Primaries: parties’ democratization efforts, citizen participation and plebiscitary issues

The article aims at showing the difficulties faced in introducing primary elections in the Italian representative democracy. The theoretical content of this contribution is twofold. First some questions concerning primary elections as a device for the selection of parties’ candidates will be discussed; then the impact of the primary vote on citizens’ participation resources to party-politics arena will be analyzed. These topics are dealt by following two paths. The first is devoted to briefly reconstruct the political consequences of different types of primary elections in the USA. The second path focuses on the development of the theoretical and political debate on primary elections in Italy, in a context characterized by crisis and transformation of political parties. According to the literature, when primary elections are pursued by party coalitions, then it is highly probable that they may lead to harsh conflicts among, and inside, the involved parties. The last part of this essay reports in fact two striking examples: the primary elections to select the centre-left coalition’s mayoral candidate in Palermo and Aversa in 2006. The outcomes of this analysis show that political parties do not become open and transparent organizations as an immediate result of the introduction of primary elections. As well, they prove that it is not possible to consider primary elections as the only way to improve openness, transparency, responsiveness and accountability of organizations, such as political parties and institutions in liberal-representative democracies.

Keywords: Party system; Party organization; Primary elections; Political participation; Plebiscitarism

Antonino Anastasi, Le primarie: democratizzazione interna ai partiti, partecipazione dei cittadini e istanze plebiscitarie in "PARTECIPAZIONE E CONFLITTO" 1/2011, pp 80-102, DOI: 10.3280/PACO2011-001004