The Nature of the Italian Party System: A Regional Case Study by Geoffrey Pridham

Author:Geoffrey Pridham [Pridham, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: European, Political Science, World, General
ISBN: 9781317339700
Google: qDN-CwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 28967947
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1981-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

Sources: Comitato Regionale della DC, Segretaria Organizzativa for DC membership data; percentage population calculated on basis of 1971 census figures for each province given in Unione Regionale delle Camere di Commercio della Toscana, Quadri di Economia Toscana (1974).

Table 4.2: Social Composition of DC Membership in Tuscany, 1975

Source: DC, Direzione Centrale, Ufficio Organizzazione Interna.

Making a straight comparison with the social structure of DC membership in the whole of Italy, it does seem that the Tuscan party as a whole was less untypical sociologically than one might assume in this ‘Red’ region. There was a similar proportion of those employed in commerce, credit and insurance, the free professions and artisan work, although all these were relatively small sectors. In Tuscany, there was a marginally higher proportion of public employees and those engaged in industry (including workers), with a smaller proportion in agriculture. Among public employees, there is a clear predominance of those employed by the state and the para-state and local government agencies, thus indicating the party’s clientilist roots. The largest difference compared with the national average was the significantly lower proportion of housewives in the DC in Tuscany. They generally provided about a quarter of the party’s membership (Table 4.3).

Various brief comments are necessary to put these data into perspective. The apparent reflection in Tuscany of the national structure of membership disguised both regional variations in Italy (e.g. a stronger agricultural base in the south; a stronger working-class base in the north), and also sub-regional variations. A party’s membership composition naturally mirrored the particular social environment from which it drew its base, and Tuscany’s social structure was, viewed very crudely, closer to the national average than many other regions. However, it is more instructive to examine provincial differences. The basic contrast between Lucca and the rest of Tuscany is once more evident as the DC’s stronger base among workers and peasants in the former substantially raised the average for the whole region. The Catholic sub-cultural factor was the main reason, with the additional feature that the DC’s stronghold in the agricultural sector among coltivatori diretti was accounted for to a large degree by the traditional concentration of this occupational group in the province of Lucca. Another group worth comment are housewives. The lower proportion for Tuscany derived almost certainly from the impact of the ‘Red’ sub-culture with the socially conformist pressures this created whether through male influence or the environment in general (notably the weak influence of religion). The same feature is suggested by the lower proportion of women members as a whole in Tuscany: 26.84 per cent compared with 37.22 per cent for Italy.40

Comparing the DC’s membership with that of the PCI in Tuscany, the differences which emerge cause no great surprise: the latter is very much more of a working-class party in its social base, and generally weaker among the bourgeoisie as a whole, in particular among white-collar workers.h The strength of the Tuscan PCI among the agricultural class also explains the lower proportional representation of the DC here compared with its national average.

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