Economic Development and the Transformation of the Italian Party System

Bibliographic Data

ID6247177
AuthorsSidney Tarrow (0000-0001-7159-0026, corresponding author)
Year1969
Volume1
Issue2
Pages161
Publication date1969-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4159 • E-ISSN: 2151-6227
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/421383
OpenAlexW2312956383
LanguageEN
Citations received9

That socialism is a necessity has never struck the masses with the compelling force of a flash of lightning.... long as misery, the lack of basic necessities, was the condition of the majority, the need for a revolution could be regarded as obvious. . . . Nowadays, in the richer societies, it is not so clear that the status quo represents the greatest possible evil.'1 How European politics have changed since the class-bound polemics of a generation ago! The statement above was written not by a staid social scientist but by an advocate of the radical European Left. It is well known that an economic miracle has transformed Europe sociologically since the war. But has it also had the political result of stilling the radicals on both fronts and transforming their political parties into identical marketing organizations? Such a proposition, self-evident to some, has seldom been treated as an empirical question. Particularly in the light of recent events in Europe, the time is ripe for more careful inquiry into the actual linkage between social and economic change on the one hand and changes in the party system on the other. Students of Western European politics have identified three general areas of change in the party system which are said to be related to the economic miracle of the postwar period. First, economic change is said to have contributed directly to a slackening of social conflict, and thence to a depolarization of the political struggle. The argument runs roughly as follows: As the wealth of a nation increases, the status gap inherent in poor countries, where the rich perceive the poor as vulgar outcasts, is reduced. differences in style of life are reduced, so are the tensions of stratification. And increased education enhances the propensity of different groups to tolerate each other, to accept the complex idea that truth and error are not necessarily on one side.2 Second, the old mass-party structure-based upon a high ratio of members to voters and a dense network of sections-is changing to a looser aggregation, particularly under the electoral impact of the mass media

Development (topology · Economic system · Economic transformation · Economics · Political science · Transformation (genetics · Italy: Economic History and Contemporary Issues · Mathematics

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