Strategies of Party Reconnection in Italy: Party and Elite Perspectives

The Italian party system represents one of the most emblematic cases of party system collapse and transformation in contemporary Western democracies. While existing scholarship has extensively examined the pars destruens of Italian “partycracy”, far less attention has been devoted to the pars construens: namely, whether and how political parties established since the mid-1990s have attempted to rebuild core party functions and reconnect with society. This paper addresses this gap by investigating the strategies of party reconnection adopted by Italian political parties between 1994 and 2024. The study asks to what extent new and re-established parties have developed innovative or credible mechanisms to restore social rootedness, organizational penetration, and elite formation, focusing on three key dimensions: inclusiveness, territorial presence, and internal elite control. Empirically, the paper combines an original mapping of party organizational trajectories with a systematic analysis of party statutes and procedures, together with elite-level evidence on perceptions of party reconnection strategies. The findings reveal a pattern of partial and incomplete reconstruction. Highly verticalized parties struggle to implement meaningful participatory practices, while attempts to combine leader-centered legitimacy with organizational structures often remain unstable. Movement-party models show limited institutionalization, and strongly centralized parties face difficulties in broadening their elite base. Across party types, statutory provisions remain weakly institutionalized, and persistent problems of inclusiveness and party financing undermine long-term organizational consolidation. Overall, the Italian case suggests that despite widespread recognition of the representative disconnect, party responses remain fragmented and insufficient to fully restore the intermediary role of parties in contemporary democracy.