Parties, Policy Issues and the Adoption of Programmatic Policies in Times of Crisis: Italy 1996-2018

This paper investigates the influence of the economic context on partisan policymaking. A focus on how the economic context constrains (or enables) parties’ policy production is of crucial importance especially today, in a period when the global economy is becoming increasingly interconnected and European countries have dealt with (and some are still dealing with) a severe economic crisis. Most of the existing literature shows how the political and the party system as well as the related distribution of power in the countries influence parties’ capacities and incentives to promote their policy preferences. At the same time, however, they rarely observe how the macroeconomic conditions in which parties are called to act can play a role in this process too. And even when they do, scholars usually underline the negative implications for policy production. In this study, I argue in favour of going beyond a viewpoint that only considers the constraining effect, without reflecting also on opportunities, issues, and electoral considerations that arise from a recession period. Are parties able to strategically take advantage of a negative economic situation for adopting their programmatic policies? A recession modifies power dynamics, produces a change in the electorate’s expectations, reduces the availability of financial resources, and increases international and European pressures on national politics. Faced with new external conditions and challenges, how do partisan office-holders react? This research draws upon a scholarship that empirically explores the existence of a party-policy linkage by looking at the congruence between parties’ electoral promises and policy outputs. This approach considers pledge fulfilment (i.e. the congruence between pre-electoral statements and the legislation enacted once in office) to determine the strength of the party-policy relation. Based on the analysis of election pledge fulfilment in Italy (1996-2018), this study empirically demonstrates that governing parties’ behaviour in times of crisis is essentially different (and it is driven by different factors) in times of crisis compared to normal times: During a recession governing parties adapt their behaviour and strategies to the new context and pressures. Despite the presence of important constraints, governments have electoral and political motivations to still try to carve out space for (some of) their preferred policies. Specifically, this paper shows that an economic crisis does not merely have a detrimental impact on partisan capacities to shape policies. On the contrary, electoral and political motivations, reputation issues, and voters’ concerns are just some of the elements that may boost partisan politics during downturns. Results from logistic regressions indeed suggest that the influence of the state of the economy on parties’ capacities to achieve their ideologically-driven policies is largely contingent (1) on the ideological family to which the party belongs and (2) the issue of the policy. Overall, left-leaning governments’ autonomy is heavily curtailed in times of crisis. Nevertheless, they appear to be able to mobilise the discretionary power they have left for realising their policy preferences related to the welfare state. Right parties, on the contrary, are less challenged by macroeconomic factors.