What a "real" Leghista would do? from "Exit Voice And Loyalty" to a Cultural Understanding of Negative Emotions and Disengagement in a radical-right party

Patterns of voicing discontent or exiting from political organizations are often studied through the lenses of rational action theory, portraying dissident members of organizations as economic actors oriented by material goals and the possible advantages or sanctions their actions can cause. One of the most used paradigms is Hirschman’s model of "Exit, Voice and Loyalty"(1971), which, despite its wide diffusion, presents several conceptual flaws and has been criticized both in this model of action, his categorization of possible patterns of action and the conceptualization of loyalty. I will use data from my ethnographic research inside a populist radical right party in Italy going through a profound change and crisis to examine the dynamics of disengagement. I argue that by relying on a micro-sociological and cultural understanding of emotions, we can better grasp the relations between dissatisfaction, loyalty, and patterns of political action. Organizational culture is acting in three ways: (1) Organizational culture filters how internal conflicts are interpreted. Members of organizations share assumptions about what constitutes adequate participation in a group. These assumptions shape recurrent patterns of interaction in the organization that Eliasoph and Lichterman call "group styles" (Eliasoph and Lichterman 2004). The same events may or may not constitute a reason for internal conflict in different groups. (2) Dissatisfaction is organized according to the cultural understanding of what is appropriate to feel, following what Hochschild calls feeling rules, ‘guidelines for the assessment of fits and misfits between feeling and situation’ (1979, p. 566). Cultural rules prescribe the appropriate emotion for the context – how is it appropriate to feel for this specific violation of expectation? Should it be rage, delusion, indifference, or anything in between? —. (3) Emotions are publicly performed according to display rules that prescribe appropriate ways to act upon emotions (ibid. 1979) or suppress them (Cossu 2002). In this sense, voicing your discontent or not voicing, leaving the organization, or not leaving, are all meaningful patterns of action performed according to these prescriptions. Different loyalty models are mobilized by actors to justify any of the abovementioned action patterns, shifting loyalty referents. For example, one could argue that a reasonable member should remain loyal to his organization, fighting for change. Alternatively, one could say that loyalty to the ideology is more important; thus, exiting the organization is the more suitable option. Moreover, one could say that a loyal member trusts the leadership and must not express dissatisfaction in public. Indications about what constitutes a "loyal member" are stratified, contradictory, and complexly organized, so conflicting interpretations of what is adequate can arise in different situations. Finally, even when action is strategic, and actors evaluate their decisions in economic terms (as in professional political action is more often the case than in other kinds of organizations), actors mobilize models of loyalty when talking publicly about their decision, as a "good member" is often not supposed to be cynical towards their organization.