The latest opinion polls for the upcoming elections see abstentionism hovering at around 34%. According to Demos & pi, at the end of 2016 lack of faith in the political parties stood at a cataclysmic 94%. What on earth has happened? And how can we combat it? The discourse would be a long one and here I can only sketch it out. Furthermore, I am not a constitutionalist but (only) a historian. Yet perhaps a little history could help here. [...]
There were various reasons for this, of which self-interest was only one. The need to combat centrifugal tendencies – long a preoccupation of the ruling Italian elites – was another. The superficial turbulence and ideological division of the new ruling class misled many a foreign journalist’s uneducated eye, but in reality guaranteed great lines of continuity. Over 90% of the citizens regularly went to vote, at both a local and national level. [...]
It was upon these bases that the Italian partitocrazia was constructed. The ruling political parties, unhampered by the magistrates of the time (many of whom were ex-Fascists), or by other institutional restraints, systematically occupied the state and divided amongst themselves all the positions of power and influence therein. Corruption was systemic, not occasional, as were contacts and exchanges of favour between politicians and criminal organisations. [...]
Nowhere in the Italian party system is there minimally the recognition that the constant activity of participation guarantees, stimulates and controls the quality of representation.’ Rather it is true that the more corrupt and decrepit representative democracy becomes, and the more toothless its participation, the more likely it is that citizens will withdraw their votes in ever more massive numbers.
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