Italian Elections and Politics 2022 - Our Time to Schlein

[Alcibiades]

Why can't you just abolish the Senate? What's argument against unicameralism in Italy?

Why should we abolish the Senate? What's the argument for unicameralism in Italy?

Presumably the usual arguments about gridlock, contradictory or confused mandates, tendancy to be dispropotionately conservative...

But also, in Italy, what purpose does the senate serve? In federal countries, the upper chamber generally represents the federal subjects against a lower chamber that represents the people; or else, it plays a clearly subordinate role like in France or the UK. But in Italy? what is the point of it? what is the use in having it as a separate institution to the chamber of deputies?

Gridlock exists. The other things you mentioned do not apply at all to Italy.

The purpose is having a separate deliberation from a body with different composition (the minimum age is higher; Senators for life exist) and "checks and balances". Also it gives us an opportunity to vote in two different ways when there are parliamentary elections.

To be honest, while many people seem to think "what's the point of having two chambers if they have roughly equal standing and competences?", my position is "what's the point of having two chambers if the upper one is clearly subordinate and has little power?"

Well, the rationale for having two chambers is usually that they fulfil different roles or represent different bodies (usually one for the people and one for the states). Thus it follows that they must have different powers; even leaving aside the possibility for gridlock and the redundancy of having two chambers carry out the same procedures and functions, it is hardly fair that the one house, which will inevitably be less democratic (usually the upper house), should have equal power.

In Italy, though, notwithstanding the fairly minor differences you mentioned, both chambers broadly represent the people, which raises the question of why have two chambers fulfilling the same roles and representing the same bodies?

[Alcibiades]

[censored]

Translation?

Comparing the Virgin, Our Lady, to a transvestite whore, all the angels in a row, comparing God to a swine.

Yeah, welcome to the magic tragic world of Italian blasphemies.

I feel that Catholic countries have much more imaginative obscenities.

[Alcibiades]

Where do Conte’s sympathies now lie ideologically? Obviously he was originally chosen by the ‘populist coalition’ to lead their government, but to survive the confidence vote he was making appeals to liberals and social democrats. Is he still most closely linked with M5S out of all the parties in his government? Also, does he have any long-term political ambitions or desire to get involved in party politics, and does he intend to try and remain PM or otherwise continue to be active in politics after the next election, or if this government collapses?

[Alcibiades]

Nice to see some results that put at least a small dent in the narrative of hegemonic right-wing ascendancy. Maybe I should always go to Italy when there’s an election on - clearly my presence here has powered the centre-left to victory!

[Alcibiades]

I’m not voting for them to win, I’m voting for them to make sure that other parties don’t cross the threshold.

Found that Italian passport behind the sofa yet, huh?

[Alcibiades]

Also, didn't Italy never really have a "normal" correlation between vote and income? The Red Regions have always been richer than the South.

To add to what Battista said: the Red Regions originally emerged as left-wing strongholds in the early 20th century because they had a very particular agricultural system which engendered violent class conflict between rural labourers and landowners. The flip side of this was that in the immediate post-WWI years, Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna were also the strongholds of Fascist popular support, where it found a natural base among the middle classes terrified by this working class radicalism.

My understanding, though, is that after WWII the nature of left-wing support in the Red Regions underwent quite a dramatic change from the above situation, and the PCI (which had of course supplanted the PSI as the dominant force on the left) became something of a cross-class phenomenon there, a deeply-engrained cultural institution. I’m not fully sure of the reasons for this, but I think it had something to do with these regions being the centre of anti-Fascist Resistance activity during the war. It probably also helped that the PCI was quite distinctive amongst left-wing parties in being founded as much on a core of intellectuals as the mass support of the organised working classes. That said, I think you would still have had much more relatively normal class-based electoral patterns during the First Republic in, for instance, the industrialised North.

Finally, I don’t think it makes sense to think of the South as being the kind of region which would be a natural base for the left in most other countries simply because it is poor. As Battista said, it is the least industrialised part of the country, and it also, for want of a better word, has always lacked ‘political consciousness’, which is certainly a consequence of its poverty, as well as historical and cultural circumstances. Its politics have tended to be based on clientelism and the like rather than the kind of ideological ‘mass politics’ in which socialist, social democratic, and communist parties traditionally tended to thrive.

[Alcibiades]

Also, didn't Italy never really have a "normal" correlation between vote and income? The Red Regions have always been richer than the South.

To add to what Battista said: the Red Regions originally emerged as left-wing strongholds in the early 20th century because they had a very particular agricultural system which engendered violent class conflict between rural labourers and landowners. The flip side of this was that in the immediate post-WWI years, Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna were also the strongholds of Fascist popular support, where it found a natural base among the middle classes terrified by this working class radicalism.

My understanding, though, is that after WWII the nature of left-wing support in the Red Regions underwent quite a dramatic change from the above situation, and the PCI (which had of course supplanted the PSI as the dominant force on the left) became something of a cross-class phenomenon there, a deeply-engrained cultural institution. I’m not fully sure of the reasons for this, but I think it had something to do with these regions being the centre of anti-Fascist Resistance activity during the war. It probably also helped that the PCI was quite distinctive amongst left-wing parties in being founded as much on a core of intellectuals as the mass support of the organised working classes. That said, I think you would still have had much more relatively normal class-based electoral patterns during the First Republic in, for instance, the industrialised North.

Finally, I don’t think it makes sense to think of the South as being the kind of region which would be a natural base for the left in most other countries simply because it is poor. As Battista said, it is the least industrialised part of the country, and it also, for want of a better word, has always lacked ‘political consciousness’, which is certainly a consequence of its poverty, as well as historical and cultural circumstances. Its politics have tended to be based on clientelism and the like rather than the kind of ideological ‘mass politics’ in which socialist, social democratic, and communist parties traditionally tended to thrive.

I suppose the counterpoint is spain, where Andalusia and Extremadura were historical strongholds of the PSOE owing exactly to the sort of economic quasi feudal set up in the south?

Exactly. I've actually seen this comparison between central Italy and Andalucia made quite a bit in the academic literature.

[Alcibiades]

Snip

From Tuscany and points south these patterns are rather familiar, with the exception of the disappearance of a few old strongholds in parts of the South (c.f. Naples city, Messina and parts of Calabria). But in the North... although the area of greatest strength (the South West of Veneto) always saw relatively good results for the old AN in the 1990s, this is very much a new electoral world and a quite remarkable one. Many rural districts where the old AN polled its worst percentages in all of Italy saw extremely strong FdI results this time around. There are breakthroughs and then there's, well, that.

Snip

Similar to last time, but there are some interesting differences and they are consistently in the direction of a less weird map by historical standards.

Snip

Vastly reduced in scale, yet the same dominant geographical theme still appears. But look a little closer: in much of the country this is clearly a much more 'left-wing' geography than seen before.

Well, that's the funny thing, isn't it - if anything this election has seen a mild reversal of MUH TRENDZ (tho, of course, buried under a right-wing landslide), but observers seem to be falling over themselves to proclaim the exact opposite...

I think this sort of true and also sort of not true. When looking at PD exclusively, their coalition, as Al said, looks a little less weird than last time, but this is largely because they lost some of their wealthiest supporters to the Third Pole, and re-gained some more working-class ones in certain regions (notably Liguria) from M5S. That is to say, none of this has really affected the demographic composition of the Right's support, which looks as non-traditional and #trendz-based as ever. The CDX once again absolutely tanked in wealthy urban areas.

As a side note, one of the more significant shifts from 2018 as indicated by exit polling was the 18-24 age bracket swinging towards the CSX. This is I suppose a small silver lining, and a welcome counterpoint to the narrative of FASCIST ZOOMERS we've seen recently in the likes of France and Sweden.

[Alcibiades]

That is to say, none of this has really affected the demographic composition of the Right's support, which looks as non-traditional and #trendz-based as ever. The CDX once again absolutely tanked in wealthy urban areas.

To add to Al's point, the one thing that really stands out for Italy to be a "muh trendz" country is the South. If you looked at Al's maps North of Molise, then yeah, you could easily make the case that Italy is basically aligning on the same basic electoral geography as the rest of Europe, with only a few ancestral remnants of the old order here and there. The South completely throws that narrative out the window, though. The right's results are well below average almost everywhere there, even in areas that were historically very right-wing! In relative terms, the right was significantly stronger there back in 2013.

You could wave it off by saying M5S are populists too, sure, but the fact that there are two brands of populism, increasingly at odds with each other (for all that Conte attacks Letta and PD, it's clear that he has no love lost for Salvini or anyone else on the right). This isn't a complication that you find in most European countries, and it will have significant consequences for how political conflict structures itself going forward. Furthermore, M5S' populism is a distinctly left populism - this time more so than ever, as they ran an almost single-issue campaign on preserving the minimum income they established. Given that, the fact that they do so well outside of large urban areas is notable. Even Mélenchon's vote became an overwhelmingly urban one in this past election. So whatever's happening in Italy, muh trendz only goes so far in explaining it.

Sorry, I think I worded the bit you quoted badly. I do basically agree with everything you and Al said in your replies, and I especially agree that it’s very important to understand that Italy is to a large extent sui generis in its politics as far as European countries are concerned. I suppose to qualify, the “centre-right” in Italy more-or-less doesn’t exist anymore (or rather it’s been amalgamated into the radical right; and you could say it hasn’t existed for a long time seeing as Berlusconi is very much not a traditional moderate conservative politician … and then of course the DC was not a centre-right party in the conventional sense either …), and it’s not like parties as extreme as FdI and Lega do well with the educated upper middle classes anywhere in Europe really (with the possible exception of Spain).