The european dimension of political discourse in Italy. A ... - CIRCaP

THE EUROPEAN DIMENSION OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN ITALY.
1. Party elites, political discourse and European Integration. Conceptual clarifications
and research strategies *
The puzzle: understanding the transformations of party elite attitudes towards European
integration
This chapter intends to provide a broad long-term analysis of the changing significance of the
question of European integration (and of some related issues) in the discourse of the most
important political parties in Italy, during the last fifty years. Pursuing this general goal will
give us the opportunity to provide an original contribution to a growing debate on the pro/anti-
European attitudes of political parties within the European Union (Hix and Lord 1997;
Hooghe et al. 2002; Marks 1999; Ray 1999; Ladrech 2000; Szczerbiak and Taggart 2002)
and, at the same time, it will help us to explore the cognitive problem raised by the broad
research undertaking the present contribution ascribes to: to what extent has the political
discourse on European integration followed/preceded the changes in the whole perception of
the public opinion and/or other external pressures? In other words, the rationale of this
chapter recalls an old question about the actual impact of political elites on the process of
Community building (Slater 1982), which is very simple in its formulation, but particularly
challenging in its practical exploration, when one has to pass from an impressionistic image
of party elites’ capability to shape the policy agenda and form the collective opinions, to a
more precise account of the relationship among these elements.
In Italy, some simplified views tend to rapidly solve the question, pushing a specific argument
and keeping the rest of the scene like a fixed, insignificant background. For instance, the
idea that Italian political elites used to “import” the European perspective, as an answer to
balance the low degree of democratic satisfaction affecting the Italian public opinion, is quite
recurrent. Probably there is some truth in this argument, and it fits the unquestionable image
of a prolonged destiny of European loyalty of Italian political elites (Cotta 1998). On the other
hand, while historians have been traditionally concerned with the causes of some peculiar
attitudes of the Italian parties (namely, the multifaceted Atlanticism/Europeanism of Christian
Democracy, or the particular Eurocommunism of the Communist party), a rather insufficient
effort has been done, especially in terms of empirical analysis, to explore the dynamic of
change in the “European vocation” of Italian political elites. We know, for instance, that
* The paper is the fruit of a joint reflection. Nonetheless, N. Conti is particularly responsible for sections
2 and 3, while L. Verzichelli for sections 1 and 4. We thank Maurizio Cotta for his valuable comments
on earlier versions of this work. We would also like to thank all the participants to the seminar held at
CIRCaP, University of Siena, on 27 May 2002. We are also grateful to Daniele Pasquinucci for his
advice on historical sources and interpretations.
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