ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the impact of directly elected regional presidents on party organisations in Italy, and in doing so evaluates the multi-level dimensions of organisational stratarchy. It describes the literature review that takes in the comparative findings from research on multi-level party organisations, links this to broader developments in terms of party change, and considers the key institutional changes in Italy and how these might affect party organisational dynamics. The question of organisational stratarchy has not been a core focus of academic research, although theoretical interest in the dynamics of multi-level politics was awakened by evidence of party organisational change in response to state decentralisation in Western Europe. The chapter outlines the methodology and data collection used for the study, which is based on comparative case studies of two large regions Campania and Lombardy, using a most dissimilar research design that nevertheless controls for size, organisation and competences of regional governments.
