ABSTRACT
The Italian party system has long been characterised by high levels of political fragmentation and instability (La Palombara 1989). This period of great instability reached its peak and came to an end in the early 1990s, when the old power system of the parties collapsed following a series of nationwide corruption scandals and judicial investigations (Bardi and Morlino 1994; Bardi 2002). During the rest of the 1990s, Italian politics experienced a systemic change. A new electoral law, the creation of new political actors and the strategic use of political communication began to sweep aside the old party system and to create a new basis for the internal organisation of political parties, much more centred around the leaders than the parties’ traditional bureaucratic structure. The emergence of new organisational structures also produced the inevitable changes in terms of internal relations within political parties, of the role played by leaders and consequently of the formal procedures for their selection.
