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

N. CONTI / L. VERZICHELLI
time of the “electoral supply” (i.e. the party manifestos), but we will try to report on a more
comprehensive set of party documents in the attempt to analyse what can be labelled as the
“formation discourse” (Schmidt 2001) produced by the party leadership throughout different
situations: the debate around cabinet crises or inaugurations, national and European
electoral campaigns, the intra-party debate, ad hoc conferences on Europe and, of course,
the acts from official party congresses.
There is an obvious limit in this approach: the party discourse does not necessarily indicate
the real ability of parties to activate and respond to the questions raised by European
Integration. In other words, we cannot produce a fully comprehensive account of party elites
reactions/pro-actions in relation to European integration during the analysed period. On the
other hand, the longitudinal analysis of party discourse will be useful to define a wide set of
problematic changes in the relationship between party elites and European integration, in a
way to suggest adequate explanations for each of these changes. As a matter of fact, we will
select specific indicators measuring the commitment of the Italian political elites towards the
European issues: how important and deep has the internal debate about the EEC/EU
membership been? To what extent have the party elites pressured the party bases? Or, on
the contrary, have the party followers guided and convinced their leaders to take a given
position?
From this point of view, the long term analyses developed so far do not seem sufficiently
empirically grounded, although two basic arguments dominating the most quoted
interpretations of the Italian international and foreign policy (i.e. Santoro 1993) are hardly
questionable:
1) A clear divide between a fully pro-European government elite (from De Gasperi to La
Malfa, from the Liberals to some Socialists) used to contrast a fully Eurosceptical opposition,
including the nationalist heirs of the fascist ideology (the extreme right of Msi) and the
leaders of the largest Communist party in the Western experience (the Pci). According to
most observers, the anti-European attitude of the communist leadership was suddenly
changed during the seventies, when an Euro-communist perspective of independence from
Moscow developed (Webb 1979).
2) The Italian government elite used to keep a loyal but “reserved” judgement on European
integration. That is to say, since the times of De Gasperi and Gaetano Martino, there was no
clear involvement of the Italian political elites in the process of European integration. Italy
was always a “middle rank power”, submitted both to the American guidelines and to the
initiatives of the more powerful continental partners (France and Germany).
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