ABSTRACT
For a long time political parties have been considered the basic organizational unit through which citizens were involved in the democratic life of their countries. Mass participation in politics is, in fact, one of the main functions that parties fulfil in contemporary political systems (Neumann 1956). For decades, it seemed that mass parties, first described by Maurice Duverger (1951), were able to guarantee such participation. This was due to the widespread presence of party structures at local level that enabled the recruitment of a greater number of citizens and the coordination of their activities across the whole country. The subsequent decline of the mass-party organizational model, first described by Otto Kirchheimer (1966), concerns this specific side of their activities. Parties kept on working as efficient organizations for electoral purposes, ensuring that campaigns were centralized and professionally managed (Panebianco 1982), and ensured their own survival through an effective use of financial and communicative resources of the state (Katz and Mair 1995). Yet, along with the centralization of resources and a more professional form of communication, came the diffused marginalization of the so-called party on the ground (Katz and Mair 1993) – namely, of militants and party members. Consequently, neither group found enough stimuli in the parties anymore, both in terms of personal identification and of their perception of effective political actions. Many of the above-mentioned authors have highlighted the dangers that could originate from a detachment between controlling the res publica (a function that parties still fulfil) and creating a link between citizens and their elected representatives within the institutions (something that present-day parties can no longer guarantee) (Lawson and Merkl 1988). Attempts to restore the main role of membership through more open rules for the selection of candidates and party leadership alike (Scarrow, Webb and Farrell 2000; Hazan and Rahat 2010) – should thus be considered as a reaction to the decrease in legitimacy previously discussed.
