del Potere. I Democristiani 1945–1975 (Milan: Longanesi, 1976).
For the mass party the model I refer to is that — still, I believe, valid — of Maurice Duverger, Les Partis Politiques (Paris: Colin, 1951).
Celso Ghini, Il Voto degli Italiani (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1975).
See Luigi Graziano, Clientelismo e Sistema Politico. Il Caso dell’Italia (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1980). By the same author, Tatron-Client Relationship in Southern Italy’ in European Journal of Political Research, 1973, I, pp. 3.34.
Sidney Tarrow, Peasant Communism in Southern Italy (New Haven Conn.,: Yale University Press, 1967).
Percy A. Allum, Politics and Society in Post-War Naples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973); and Massimo Caprara, I Gava (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1975).
Mario Caciagli et al., Democrazia Cristiana e Potere nel Mezzogirno. Il Sistema Democristiano a Catania (Florence: Guaraldi, 1977).
Giuseppe Bonazzi, Arnaldo Bagnasco and Salvatore Casillo, Industria e Potere in una Provincia Méridionale (Turin: L’Impresa Edizioni, 1972).
On the party-machine in the USA see Michael Royko, Boss: Richard Daley of Chicago (New York: Dutton, 1971) and Hugh Bone, American Politics and the Party System (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).
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© 1982 Mario Caciagli
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Caciagli, M. (1982). The Mass Clientelism Party and Conservative Politics: Christian Democracy in Southern Italy. In: Layton-Henry, Z. (eds) Conservative Politics in Western Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05519-7_12
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