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

THE EUROPEAN DIMENSION OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN ITALY.
this perspective, a deeper integration is considered as a specific priority and a fundamental
goal for the party throughout its political discourse.
Structuring the longitudinal analysis: the interaction between pro-European discourse,
phases of European Integration and cycles of party government in Italy
The last clarification concerns the timing of our research: differently from the approaches
focused on the measurement of “pro-Europeanism” (or anti-Europeanism) of individual
parties (Ray 1999, Szczerbiak and Taggart 2000) or on the overall impact of Europe on the
party systems (Mair 2000), we aim here to find eventual connections between the re-shaping
of “domestic” party discourse and the changes at supranational level. Therefore, a timeintensive
strategy of investigation like those proposed by the studies mentioned above would
be inadequate.
This leads us to an additional problem, residing in the structural difference between two
historical phases we face here: the period of the first republic (1948-1992) is in fact
characterised by a very stable political elite, while the nineties have been crossed by a
sudden and intense change of the party system, which determined a significant renewal of
the political elite and, consequently, a potential transformation of the political discourse. We
propose to solve this problem measuring first continuity and discontinuity in the political
discourse within the two historical periods, and to leave to the final part of the chapter the
discussion on whether the attitudes of party elites have really changed from the first historical
cycle to the other.
However, the plain longitudinal comparison between the recent party discourse and the “old”
one cannot be an exhaustive way of controlling the transformation of party elite attitudes in
Italy, because it would not tackle another relevant question of the puzzle: the connection
between the significance of the European issue and the evolution of coalition governance in
Italy. First of all, is there a connection? And, in case of a positive answer, what is the story
influencing the other? In order to shed a light on this problem, we can simultaneously show
the series of coalition governance cycles (Verzichelli and Cotta 2000) and the main steps of
European Integration (figure 4).
FIGURE 4 ABOUT HERE
As one can see, the phases of change in domestic politics seem rather independent from the
evolution of European integration. On the other hand, at least two historical turning points
have to be mentioned here, since they seem to hold together change at the domestic and at
the supranational level: at the end of the seventies, in the domestic arena the return to a
“normal” majority-opposition dynamic after a time of grand coalition (national) goes together
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