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The Italian Democratic Party and New Labour
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Luciano M. Fasano · Paolo Natale ·
James L. Newell
The Italian
Democratic Party
and New Labour
The Crisis of the European Left
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Introduction
This book explores the long-term decline of the mainstream parties of
the left in Europe from the perspective of two of its largest protagonists:
the Italian Democratic Party (PD) and New Labour in the UK. Both
represented novel responses to profound problems.
In the UK case, the Labour Party had for three decades following
the Second World War been buoyed up by the post-war socialdemocratic
consensus, whose foundations had been laid by the Atlee government
elected in 1945. There was therefore broad agreement between the two
main parties that social and economic policy-making ought to be guided
by the principles of Keynesian demand management, the public ownership
of key industries, the mixed economy, the welfare state and the pursuit of
full-employment. In Italy, the Communist Party (PCI) had been buoyed
up by the ideology of anti-fascism, whose constitutional foundations it
had helped to lay in the post-war Constituent Assembly. Thereafter, it
had been able to combine and integrate its control of local government
on the one hand and collateral associations on the other, to provide in
the regions where it was strong, a range of services—from healthcare
and housing to employment and welfare—designed to ensure that citizens
were looked after, “from the cradle to the grave”.
Both parties had reached the height of their power in the mid-1970s,
but undergone major crises immediately thereafter. 1979 was a watershed moment in both cases. In the UK, the Labour Party went down to
defeat in the general election of that year after the apparent failure of its
ix
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x
INTRODUCTION
“social contract ”, a sense of chaos and dissatisfaction with its handling of
labour relations, and eroding public confidence in its ability to manage
the economy effectively. In Italy, the 1979 general election saw the PCI
decline in support for the first time since 1953 after the failure of its “historic compromise” strategy of collaboration with the Christian Democrats
as a means of managing economic and social problems if anything more
profound than those being suffered by the UK.
In both cases, the start of the new decade ushered in a completely new
era, one marked by profound economic, social and cultural changes. The
1980s was a decade of renewed economic prosperity underlain by the
“Thatcher revolution” and Craxian “decisionismo”. With the emergence
of the post-Fordist economy and the rise of neo-liberalism, “loadsamoney” and the yuppie culture had their counterparts in Mediaset and
“Milano da bere”1 . Deregulation and free-market capitalism underpinned
a profound change of values away from the collective and social ideals that
had marked the politics of the 1970s in favour of the pursuit of material wealth, conspicuous consumption and a focus on individual success,
in a generalised “retreat to the private sphere”. The Thatcher-inspired
employment acts designed to curb the power and influence of the trade
unions, and the Prime Minister’s conflicts with the labour movement,
had as their counterparts in the Italian case the Craxi-inspired cuts to
the wage-indexation system and the Prime Minister’s facing down of
the CGIL in the referendum of 1985. The left in both countries faced
significant retreats at election after election.
The start of the 1990s ushered in yet another new era, one that
appeared in at least some respects to hold out the promise of a brighter
future for the left in both countries. In the UK, European integration
and the Maastricht Treaty led to growing divisions within the Conservative Party while holding out the prospect for Labour of a completely
new political project based on a “social Europe” and, with the support of
Jacques Delors as EU Commission President, the attempt to replace the
socialdemocratic consensus with something similar at the European level.
In Italy, the discrediting of the traditional governing parties thanks to
“mani pulite” and the transformation of the PCI into a non-communist
1 Literally “Milan to drink”, the phrase originated in the 1980s, to capture the idea
that Milan was a city where people could indulge in a sophisticated and enjoyable lifestyle,
emphasizing conspicuous consumption.
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INTRODUCTION
xi
party with a new name provided the basis for a completely fresh start. Nolonger subject to the conventio ad excludendum—the agreement among
the Christian Democrats and their allies that the left was permanently
ineligible as a potentially governing partner—the PCI’s heirs were now
in a position finally to realise the project of the “historic compromise”,
in conjunction with left-leaning former Christian Democrats, in the new
era of prosperity that seemed likely to be ushered in by Economic and
Monetary Union, and the adoption of the single currency at the end of
the decade.
Both projects reached heights of success—in the UK case with New
Labour’s landslide general election victory of 1997, and in the Italian case
the year previously with the first-ever overall seat majority, under Romano
Prodi, for a pre-constituted electoral coalition of the centre-left: the Ulivo
(or “Olive Tree coalition”). Neither project, ultimately, however, proved
successful. Though achieving a landslide victory in 1997, Tony Blair and
New Labour did so against the background of a record-low turnout. The
party failed to develop a core of stable supporters, and by 2010 was once
again facing a lengthy period of opposition. In Italy, the PD after its
formation in 2007 never succeeded in realising that “majoritarian vocation”—the capacity to occupy all of the political ground to the left of
centre and so win elections single-handedly—its founding general secretary, Walter Veltroni, had set for it. At the general election of 2022, it
went down, in terms of the absolute number of votes cast for it, to the
worst election defeat in its short history. Labour, meanwhile, was gearing
up for a general election that had to be held at the beginning of 2025
at the very latest—an election it seemed likely to win—but almost exclusively because of the massive unpopularity of the Conservatives combined
with an electoral system that effectively obliges voters to cast their votes
for whichever of the two front runners they dislike the least.
The explanation for these failures, which reflect the decline in support
for the mainstream left in Europe generally over the past forty years,
comes in two parts. On the one hand, there are the features of the
changing context within which the parties have had to operate. They
include the rise of post-Fordism and neo-liberalism; the decline in the size
of the industrial working class and in working-class identities; the decline
of the mass integration model of party organisation; the emergence and
growth of celebrity politics. Globalisation, the growing cleavage between
its “winners” and “losers” and the resulting upsurge of the populist right
are also essential elements of the explanation, which we attempt to weave
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xii
INTRODUCTION
together in the final chapter of the book where we ask about the lessons
the left needs to draw from the experience of recent decades. We place
particular emphasis on the emergence of the individualised mass society
in which an increasing emphasis on individual autonomy, uniqueness and
self-expression is, paradoxically, combined with growing conformity and
therefore with a heightened willingness to embrace projects built around
decisive leaders and more or less authoritarian political solutions in place
of the collective mobilisation the left’s traditional supporters would have
embraced in the past.
On the other hand, an equally important part of the response has to do
with the left’s responses to these changes, including its timidity in the face
of challenges to the values of equality and international solidarity to which
it could, before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, have responded more
decisively. Conflicts over these matters bear on questions of power—on
whether it is being employed justly or unjustly—and therefore go to the
heart of what politics is about: who gets what, when and how. And since
the rights and obligations governing who gets what, when and how are,
once established, usually permanent (though, obviously, not always) so
the struggle over (in)equality and so forth is permanent and is, ultimately,
a struggle for hegemony. Yet hegemony cannot possibly be achieved in the
absence of an effective ideology or a narrative that can inform the development of a political programme and so enable a party to set the agenda
of public political discussion as opposed to having constantly to respond
to agendas set by others. Emblematic in this regard were Enrico Letta’s
decision to contest the 2022 election in support of “the Draghi agenda”
and Keir Starmer’s decision to contest the forthcoming UK general election in support of a promise to “make Brexit work”—agendas neither of
which originated with the two men and were entirely imposed on their
parties from without. From an historical perspective, this is perhaps not
surprising. At bottom, both the New Labour and PD projects were reflections of the post-Cold War world and “The End of History” with their
contempt for ideology and their staunch refusal to see the world in “leftright” terms. It is not surprising, therefore, that both Labour and the PD
currently give the impression of being “empty shells”. Both appear to be
at pivotal moments in their history with the UK general election set to
demonstrate whether Labour has the power to put an end to nearly a
decade and a half of rule by the most electorally successful party of the
right in Europe, with the new leadership of Elly Schlein set to demonstrate whether a radical general secretary in charge of a divided PD whose
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INTRODUCTION
xiii
members apparently preferred another can develop effective opposition
to a right-wing government that looks set to remain securely in office at
least until 2027.
Against this background, the remainder of our book is organised as
follows. Chapter 1 provides the essential contextualising information and
analysis by exploring the trajectory of support for key European parties
within the democratic socialist tradition and documenting the development that provides the basic rationale for our work: that “While there
have been occasional moments of respite marked by electoral victories or
the emergence of new leadership, these positive periods have not been
sufficient to reverse the overall declining trend that has characterized [the
mainstream left] over the past thirty years” (p.000). Chapters 2, 3 and
4 focus on the trajectories of the PD and New Labour in more detail.
Chapter 2 discusses the PD’s origins and the five different attempts,
under the corresponding number of general secretaries, it has made to
date to recast itself and get to grips with the failures, perceived and real,
of the immediately preceding phase of its history. Chapter 3 considers
the “New Labour” phenomenon in an attempt to throw light on its
similarities with the PD phenomenon and therefore on the extent to
which an understanding of the former can help us to understand the
latter. Chapter 4 presents data from a series of surveys among delegates
to the PD’s national congresses to highlight the party’s still unresolved
difficulties in achieving effective institutionalisation, making it seem like
a political entity that is constantly under construction, with leadership
changes, splits and programmatic instability being due above all to the
inability to consolidate an identity for itself. Finally, in the concluding
Chapter 5, we attempt to draw on the analyses of the preceding four
chapters to draw some conclusions for the future of the European left—
this in terms of concise answers to three questions: What does it mean to
be on the left in the early twenty-first century? What has been responsible
for the left’s decline? What is to be done?
A large number of individuals were responsible, whether aware of it or
not, for providing encouragement, opportunities for discussion and ideas
on which we have drawn. We owe them a debt of gratitude. They include
Michael Salvati, Luigi Ceccarini, Giovanni Barbieri, Silvia Bolgherini,
Marco Damiani, Ilvo Diamanti, Nicola Pasini, Antonio Floridia and Gianfranco Pasquino. We would like to thank Rosa Mulé and Sofia Ventura
for organising the conference, “Dove sta andando la sinistra italiana?”,
at the University of Bologna, on 29 November 2022 at which some of
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xiv
INTRODUCTION
the ideas expressed in this volume were first tried out and, for the same
reason, Mara Morini, Antonella Seddone and Davide Vampa for organising, under the auspices of the UK Political Studies Association’s “Italian
Politics Specialist Group”, the conference, “The Crisis of European Social
Democracy: Causes and Consequences in an Age of Uncertainty”, at the
University of Genova on 14–15 June 2019. Ambra Finotello, as commissioning editor at Palgrave, has been enormously supportive in believing
in our work and encouraging us to complete it. Finally, we would like
to thank the two anonymous referees who read our manuscript after we
submitted it. It goes without saying that responsibility for any errors
of fact or interpretation remaining in the text lies solely with us as the
authors.
December 2023
Luciano M. Fasano
Paolo Natale
James L. Newell
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CHAPTER 1
European Socialist Parties Trends: Where
Socialdemocratic Parties Are Going After
the Berlin Wall Crash
Abstract The actual difficulties of the left parties are rooted in both their
past history and their recent experiences. Thirty years after the fall of the
Berlin wall, the European left appears still to be attempting to make up
for lost time: the collapse of a vision of the world and of political objectives inspired by the values of socialism and communism should have led,
in the Western Europe, to a general reconceptualisation of the nature
of both the left and political project it needed to devise in pursuit of
social and political change, by defeating exclusions and inequalities. This
trend affects both Italy and UK, as two countries where the main leftwing parties explicitly choice the so-called Third Way. In the first case,
concerning the Partito Democratico, by promoting the birth of a new
merger party between Ds (Democrats of Left) and Margherita (Daisy). In
the second case, concerning the Labour Party, by promoting a political
and organisational change, under the banner of the so-called Third Way,
inside that party itself. Similar trends happened in other European countries, for instance in Germany, where the Socialdemocratic Party led by
Schroeder took the run of the so-called Neue Mitte, and in Spain, where
under the Zapatero’s leadership the Spanish Socialist and Workers’ Party
inaugurated the season of the so-called Nueva Via. A different path was
instead followed by France, where the Socialist Party, after the defeat of
Jospin in the 2002 presidential election, because of the high fragmentation that characterised the so-called Gauche pluriel, took a different
way, remaining strongly divided by very deep conflicts within it. As we
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2024
L. M. Fasano et al., The Italian Democratic Party and New Labour,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54059-2_1
1
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2
L. M. FASANO ET AL.
can see, in all these European countries, such as UK, Italy, Germany and
Spain, the main left-wing parties attempted the way of a new socialism
founded on hybridisation with the liberal tradition, thus making an effort
to counter the current crisis. In France, on the other hand, the path token
by the left parties was different and led to the defeat of the 2017 presidential election, won by Macron, once he left the PSF making a new
political movement called “La République En Marche”. This chapter aims
to synthetically reconstruct these events, focussing mainly both on the
tendencies of the electoral consensus that have characterised these left
parties in the last thirty years and on the perceptions of their voters, as
they are no longer so close to the kind of policies and society they would
like to achieve.
Keywords Political parties · European left · Socialist/Socialdemocratic
parties · Italian democratic party · Voting behaviour · Decline of the left
Thirty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the European reformist
left, which aligns with the socialist and democratic tradition, is facing
a crisis on multiple fronts. This crisis encompasses political culture,
ideas, programmatic proposals and the ability to govern effectively. This
segment of the political spectrum, which seeks new ways to address
contemporary societal challenges while adhering to progressive values, has
been grappling with an ongoing decline in electoral support, particularly
among its traditional voter base—the working classes and a portion of the
middle class.
In comparison with the late 1980s, support for the major European socialdemocratic parties has significantly diminished in absolute
terms. This trend can be observed in countries such as France, Germany,
Sweden, Spain, Italy and Greece, with only the UK and Portugal being
partial exceptions. It is crucial to note that this decline is closely linked to
another significant phenomenon that has characterised these parties over
the past decade: a dwindling appeal within their traditional constituencies,
especially among salaried workers and the working class. Many of these
individuals have shifted their allegiance to populist parties of the right.
When examining the trajectory of support for key European parties
within the democratic socialist tradition—including PASOK in Greece,
PSOE in Spain, the PS in Portugal, the PSF in France, the SPD in
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1
EUROPEAN SOCIALIST PARTIES TRENDS: WHERE …
3
Germany and SAP in Sweden—and comparing them to the party in Italy
that currently represents the primary successor to the social-communist
tradition, the PD, several commonalities emerge. These parties have experienced a slow and steady decline in votes over the past few decades,
from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the present day. While there have been
occasional moments of respite marked by electoral victories or the emergence of new leadership, these positive periods have not been sufficient
to reverse the overall declining trend that has characterised their fortunes
over the past thirty years.
The parties that have suffered the most significant electoral setbacks
are PASOK and the French Socialist Party, both witnessing a substantial
erosion of their voter bases. PASOK, in particular, has experienced a staggering 65% loss of votes in Greece, while the French Socialist Party has
faced a 62% decline in France.1
During Mitterrand’s presidency, the French Socialist Party saw a sharp
decline in its support, losing almost half of its voters between the 1988
and 1993 legislative assembly elections. Its vote fell from nearly 8.5
million to just under 4.5 million. However, the party gradually recovered, reaching more than 7.6 million votes in the 2012 elections, shortly
after François Hollande assumed the presidency. Just five years later, in the
2017 elections, the party’s support plummeted to only 1.6 million votes,
marking the lowest point in its recent history. This decline continued,
leading the party to participate in the 2022 elections as part of the
Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociale, a left-wing coalition
led by former Minister Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who later left the party to
establish a new political movement, La France Insoumise.
The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) faced a similarly bleak
fate. After enjoying electoral success in the two decades following the
fall of the Berlin Wall, during which it garnered between 2.5 million
1 PASOK goes from more than 2.5 million voters in 1990 to just over six hundred
thousand votes in June 2023, won within the KINAL coalition with Democratic Left
(DIMAR), a party that originated from a split from Syriza, whose weight within that coalition is, however, very limited. The haemorrhage of support affecting the Greek Socialists
is equivalent in total to just under two million votes in thirty-three years. The PSF went
from nearly 4.5 million votes in 1993 to about 1.7 million voters in 2017, a net loss of
more than 2.7 million votes. The figure for the most recent legislative elections, which
were held in June 2022, is in contrast, although it must be mainly attributed to the
success of the lead party of the NUPES coalition, the alliance in which the PSF itself was
a participant, along with Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise.
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L. M. FASANO ET AL.
and 3 million votes and supported Papandreou’s socialist-led governments, PASOK suddenly experienced a dramatic decline. In May 2012,
it fell to just over eight hundred thousand votes, with a further decline
to 756,000 a month later in the June 2012 elections. This represented
a loss of about two-thirds of its support. In the January 2015 elections, PASOK’s support dwindled even further, dropping to below three
hundred thousand votes.
In subsequent elections, PASOK formed an electoral alliance with
DIMAR, a new party with socialdemocratic leanings, which allowed it
to surpass the three hundred thousand vote threshold in the September
2015 elections. In the 2019 elections, again in coalition with DIMAR
under the banner of the Movement for Change (KINAL), PASOK
attracted over four hundred thousand voters. In the most recent May and
June 2023 elections, still in alliance with DIMAR within KINAL, PASOK
secured more than 600 thousand votes in both rounds.
Two other significant parties within the European socialist camp,
namely PSOE and the SPD, have also experienced substantial declines
in voter support, amounting to approximately 15% and 23%, respectively,
compared to the electorate they commanded in the early 1990.2
The Socialdemocratic Party of Germany (SPD) underwent a transformation in voter support after the period of growth that followed the
general elections following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990. During
this phase, the SPD steadily increased its support from 15.5 million
voters to over 20 million votes, securing victory in the 1998 general elections with Gerhard Schröder as Chancellor. However, signs of a decline
emerged as early as the 2002 elections, even though Schröder was reappointed as Chancellor. The most significant drop occurred in the 2005
elections, which marked the beginning of a series of Merkel-led governments through a Grand Coalition formula. During this time, the SPD’s
support was halved, garnering just under 10 million votes. Subsequently,
the party’s support fluctuated between 11 and 9.5 million votes in the
following two rounds of elections in 2013 and 2017. It witnessed a slight
resurgence in the last general election held in 2021, securing just under
2 The PSOE goes from just over 9 million votes in 1993 to just over 7.7 million votes
in July 2023, a net loss of about 1.4 million votes. The SPD goes from more than 15.5
million votes in 1990 to just under 12 million in 2021, losing a total of more than 3.5
million votes.
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1
EUROPEAN SOCIALIST PARTIES TRENDS: WHERE …
5
12 million votes, leading Olaf Scholz, the deputy Chancellor and Finance
Minister in the last Merkel government, to form a government.
A similar trajectory has been observed in the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). After three election rounds between 1989 and 2000,
where they secured approximately 8 to 9 million voters each time,
including the period of Felipe González’s government and the subsequent
rise of José Aznar, PSOE won more than 11 million votes with José Luis
Rodríguez Zapatero. However, it experienced a significant decline to just
over 5 million votes over three election rounds between 2011 and 2016.
Despite a modest recovery in the closely contested 2019 elections (held
in April and November) that led to a return to government under a new
leader, Pedro Sánchez, the party was unable to surpass 7.5 million votes
in the first round or 6.7 million in the second round. In the early return
to the polls in July 2023, following a severe defeat in the spring local
elections, PSOE managed to regain support surpassing 7.5 million votes.
However, it was still overtaken by the Partido Popular.
The phenomenon of declining voter support is not limited to Southern
Europe; it has also affected Nordic Social Democracy and the British
Labour Party. Over the past three decades, the Labour Party in the UK
and the Socialdemocratic Workers’ Party of Sweden have lost approximately 11% and 5% of their voter bases. Respectively.3
Although both the Socialdemocratic Workers’ Party of Sweden and the
British Labour Party have experienced some decline in their electorates
over time, they appear to have been less severely impacted compared to
other parties. The Socialdemocratic Workers’ Party of Sweden has maintained relatively stable support. From the 1988 general election to the
2022 general election, SAP’s results fluctuated within a range of approximately half a million votes, with minimal variation, especially between
2006 and 2022. While they received slightly more votes in the 2022
general election compared to their earlier results, it was insufficient to
3 The Labour Party drops from about 11.5 million voters in 1992 to just over 10
million in 2019, a net loss of nearly 1.3 million votes. Returning to the just over 10
million voters who made up the Labour electoral pool at the time of the Conservative
governments of Thatcher and Major. The Socialdemocratic Workers’ Party of Sweden
goes from just over 2 million votes in 1991 to 1.9 million voters in 2022, suffering a
much smaller loss than all other parties considered, that is, just under 100,000 votes.
Although by the last general election, while reconfirmed as the country’s first party, the
SAP was relegated to opposition by a centre-right majority consisting of the Moderate
Party, Christian Democrats and Liberals.
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6
L. M. FASANO ET AL.
16
UK
15
ITALY
14
13.5
13
12.9
11.9 12.1
12
11.6
11
10
10.7
10.3
10.3
10.0
9.6
9
9.3
8.6
8
8.6
7.9 7.9
7
6
5
6.3
6.2
6.2
5.3
4
Fig. 1.1 Million of voters for PCI (PDS, DS, PD—Italy) and the labour (UK),
in the Parliament election (Low Chamber) 1987–2022
keep them in government, where they had been continuously present for
two terms (Fig. 1.1).
On the other hand, the British Labour Party has exhibited a more
unpredictable electoral performance.4 Despite this, the support they
garnered in the 2019 election was roughly equivalent, in percentage and
absolute terms, to their vote in 1987, during the Thatcher government
era. However, between 1987 and 2019, the British Labour Party experienced considerable fluctuations in its performance. An initial phase of
electoral growth culminated in Tony Blair’s New Labour winning more
than 13.5 million votes in 1997. This was followed by a period of decline,
leading to Labour’s disappointing performance in the 2010 election with
4 Notably, a period of steady growth in support since 1987, culminating in the more
than 13.5 million votes won by Tony Blair’s New Labour in 1997, was followed by a
period of decline, which led Labour to collapse to just over 8.5 million votes in the 2010
general election. From there, a new upswing begins, to the nearly 13 million won—
albeit in defeat—by Jeremy Corbin in 2017, a success not, however, repeated at the next
election in 2019, when Labour’s votes return to the 10 million or so of nearly three
decades earlier.
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1
EUROPEAN SOCIALIST PARTIES TRENDS: WHERE …
7
just over 8.5 million votes. Subsequently, a new phase of growth began,
with Jeremy Corbyn securing nearly 13 million votes in the 2017 election, although this success was not repeated in the 2019 election when
Labour’s vote count returned to the approximately 10 million marks,
similar to that of nearly 30 years earlier.
The Portuguese Socialist Party is the exception in the European political landscape, experiencing growth in support of 38% from the early
1990s to the present.5 This growth occurred within an electoral landscape
marked by alternating governments with its historic centre-right rival, the
Socialdemocratic Party (Table 1.1).
After the era of governments led by the Social Democrat Cavaco
Silva ended, the Portuguese Socialist Party came to power in 1995
with Antonio Guterres as its leader. This marked a significant period of
governance for the party, during which it also held the presidency of
the Portuguese Republic. The party’s support fluctuated between over
2.5 million voters in 1995 and 2 million in 2002. In 2005, it once
again gained over 2.5 million votes, securing a victory and a return to
power with José Sócrates at the helm. Sócrates remained in government for two more terms until 2011 when the Socialists ceded power
to the Socialdemocratic Party, which formed a government led by Passos
Coelho.
In 2015, the Portuguese Socialists returned to power after an election
that failed to provide the Social Democrats with enough seats to form
a government. This time, Antonio Costa led a coalition known as the
“Geringonça”, formed with the Left Bloc and the United Democratic
Coalition. Later, they governed independently following their 2022 election victory, winning by 14 points over the Social Democrats and securing
an absolute majority of seats in the Assembly of the Republic.
However, even during the Guterres and Soares years, as well as more
recently during the Costa years, the Portuguese Socialist Party experienced a notable reduction in support. In the ten years between their
victory in the 2005 elections and their narrow defeat in 2015, support
for the party tended to decline, reaching its lowest point during the latter
election when, for the first time since the early 1990s, the Socialist Party’s
5 The Portuguese Socialist Party goes from just under 1.7 million voters in 1991 to
just over 2.3 million in 2022, showing an increase in support of about 630,000. A real
exception, compared to the trend observed by the other socialist and socialdemocratic
parties considered.
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1991
16,70,618
29.1
PORTUGAL 1987
PS
12,62,506
22.2
1995
25,83,755
43.8
1993
32,35,017
46.9
1999
23,59,939
44.0
1996
28,13,245
41.5
2002
20,55,986
37.8
2000
30,07,596
43.8
2002
21,13,560
39.8
2005
25,73,869
45.1
2004
30,03,275
40.5
2006
19,42,625
35.0
2009
20,77,695
36.6
2007
27,27,853
38.1
2010
18,27,497
30.7
2017
16,85,677
3.5
2011
21,59,742
38.7
2009
30,12,373
43.9
2014
18,86,473
31.3
2022
58,36,079
25.6
2015
17,47,685
32.3
2012
8,01,233
12.8
2018
18,30,386
28.3
2019
19,08,036
36.3
2015
3,02,298
5.2
2022
19,64,474
30.3
2019
75,13,142
28.7
1990
25,43,042
38.6
1998
19,14,426
36.4
2012
76,18,326
29.3
2016
54,43,846
22.6
1989
27,24,334
40.7
1994
25,13,905
45.2
2007
64,36,520
24.7
2015
55,45,315
22.0
GRECIA
PASOK
1991
20,62,761
37.7
2002
60,86,599
24.1
2004
2008
2011
1,10,26,163 1,12,89,335 70,03,511
42.6
43.9
28.8
1988
23,21,826
43.2
1997
59,61,612
23.5
2000
79,18,752
34.1
SWEDEN
SAP
1993
44,15,495
17.6
1996
94,25,678
37.6
1988
84,93,702
34.8
1993
91,50,083
38.8
FRANCE
PSF
32.1
1989
81,15,568
39.6
40.0
SPAIN
PSOE
30.4
2017
2019
1,28,74,985 1,02,69,051
1987
1990
1994
1998
2002
2005
2009
2013
2017
2021
1,40,25,763 1,55,45,366 1,71,40,354 2,01,81,269 1,84,84,560 1,81,29,100 1,24,77,437 1,28,43,458 1,14,29,231 1,19,55,434
37.0
33.5
36.4
40.9
38.5
38.4
27.9
29.4
24.6
25.7
35.2
2015
93,44,328
GERMANY
SPD
40.7
29.0
43.2
30.8
34.4
2010
86,06,517
1987
1992
1997
2001
2005
1,00,29,270 1,15,60,484 1,35,18,167 1,07,24,953 95,52,436
Voters and share of votes for the parties of the left or centre-Left in Europe
2022
23,01,887
41.4
2019
4,57,623
8.1
2023
77,60,970
31.7
2023
6,76,165
11.5
8
UK
Labour
Party
Table 1.1
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EUROPEAN SOCIALIST PARTIES TRENDS: WHERE …
9
voter base fell below the 2 million threshold. This trend was reversed in
the 2022 elections when they once again surpassed this threshold.
The recent history of these parties, spanning the past 30 years from
the fall of the Berlin Wall to the present, can be broadly divided into two
distinct phases. The first phase, which began in the years following the
fall of the Berlin Wall and continued until roughly the early 2000s, was
characterised by significant growth in support for most of these parties.
This growth sometimes led to election victories and the assumption of
government leadership. The second phase commenced in the latter part
of the first decade of the new century and has continued throughout
the second decade up to the present day. In this phase, a common trend
among most socialist parties has been a decline in voter support.
In the Italian context, growth and decline happened somewhat later,
specifically, after 2006. This period coincides with the fall of Romano
Prodi’s Ulivo government and the establishment of the Democratic Party
(PD) through the efforts of the Democratici di Sinistra (DS) and the
Margherita-Democrazia è Libertà (DL). Consequently, it is possible to
divide the Italian left’s political trajectory from 1989 to the present into
two distinct periods: one before and one after the formation of the PD.
This division proves particularly valuable when comparing the Italian case
with that of the UK and subsequently with the other countries under
consideration (Table 1.2).
As mentioned earlier, the first phase of this evolution corresponds to a
period of expansion characterised by a growth in support, often resulting
in electoral victories and the assumption of government positions. It is as
if, following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent dissolution
of the Soviet Union and its satellite states, socialist and socialdemocratic
political forces in Western Europe had finally freed themselves from the
weight of a historical presence. This presence, which had exerted a significant influence on relations among left-wing parties in European states
since the Third International, was relevant both in the case of Italy, where
the principal left-wing party was the PCI, and in other European countries where socialist and socialdemocratic parties had long held a dominant
position on the left. However, it is important to note that the collapse of
the Berlin Wall did not have the same dramatic impact in these countries
as it did in the Italian context. Let us begin by examining the European
context and then proceed to analyse the situation in Italy.
German Social Democracy faced a unique situation following the
reunification of East and West Germany, as it had to coexist with the
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Coalition of
Centre-Left
Party
1992
63,21,084
16.1
PDS
96,19,720
24.5
PDS, PRC,
VERDI
1987
1,02,50,644
26.6
PCI
1,02,50,644
26.6
PCI
1,33,08,244
34.3
PROGRESSISTI
1994
78,81,646
20.4
PDS
1,62,65,985
43.4
ULIVO
1996
78,94,118
21.1
PDS
1,31,69,239
35.5
ULIVO
2001
61,51,154
16.6
DS
1,90,02,598
49.8
UNIONE
2006
1,19,30,983
31.3
Ulivo
1,40,99,747
37.6
PD, IDV
2008
1,20,95,306
33.2
PD
Voters for the single party and for the Coalition of Centre-Left in Italy
1,00,49,393
29.6
PD, SEL, AA
2013
86,46,034
25.4
PD
74,80,806
22.8
PD, +EUR,
AA
2018
61,61,896
18.8
PD
73,37,975
26.1
PD,
VERDI-SIN
2022
53,48,676
19.0
PD
10
ITALY
year
Table 1.2
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1
EUROPEAN SOCIALIST PARTIES TRENDS: WHERE …
11
Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor to the Unified
Socialist Party of Germany (SED), the former Communist Party of East
Germany (GDR). This situation was unprecedented, particularly because
the Communist Party in West Germany had been declared unconstitutional as early as 1956. In the years that followed, especially starting
in 2005, when the electoral alliance “Die Linke” was formed and later
became an official party, relations between the SPD and other left-wing
formations in Germany became increasingly confrontational. The German
case is particularly significant because, during this period, other countries
did not undergo such significant transformations in their party systems
and competitive dynamics.
In some countries, socialist and socialdemocratic parties coexisted
with parties to their left, which held more radical political positions.
Other countries had no significant alternatives to the left of socialist and
socialdemocratic parties. For example, in France and Spain, there were
parties of the European communist tradition to the left of their respective
socialist parties—the French Communist Party (PCF) and the Spanish
Communist Party (PCE). In Sweden, a party with communist origins
had existed since the days of the Third International, initially called the
Socialdemocratic Left Party of Sweden and later the Communist Party of
Sweden, which subsequently became the Left Party. In Greece, PASOK
faced competition from left-wing movements and parties, including the
Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and Synaspismos, a diverse left-wing
coalition that later gave rise to the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza).
In Portugal, political movements to the left of the Socialist Party had
roots in the period following the dictatorship of Salazar and Caetano.
These movements included the Portuguese Communist Party, the ecologist party the Greens, Democratic Intervention, Politics XXI, the People’s
Democratic Union and the Revolutionary Socialist Party, which eventually formed the Left Bloc. The United Democratic Coalition and the
Left Bloc, along with the small Communist Party of Portuguese Workers,
represented the left-wing political landscape following the 1995 elections,
while the Socialist Party maintained its primacy on the left.
In the UK, the Labour Party faced no significant competition from
parties to its left. Although it included components of the radical left, such
as Marxist and Trotskyist groups, these remained a minority within the
party and did not significantly impact its internal political and programmatic direction. Consequently, the Labour Party gained no specific
competitive advantage from the collapse of the Berlin Wall and there was
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12
L. M. FASANO ET AL.
a delay of eight years before the party was able to return one of its leaders
to Downing Street, despite the conclusion of Margaret Thatcher’s tenure
of office in 1990.
Between 1987 and 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, several
socialist parties were in government across Europe. PSOE led by Felipe
Gonzales was in power in Spain, the PSF under François Mitterrand
governed France, and SAP, headed by Ingvar Carlsson, led the government in Sweden. Gonzales and Mitterrand had established themselves
as long-serving leaders who had left a significant mark on their respective countries’ recent political history. However, their time in power was
coming to an end. Carlsson, on the other hand, assumed the task of
leading Sweden after the assassination of Olof Palme in 1986 having
previously been designated as Palme’s deputy Prime Minister.
In contrast, socialist parties in the UK, Portugal and Germany had
spent a prolonged period in opposition. The UK had seen consecutive
governments led by the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher;
Germany had Christian Democratic governments under Helmut Kohl,
and Portugal had been led by the Socialdemocratic Party under
Aníbal Cavaco Silva for an extended period. These long-lasting political
leaders had marginalised British Labour, German Social Democrats and
Portuguese Socialists, rendering them politically irrelevant.
Greece presented a different situation, where the Panhellenic Socialist
Movement (PASOK) had been in power during the first half of the 1980s
under Andreas Papandreou. However, the two rounds of elections in
1989, held in June and November, resulted in the defeat of PASOK and
the rise of the right-wing New Democracy Party. A technocratic government was subsequently installed. PASOK remained closely associated with
the charismatic figure of Papandreou, its founder, who briefly returned to
lead the government but eventually found himself in opposition.
In Italy during this period, the prevailing government formula was the
pentapartito or “five-party” arrangement, which included the Christian
Democrats (DC), minor secular parties (PRI, PLI, PDSI) and the Partito
Socialista Italiano (PSI). The Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI), having
moved beyond the historic compromise phase and the period of national
solidarity governments with the DC, had been stably in opposition for a
decade.
In the second phase of this evolution, the lingering influence of the
Soviet communist world was still evident in the early 1990s. General
elections took place in Germany, the UK, Sweden, Portugal and Greece
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EUROPEAN SOCIALIST PARTIES TRENDS: WHERE …
13
between 1990 and 1992, resulting in the defeat of socialist parties. Only
in France and Spain did the socialist parties, led by Mitterrand and
Gonzales respectively, manage to stay in power. However, around the
mid-1990s, a recovery began for socialist and socialdemocratic parties
across these countries.
In Greece and Sweden, this recovery occurred between 1993 and 1994
when PASOK and SAP won elections, bringing Papandreou and Carlsson
back to power. A similar resurgence happened in the UK and Germany
between 1997 and 1998. The Labour Party and the SPD emerged
victorious after a lengthy period of Conservative Party and CDU-CSU
dominance. They won these elections under the leadership of Tony Blair
and Gerhard Schröder, who initiated a new era of governance under
the banners of two somewhat similar cultural philosophies: the “Third
Way” and the “Neue Mitte”. These approaches aimed to transcend the
limitations of traditional labour and socialdemocratic politics by incorporating liberal perspectives.6 This strategic repositioning of their respective
parties drew inspiration from the successful experiment carried out by
Bill Clinton with the US Democratic Party during the 1992 presidential
elections.
Spain and France, having experienced substantial and extended periods
of socialist government in the late 1980s and early 1990s, saw PSOE and
the PSF return to electoral victory later, with Zapatero’s win in 2004 and
Hollande’s victory in 2012, respectively. In Portugal, the 1992 elections
were won by the Socialdemocratic Party, which had been in power since
1985 under the leadership of Cavaco Silva. Despite the Socialist Party’s
growing support since the 1987 general election, it remained over twenty
percentage points behind the Socialdemocratic Party, equivalent to more
than 1.2 million votes. Cavaco Silva had held significant positions both as
Prime Minister and later as President of the Republic, shaping the history
of the Portuguese Socialdemocratic Party for three decades.
The decline in support for the main European socialist and socialdemocratic parties started in the early 2000s, with the exception of France. In
France, support had already decreased in 1993 two years before François
Mitterrand’s presidency came to an end, but it began to rise again
until 2012 when François Hollande, a new socialist leader, was elected
President.
6 See Blair, T. and Schroder, G. (1998).
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L. M. FASANO ET AL.
However, the most significant drop in votes occurred between 2008
and 2011. During these years, leftist political forces found themselves
unprepared to address the consequences of the Great Recession that
affected the Western world for about a decade starting in 2008. The
only exceptions were the PSF, which experienced its largest decrease in
support only in 2017 following the departure of former Socialist Minister
Emmanuel Macron to form a new political movement called République
En Marche, and PASOK, which only faced the Greek economic crisis with
the elections of May and June 2012.
This timing is not coincidental. Leftist parties, which had become
accustomed to coexisting peacefully with globalisation and its effects,
were ill-equipped to deal with the crisis. It is quite likely that their
inability to provide timely and effective responses to the groups most
affected by the economic downturn led to a gradual detachment of
these social groups from the left-wing forces, particularly the socialist and
socialdemocratic parties.
In Greece, PASOK experienced a significant decline in support during
the economic and financial crisis that unfolded between 2012 (May and
June) and 2015 (January and September). Prior to this crisis, PASOK had
consistently received between 3 and 2.7 million votes in the early 2000s.
However, during the four general elections held in this period,
PASOK’s fortunes took a severe hit. In the May 2012 elections, it
lost more than two million votes. Subsequently, in the January and
September 2015 elections, following a split in the party led by the historic
leader Papandreou, who formed the Movement of Democratic Socialists,
PASOK’s support dwindled to just under 350,000 voters. It entered a
coalition with DIMAR, a sister party of democratic socialist inspiration.
PASOK continued to be part of the Movement for Change (KIMAR)
coalition with DiMAR in the 2019 elections, where it garnered just under
half a million votes. In the most recent elections in May and July 2023,
the party experienced a slight recovery in support, securing just under
600,000 votes. This represents a stark contrast to its earlier prominence
when, from the early 1980s to the first decade of the 2000s, PASOK
played a leading role in several governments, including its participation in
the National Unity Executive in 2011/12.7
7 Between 1981 and 2012, PASOK participated in no fewer than ten executives, out
of a total of sixteen, expressing the president of the council on seven occasions. Its last
participation in government now dates back to 2011/12 in the National Unity coalition
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EUROPEAN SOCIALIST PARTIES TRENDS: WHERE …
15
In Spain, PSOE, which received more than 11 million votes in the
2004 and 2008 general elections under Zapatero’s leadership, experienced a significant decline in support. In the closely contested elections
of 2015 and 2016, the party garnered about 5.5 million voters. However,
there was a partial recovery in April 2019 when Pedro Sanchez led the
party to victory with 7.5 million voters. Despite this improvement, PSOE
still fell well short of its performances during the previous decade, trailing
by approximately 3.5 million votes.
Even in the second round of elections in 2019, when PSOE secured
over 6.7 million votes and Sanchez was reconfirmed as the leader, its
support remained below the nearly 8 million votes that had led to the
collapse of Almunia’s PSOE against Aznar in 2000. The victory of the
Popular Party in the 2023 elections did not provide its leader, Núñez
Feijóo, with the parliamentary majority necessary to form a centre-right
government, so that PSOE might return to office in the near future.
However, though support for the Spanish Socialists increased by 3.7
percentage points, this changed little, as their vote has not exceeded the
9 million mark since the early 2000s.
In Germany, the SPD, which boasted 18–20 million voters during the
Schroeder era (in 1998, 2002 and 2005), has seen a gradual decline in
support. It first dipped to just over 12 million votes in the 2009 and 2013
general elections. Subsequently, there was a further decline with only 9.5
million voters in the 2017 elections.
In the 2021 elections, the German Social Democrats, now led by Olaf
Scholz, experienced a modest recovery by garnering nearly 12 million
votes. This allowed them to return to government without having to rely
on the grand coalition formula that had characterised the two previous
German governments. However, it is important to note that Scholz’s
achievement, facilitated by his role as deputy Chancellor during the
last Merkel government, was insufficient to enable the German Social
Democrats to regain the level of support they had enjoyed during
Schroeder’s first chancellorship.
In France, the PSF saw a significant decline in its support, dropping
from around 6–7.5 million voters in the early 2000s to just over 1.5
million votes in the 2017 National Assembly elections. This decline was
with New Democracy and the Orthodox People’s Grouping, under the leadership of Lucas
Papademos.
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16
L. M. FASANO ET AL.
exacerbated by Emmanuel Macron’s decision to leave the party and establish his own political group, La République En Marche, which greatly
weakened the French Socialists by siphoning off their traditional voter
base.
The PSF, now a shadow of its former self, was compelled to form an
alliance with the French Communist Party and other left-wing parties
in a diverse coalition called the Nouvelle Union populaire écologique
et sociale (NUPE), led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise.
While the NUPE achieved 5.8 million votes in the 2022 elections, which
matched the level of support the old Socialist Party had had in 1997,
the transformation of the French left under Mélenchon’s leadership has
not yet replicated the electoral successes that allowed the PSF to propel
François Hollande into the presidency and win the legislative elections of
2012.
In Sweden, the decline of SAP was less dramatic. They went from
approximately 2 million votes in the early 2000s to 1.9 million voters
in the 2022 election. However, despite winning the election, their victory
was not sufficient to secure the reappointment of the outgoing Minister of
State, Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson, as the head of government.
Over the past two decades, the Swedish Social Democrats have experienced fluctuations in their electoral fortunes, in terms of both election
results and their ability to form a government. Although they led the
country for two extended periods, from 2002 to 2006 (with a brief stint
in 1996) and from 2014 to 2022, they have not managed to surpass
the two-million-vote threshold since 2002. This period included their
prominent role in governing the country for twelve years, from 1996 to
2006, first under the leadership of Ingvar Carlsson and later under Goran
Persson.
In the UK, Tony Blair’s New Labour began the first decade of the
2000s with just under 11 million votes. However, by the end of this
decade, under Gordon Brown’s leadership in 2010, they had only slightly
more than eight and a half million voters. This level of support was
the lowest since the 1983 election when, under Michael Foot, Labour
achieved a similar result.
The Labour Party’s support started to grow again in the 2015 election,
when under Ed Milliband, they garnered just over 9 million votes. Under
Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, they came close to hitting nearly 13 million
votes in the 2017 election. However, these results were still not sufficient to bring Labour back into government. Just two years later, again
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EUROPEAN SOCIALIST PARTIES TRENDS: WHERE …
17
under Corbyn’s leadership, they experienced a loss of more than two and
a half million votes, resulting in an outcome similar to that of the 1987
elections, which occurred before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when their
support slightly exceeded the 10 million mark.
In Portugal, since the early 2000s, there has been a consistent level of
support for the Socialist Party, which has remained at around two million
votes. This trend continued even after the period from 1995 to 2002,
during which the Socialists held both the presidency of the republic, first
with Soares and then with Sampaio, and the leadership of the government
with Guterres.
The only exception to this trend occurred in the 2015 elections when
their support dropped to 1.7 million votes, which was about 300,000
votes less than the Socialdemocratic Party. However, despite this, the
Socialist Party ended up forming the government with Antonio Costa
as the leader, after only a month and a half of the Socialdemocratic Party
being in power with Passos Coelho.
Overall, the Portuguese Socialists have been in power for a long
period, uninterruptedly leading the executive for the past eight years. This
prolonged period of governance has allowed them to maintain their level
of support at around two million votes, making them a notable exception
in the landscape of European left-wing parties.
The trend in support that has characterised socialist and socialdemocratic parties in major European countries since the collapse of the Berlin
Wall can also be viewed in terms of their roles as the majority or the opposition. While the overall trend of declining support remains consistent, it is
notable that in most of the cases we have discussed, especially in Germany,
the UK, France, Sweden and Portugal, there is a pattern where support
tends to increase when these parties are in opposition and decrease when
they have recently been in government. This suggests an anti-cyclical
tendency, indicating that left-wing parties may not benefit from being in
government. It is as if the strategy of being in power, and subsequent
retrospective voting by the electorate, tends to damage their electoral
performance in the elections that follow their time in government.
This phenomenon is particularly evident in the UK with the Labour
Party. Their support increased from 1987 for a decade until their first
electoral victory under Blair. However, it contracted in subsequent elections between 2001 and 2010 under different leadership, ultimately
leading to their defeat under Brown’s leadership. Support then increased
again when they were in opposition between 2015 and 2017, with
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18
L. M. FASANO ET AL.
the only exception being in 2019 when they faced another election in
opposition under Corbyn, which saw a decline in support.
Similar patterns can be observed with the Socialist Party in France,
where they saw increased support in the elections of 1997, 2007 and
2012 when they were in the opposition, both in the Elysée and in the
National Assembly. Conversely, they experienced a loss of votes in both
1993 and 2017 when they were in leadership positions in the government
with Bérégovoy and Cazeneuve, and in the presidency of the republic with
Mitterrand and Hollande, respectively.
In Germany, the SPD had gains in support in 1990, 1994 and 1998
when they were in opposition to the 3rd, 4th and 5th Kohl governments, respectively. However, a decline in votes accompanied the elections
following the two Schroeder governments in 2002 and 2005, as well
as the first grand coalition government in which the German Social
Democrats participated under the leadership of Angela Merkel.
In Portugal, the Socialist Party increased its votes in the elections of
1991, 1995 (when they were in opposition to the government of Cavaco
Silva) and 2005 (when their Socialdemocratic opponent Santana Lopes
was in government). However, they lost support in the elections of 1999
and 2002 when they were in government with Antonio Guterres, as well
as in 2009 when the executive was led by the Socialist José Sócrates.
There was a partial recovery of support in the following elections of 2011.
In the last two electoral rounds of 2019 and 2022, the Portuguese PS
managed to regain support by being in government under the leadership
of Antonio Costa.
The trend for the Socialdemocratic Workers’ Party of Sweden is
different, as it is more stable and less affected by alternating growth and
decline. The peak of two and a half million votes recorded in the 1994
elections occurred when they were in opposition.
Conversely, PASOK in Greece had a quite different trend due to its
considerable instability. It did not lend itself well to interpretations related
to the role of being in the majority or opposition, especially considering
the collapse it suffered with the elections of May 2012, following its
participation in the government of national unity and the severe economic
and social effects of the financial crisis affecting the country.
In contrast, the trajectory of PSOE in Spain does not follow the
declining trend from government positions that we have observed in
most other socialist and socialdemocratic parties. Instead, the Spanish
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EUROPEAN SOCIALIST PARTIES TRENDS: WHERE …
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Socialists had a different pattern. Between the 1989 and 2000 elections, they experienced growth in support while in government, in 1993
and 1996, respectively, after the third and fourth Gonzales governments.
However, they suffered a decline in support when in opposition, in the
2000 election round following the first executive led by Aznar.
Subsequently, between 2004 and 2008, they saw an increase in support
both in opposition to the second Aznar government, when they almost
unexpectedly won the elections after the Islamist attacks in Madrid, and
following the first socialist executive led by Zapatero.
However, after Zapatero’s second term in government, during the
2011 elections, and then between 2015 and 2016, they suffered a
substantial loss of support in both government and opposition. This led to
the last three election rounds, occurring between 2019 and 2023, which
exhibited an even more discontinuous trend.
In contrast to the overview concerning socialist and socialdemocratic parties in other major European countries, the Italian case shows
several notable peculiarities. To begin with, Italy was home to the largest
Communist Party in Western Europe. While the PCI’s affiliation with
the Soviet Union was widely recognised, Italian Communists consistently
attempted to assert a degree of autonomy from Moscow. This autonomy,
however, failed to grant the Italian Communists sufficient political legitimacy to serve as a credible governing alternative. This was evident in
the exclusion of the Communists from majority coalitions, except for the
brief period of the “historic compromise” when they provided external
support to the single-party Christian Democratic executive led by Giulio
Andreotti from 1978 to 1979.
Moreover, the PCI faced stiff competition from the PSI, particularly
after the Socialists, under their new leader Bettino Craxi, adopted a
more autonomous stance. This competition peaked with the defeat of the
Communists in the referendum leading to abolition of the cost-of-living
escalator, a policy strongly advocated by the Socialists. It was during the
two years beginning with the fall of the Berlin Wall and ending with the
collapse of the USSR that the history of the PCI came to an end and
gave way to the post-communist phase. This transition was marked by
the creation of the Partito Democratico della Sinistra and the subsequent
split that gave rise to the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (PRC).
Only during the period between 1992 and 1994, following the implosion of the PSI, along with the DC and other governing parties, due
to the Tangentopoli investigations and the trials exposing widespread
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20
L. M. FASANO ET AL.
corruption in their respective leaderships, did the PDS emerge as the
dominant force within the Italian left. Alongside the PDS, a few other
small political groups, including Verdi, Alleanza Democratica and la Rete,
also found their place on the Italian left, in addition to the PRC.
In the early 1990s, Italy underwent a significant transformation,
primarily driven by the Tangentopoli investigations, marking the end
of the First Republic. This period saw the beginning of a lengthy and
ongoing transition. The Left, during this time, was divided into two new
parties: the PDS and the PRC, both emerging from the dissolution of
the PCI after its 1991 constituent congress held in Rimini. However,
the election results were not particularly reassuring. Together, these two
parties, which carried forward the communist legacy, garnered just over
8.5 million votes (6.3 million for the PDS and 2.2 million for the PRC),
which was more than 1.7 million fewer than the number of votes the PCI
had won at its final general election in 1987.
Consequently, the PDS and the PRC found themselves in opposition.
First, they faced the Amato government in 1992, which was supported by
a four-party coalition consisting of the DC, PLI, PSDI and PSI. Subsequently, they opposed the Ciampi government in 1993, after the PDS
withdrew its support just hours after its ministers had been sworn in. This
move was a protest against the refusal of the Chamber of Deputies to lift
the parliamentary immunity of PSI general secretary, Bettino Craxi, who
was implicated in the Tangentopoli investigation.
Italy returned to the polls two years later, marked by the entry of
media mogul Silvio Berlusconi into politics, with his personal party, Forza
Italia (FI). This election also saw the formation of a complex coalition,
with Berlusconi allied with Umberto Bossi’s Lega Nord (LN) in the
northern regions (Polo delle Libertà) and with Alleanza Nazionale, a
party that had emerged from the MSI, in the southern regions (Polo
del Buon Governo). Simultaneously, the Italian party system underwent
profound changes. They included the dissolution of the parties of the
First Republic, many of which were implicated in the Tangentopoli investigations, as well as the emergence of new political groups, including FI,
AN, the LN, AD and the Network.
The Italian party system took on a bipolar format, which would remain
a defining feature at least until the general elections of 2008.
Analysis of political developments in this context is notably more
complex compared to analysis of the trajectories of socialist and social
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EUROPEAN SOCIALIST PARTIES TRENDS: WHERE …
21
democratic parties in other European countries. There are two main
reasons for this complexity.
Firstly, unlike other countries where distinct socialist or socialdemocratic parties still exist, Italy has witnessed multiple shifts in the political
landscape over the past three decades. This has resulted in the emergence
of various political entities, many of which can be considered as more or
less direct successors to the PCI. It is important to note that Italy no
longer has a single socialist or Socialdemocratic Party, in contrast to other
major Western European countries where such parties still operate.
Secondly, between 1992 and 2022, there were significant changes to
the Italian political and institutional context mainly due to alterations
in the electoral system. In 1992, elections were still conducted under
the old proportional law, which helped to frame the polarised multiparty system (Sartori 1982) of the so-called First Republic.8 And then,
between 1994 and 2001, Italy transitioned to a majoritarian system, with
a proportional quota limited to one quarter of the available seats in the
Chamber of Deputies. This shift favoured the development of a bipolar
party system characterised by two electoral coalitions, one of the centreleft and the other of the centre-right, each competing for overall seat
majorities. Subsequently, from 2006 to 2013, Italy had a proportional
electoral system with a majority premium, and then, from the 2018 election, a hybrid electoral system with single-member constituencies and
proportional list voting. These changes significantly influenced the political landscape, facilitating the emergence of third parties, most notably the
Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Star Movement, M5s). As a result, Italy
8 The journalistic expression “Prima repubblica” (First republic) is intended to qualify
the Italian political system in the first phase of its republican history, from 1946 to
1994. Characteristics of the so-called “First Republic” were:(a) blocked democracy, i.e.
the absence of party alternation in government, given that the PCI on the left and
the MSI on the right were systematically precluded from participating in the national
executive, which was therefore limited to the DC, the so-called minor secular parties and,
finally, from the early 1960s, the PSI; (b) consociativism, i.e. the prevalence of a logic
of compromise whereby a large part of law making had to have an implicit agreement
between the party of relative majority, the DC, and the main opposition party, the PCI; (c)
ideological polarisation, i.e. the high cultural distance that separated the opposition parties
of the right from those of the left, making it impossible for them to collaborate with the
governing parties; (d) absence of responsibility respectively in the role of government
or opposition, as government parties were obliged to govern together while opposition
parties were prevented from doing so. See Fabbrini (2009), Passigli (2021) and, as a more
general reference, Jones and Pasquino (2015).
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22
L. M. FASANO ET AL.
experienced a kind of “tri-polarisation” of its party system, characterised
by a weakening of the bipolar dynamic and the presence of two coalitions
and a third significantly sized force, the M5s, which refused to coalesce
with either of the other two either at the 2013 or at the 2018 elections.
In summary, Italy’s political landscape over this period evolved from
the polarised multi-party system of the First Republic to a bipolar system
marked by the presence of two large coalitions, and eventually to a
tri-polar system with the simultaneous presence of two coalitions and
influential third parties like the M5s.
In the case of Italy, calculations and evaluations have become more
complex for several reasons. Firstly, the party system has experienced a
constant and swift influx of new political entities. Secondly, the changes
of electoral system have led to varying competitive conditions in election campaigns. These factors have had a substantial impact on how
the political landscape has been organised and how voter support trends
have developed. Consequently, comparing Italy with the other European
countries discussed here is extremely challenging.
Over the past thirty years, the Italian party system has seen the successive emergence of several political parties that can trace their roots back
to the social-communist tradition. Within the centre-left, this evolution is
exemplified by the transformation of the PDS into the DS and finally the
PD. Furthermore, the PD now includes elements from the MargheritaDemocrazia è Libertà, a party with roots in the Catholic democratic
tradition, specifically, the Christian Democratic left.
In the realm of left-wing radical forces, the changes are mainly seen
in the transition from the PRC to the Party of Italian Communists, with
interim phases like those seeing the emergence of the Sinistra Arcobaleno
and the Sinistra Ecologia e Libertà (SEL). Recently, a new movement
called Liberi e Uguali emerged after factions historically connected to
Massimo D’Alema and Pierluigi Bersani left the PD.
To assess the performance of left and centre-left parties in the Italian
context, it is crucial to establish a reference point. Temporally, this reference point is located in the late 1980s, with a significant turning point in
1991. This year marked the svolta della Bolognina (“Bolognina turning
point”), leading to the dissolution of the PCI and the emergence of the
PDS and the PRC. Additionally, it is important to note that 1992, just
a year after the PCI’s dissolution, witnessed the collapse of the political
system known as the “First Republic”. This collapse resulted from the
Tangentopoli investigations, which particularly targeted the parties within
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EUROPEAN SOCIALIST PARTIES TRENDS: WHERE …
23
the then five-party governing coalition (consisting of the DC, the PSI,
the PSDI, the PRI and the PLI). The PDS remained largely untouched
by the scandal, partly because it was not involved in the networks of
corrupt exchange that implicated the governing parties, such as those
underpinning the Enimont bribery allegations.9 Furthermore, the PDS
had recently undergone a significant transformation, presenting itself to
the public in a new light.
1992 was also significant as it marked the last elections to be held
under the old proportional electoral law that had been in use during
the “First Republic”. In 1994, the electoral landscape shifted further
with the introduction of the Mattarella law, which, due to its predominantly majoritarian nature,10 facilitated the formation of relatively stable
electoral coalitions. This electoral system, used for the 1994 and two
subsequent elections, helped solidify a competitive dynamic characterised
by bipolarity.
When examining the performance of left and centre-left political forces
in Italy from the 1994 general elections to the 2022 elections, we can
approach the analysis from several perspectives. These perspectives help us
understand the complex dynamics in Italian politics, especially considering
the legacy of the PCI.
One perspective involves focussing on the direct heirs of the PCI and
tracing the evolution of the main centre-left party, initially known as the
Partito Democratico della Sinistra, later as the Democrats of the Left (DS)
and today represented by the Democratic Party (PD). These parties have
direct roots in the Partito Comunista Italiano.
Another perspective focusses on the parties that have formed the
centre-left coalition at various elections. This perspective considers the
9 The Enimont bribe trial was the main judicial trial of the Manipulite season. It took
place in Milan between 1993 and 2000 and saw the involvement of the leading politicians
of the governing parties of the so-called First Republic.
10 As a reminder, the Mattarella law for election to the House provided for 3/4 of
the seats to be allocated in single-member, single-round constituencies and 1/4 of the
seats to be allocated proportionally within a single national constituency with a 4% barrier
threshold. In the Senate, on the other hand, 3/4 of the seats were also allocated in
single-member, single-round constituencies, while the remaining quarter were allocated
proportionally through a kind of catch-up on a regional basis with respect to the total
list votes of the parties linked to the candidates in the single-member constituencies, once
the votes obtained by those elected were separated out.
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24
L. M. FASANO ET AL.
broader set of parties that have aligned themselves with the centre-left on
several occasions.
An important factor to consider is the discontinuity that emerged
after the 2006 elections when an electoral alliance between the DS and
the Margherita played a pivotal role in the Unione11 coalition led by
Romano Prodi. This event marked the beginning of the path leading
to the formation of the PD. The PD brought together elements from
both the post-communist left and the Christian Democratic tradition. As
a result, it became increasingly challenging to attribute the evolutionary
trajectory of the left solely to the post-communist tradition.
These perspectives help illuminate the complex political landscape in
Italy, where the legacy of the PCI and the shifting alliances within the
centre-left have helped shape the country’s political dynamics in recent
years.
In the context of the first perspective, the largest party, as previously
mentioned, has traced a line of development from the PCI to the PDS,
then to the DS, and subsequently, with the collaboration of MargheritaDemocrazia è Libertà, to the formation of the PD. When we examine
this trajectory, we observe a significant decline in voter support. From
the over 10 million votes once garnered by the PCI, support for the left
has dwindled to the just over 5 million votes won by the PD in the latest,
2022, general election. This represents a loss of approximately 48% of the
votes that the PCI received in the late 1980s.
It is worth noting that the electoral base of the PCI was relatively stable
during that time. After a drop in the combined share of the vote going to
the PDS and the PRC in the 1992 general election following the svolta
della Bolognina (−16.8%),12 by the 1994 election, the total vote for these
two parties had rebounded to over 11 million, matching the support the
PCI had achieved at its last election in 1987.
The first significant reduction in votes for the post-Communists
occurred three years later, following the split between the PRC and
11 Unione was the name of the rassemblement that brought together with leader
Romano Prodi the forces of the reformist centre-left (Ulivo) with those of the radical
left and centre, alternatives to the Casa delle Libertà, which was the centre-right coalition
led by Silvio Berlusconi.
12 To be precise, in the 1987 general election the PCI obtained 10,250,644 votes,
while in the 1992 general election the PDS and PRC won 6,321,084 and 2,204,641
votes, respectively, which together make 8,525,725 votes, or 1,724,919 fewer preferences,
or 17% less support than the PCI.
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EUROPEAN SOCIALIST PARTIES TRENDS: WHERE …
25
the Party of Italian Communists (PdCI). At the 2001 general election,
the total vote for the three parties (PDS, PRC and PdCI) combined
descended to just over 8.6 million, constituting a 22% loss compared
to the votes they had won at the previous election. Interestingly, there
appears to be a regularity: following splits, the parties involved often experience a decline in voter support. In the case of the heirs of the PCI, this
decline also seems to follow a pattern, with their vote pool consistently
hovering around 8 million votes both in 1992, following the PDS-PRC
split, and in 2001, following the PRC-PdCI split.
With the 2006 parliamentary elections, which featured a combined
list fielded by the DS and the Margherita for the Chamber of Deputies
election, this historical trajectory came to an end, serving only as a reference point for the potential electoral base that the post-communist left
contributes to the centre-left’s overall support in subsequent elections.
Even when considering voters who, in 2018, supported political offerings derived from the post-communist tradition, totalling approximately
1.6 million, it becomes evident that the post-communist left no longer
approaches the level of support that the PCI achieved back in 1987.
In the 2006 elections, characterised by the emergence of an electoral
alliance between the DS and the Margherita as part of the Unione coalition led by Romano Prodi, there was a notable increase in voter support.
This increase can be attributed to significant changes in the political
context. The election saw the convergence of two key political traditions:
the heirs of the communist tradition, represented by the DS, and the heirs
of the Christian Democratic tradition, particularly the faction known as
the “DC left”, which had given rise to the Margherita-DL founded in
the run-up to the 2001 elections. This convergence occurred within the
combined lists of the Ulivo coalition, fielded for the Chamber of Deputies
contest.
When we distinguish between the periods from 1992 to 2001, marked
by the political offerings of the PCI’s successors (the PDS-DS, the PRC
and PdCI), and the period from 2006 to 2008, which led to the creation
of the PD through the merger of DS and DL-Margherita, a significant
shift in the profile of the Italian centre-left becomes evident.
The birth of the PD represented an extraordinary opportunity for the
Italian centre-left. It shifted the focus from the post-communist legacy
to the potential for the cultivation of a centre-left electorate with a clear
governmental ambition. During the PD’s formative phase and its first test
in general elections, this coalition managed to secure nearly 12 million
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26
L. M. FASANO ET AL.
votes under the “Uniti nell’Ulivo” list. Additionally, at the 2006 election, the centre-left parties collectively received 19 million votes, with an
additional 7 million votes coming from smaller parties allied with “Uniti
nell’Ulivo” within the centre-left coalition.13
The 2008 election marked the debut of the PD. Under Veltroni’s leadership, the party aimed to establish a competitive dynamic centred around
significant degree of bipartisanship. The plan was for the Democrats to
represent the centre-left, while the Popolo della Libertà would serve as
the core party for the centre-right, in line with the concept of a “majority
vocation.”14
If we draw on the perspective that considers the PD as the direct
heir of the post-communist tradition, we can make a number of comparisons. When we trace the process of political development that began with
the PCI and ended with the formation of the PD, passing through the
PDS and the DS, we observe a significant decline in support. The PCI,
in 1987, garnered more than 10 million votes, while the PD in 2022
received slightly over 5 million votes. This is equivalent to the loss of
approximately 48% of the voters that supported the Communists in the
1980s.
However, if we focus on the period starting with the svolta della
Bolognina, which led to the formation of the PDS and its first electoral
outing in 1992, and ending with the most recent election in 2022, the
difference in voter support is more modest. In 1992, the PDS secured
just over 6.3 million votes, and in 2022, the PD received slightly over 5
million votes.
However, there are other ways to measure this phenomenon. We can
consider the parties that belong to the centre-left coalition as additional
13 The centre-left electoral array, i.e. the set of lists linked to Romano Prodi’s candi-
dacy, included, in addition to the list United in the Ulivo (consisting of DS and DL),
PRC, PDCI, the Rosa nel Pugno (a formation uniting Socialists and Radicals), Italia
dei Valori (the political party of former Mani pulite magistrate Antonio Di Pietro),
Greens, UDEUR (the list of former Christian Democrats built by former President of
the Republic, Francesco Cossiga, and Clemente Mastella), joined by other smaller lists,
such as the Socialists, Consumers’ Movement, the Alleanza Lombardia Autonoma, the
Liga Veneta and the Partito Pensionati.
14 Broadly interpreting a concept of Duverger’s, the idea of “majoritarian vocation”
means the presence of parties that, on the respective centre-left and centre-right sides, were
supposed to compete, within a bipolar dynamic, aspiring to win enough compensations
to govern almost alone.
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EUROPEAN SOCIALIST PARTIES TRENDS: WHERE …
27
benchmarks. From this perspective, it is interesting to note that in the
1992 elections, held before the introduction of the Mattarella electoral
law, which favoured bipolar competition by allocating three quarters of
the seats in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate in accordance
with the single-member, simple plurality system, the centre-left parties15
combined received over 15.7 million votes. Two years later, under the
new electoral law, this figure dropped to just over 13 million votes, but
then increased to 16 million in the subsequent elections of 1996 and
2001.
The turning point came at the 2006 election when the Democratici
di Sinistra and the Margherita formed an electoral alliance called Uniti
nell’Ulivo. This alliance, after forming a federation with the Socialisti
Democratici Italiani (SDI) and the Movimento Repubblicani Europei the
year before, received an impressive 19 million votes. However, the size
of the coalition posed several challenges, leading to the instability of the
newly formed Prodi government and eventually causing it to fall, resulting
in early elections.
During this period, the Ulivo’s federative project continued to
progress, and after a significant electoral defeat in the 2007 local elections, the conditions were considered favourable for the establishment of
the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, PD).
The birth of the PD and the political strategy adopted by its leader,
Walter Veltroni, during the party’s formation phase, enabled it to secure
more than 12 million votes at the 2008 election. Combined with the just
under 1.6 million votes of Italia dei Valori (IdV), a political formation led
by the former public prosecutor, Antonio Di Pietro, the new centre-left
coalition amassed a total of just under 14 million votes. This seemed to
suggest that the decision to exclude the radical left forces from the coalition could be a successful strategy, given that the electoral competition
was now dominated by the PD and the Popolo delle Libertà (PdL), a
political entity created by Berlusconi through the merger of FI and AN.
15 Since the bipolar competitive dynamic favoured by the Mattarella electoral law, which
would not be approved until the following year, had not yet been established, in 1992
we consider parties placed in the centre-left PDS, PSI, PRC, the Green lists and La Rete,
a national list with a civic imprint, born on the initiative of Leoluca Orlando, Nando
dalla Chiesa, Claudio Fava, Alfredo Galasso, Carmine Mancuso and Diego Novelli, as an
aggregation between progressive Catholic forces and leftist forces.
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L. M. FASANO ET AL.
The 2008 elections thus marked a significant turning point, peculiar
to the Italian case, signifying the end of the first phase of evolution and
the start of the second. From that point onward, the electoral trajectory
of the centre-left coalition diverged from that of the range of parties (the
Sinistra Arcobaleno and other formations of the radical left) identifying
with a left-wing position, in that it had a broader electoral base.
However, by the 2013 elections, when the PD was under the leadership of Pierluigi Bersani, the party reverted to an alliance strategy that
aimed to build a coalition encompassing political forces from both the
centre, such as the Centro Democratico, and the left, such as Sinistra
Ecologia e Libertà (SEL), the direct heir of the Sinistra Arcobaleno. This
strategy did not yield the anticipated results. While the gap between the
centre-left coalition and the parties of the left initially widened to over
1.6 million votes in 2018, it then narrowed to just over 600,000 votes
in 2022. Interestingly, the PD lost almost three-and-a-half million votes
between 2013 and 2018, and a further 800,000 votes between 2018 and
2022. This pattern indicates, contrary to its initial expectations of being
a “majority” party, both the PD’s increasing difficulty in attracting votes
and a progressive decline in the appeal of the political forces of the left
and centre-left generally.
Finally, concerning electoral trends related to the dynamics of being in
the majority or opposition, let us delve into the period between the 1992
and 1996 elections. During this time, there was a decrease in support
when the left was in opposition and an increase when it was in government. However, we should differentiate between the Prodi government
of 1996, where the PDS’ participation was a result of the prior political decision to be part the centre-left electoral coalition, and the Ciampi
government of 1994, led by a technocrat, which was quite different.
The slight increase in votes between the 1994 and 1996 elections,
resulting in an electoral victory, can be attributed to the failure of the
first Berlusconi government. It fell shortly after the centre-right’s unexpected and decisive victory in the 1994 elections due to a disagreement
between Berlusconi’s FI and the Lega Nord over welfare system reform.
Moving on to the 2001 elections, the DS had just completed a legislative term in government, initially with the Prodi I government and then
with the governments led by their former general secretary, Massimo
D’Alema, and the Amato II government. This extended period in government had a negative impact on their popularity. In 1998, the Prodi I
government had collapsed due to the premier opposition to the PRC’s
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EUROPEAN SOCIALIST PARTIES TRENDS: WHERE …
29
proposal to reduce working hours. The subsequent alternation in government between coalitions of the centre-right and centre-left, marking the
transition from the “Republic of Parties” to the “Second Republic” in
1994, impeded the formation of a unified political entity on the basis of
the Ulivo coalition. However, this alternation favoured the success of the
Ulivo in the 2006 elections.
In contrast, the 2008 elections, with the birth of the Democratic
Party (PD), introduced both a disruptive element and a turning point.
The array of centre-left political offerings shifted significantly, presenting
voters with a new situation. Instead of the broad coalitions that had
characterised the centre-left, from the Progressisti of 1994 to the Ulivo
in 2006, voters now faced a single party, the PD, formed through the
merger of the DS and the Margherita (along with other smaller secular
democratic groups). This was intended as an alternative to the other leftwing political forces that had previously been part of those coalitions.
The PD did not win the 2008 elections, but it achieved a level of support
comparable only to what the PCI had achieved in the 1976 elections.
After 2008 and up to the 2022 elections, the PD remained in government, albeit as part of coalitions variously constituted. They included
two technocratic governments led by Mario Monti and Mario Draghi;
a broad coalition government that included parties of the centre-right
under Enrico Letta; two centre-left governments led by Matteo Renzi
and Paolo Gentiloni, respectively; and a government in partnership with
the M5s led by Giuseppe Conte. This continuous presence in government
ultimately led to a decline in voter support. Voters began to perceive the
PD as an integral part of the country’s power structure. Meanwhile Italy
was witnessing the rise of anti-establishment parties, such as Beppe Grillo’s M5s and the League under Matteo Salvini (with the League later
taking on a more pronounced sovereigntist stance even before Giorgia
Meloni’s arrival in the Prime Minister’s office in Palazzo Chigi). Thus,
the perception grew that the PD was part of the establishment and this
provided to be highly damaging to the main left-wing party in Italy.
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Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Working Documents No. 2/June.
Fabbrini, Sergio. (2009). The Transformation of Italian Democracy, in Bulletin
of Italian Politics, vol. 1, n. 1, pp. 29–47.
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30
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Jones, Erik and Gianfranco Pasquino (Eds.) (2015). The Oxford Handbook of
Italian Politics, Oxford (UK): Oxford Academic Press.
Passigli, Stefano. (2021). Elogio della Prima repubblica, Milano: La Nave di
Teseo.
Sartori, Giovanni. (1982). Teoria dei partiti e caso italiano, Milano: Sugarco.
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