Abstract
Why are some party governments suspended and replaced by technical governments? There are surprisingly few answers to this important question in the literature. This article contributes to the literature by analyzing the demographic profiles of the parties’ most committed activists, the party delegates. There is very little in the way of comparative, synchronic and diachronic research that seeks to explore similarities and differences in the demographic profile of middle level elites within radically different political and institutional environments. This article aims at filling such void in empirical research. It draws upon an original dataset based on about 4000 interviews to party national delegates of 15 political parties in Italy between 2004 and 2009, and compares the results with those of the first European comparative research of party delegates that dates back to the seventies, the EPPMLE (European Political Parties Middle Level Elites). Our research findings suggest the presence of high entry barriers that prevent young individuals and women fully to participate in the party’s life. This demographic bias may be a key factor in accounting for the advent of technical governments in Italy because it dwarfs the possibility that new human capital helps developing innovative party programmes.
Highlights
Technical governments in parliamentary democracies comprise of experts and technocrats whose positions are legitimized by their competences rather than by parliament
Technocratic governments raise questions about definitions, what exactly is a technocratic government and how does it differ from party government (McDonnell & Valbruzzi, 2014)? Are technocratic-led governments compatible with democratic accountability? Scholars that focused on the selection of ministerial staff in parliamentary democracies point to new trends of ministerial recruitment from outside the realm of politics (Blondel & Thiébault, 1991)
We focus on the life of political parties “from within” by exploring the changing demographic profiles of their most committed activists, the delegates to national conventions, drawing upon original data assembled from research carried out at the national conventions of Italian political parties in the 1970s and between 2004 and 2009
Summary
Technical governments in parliamentary democracies comprise of experts and technocrats whose positions are legitimized by their competences rather than by parliament. National party delegates are not just party members, but activists with a long political militancy In many cases, these are individuals with social visibility, thanks to their organizational or elective positions in politics and local level associations. Delegates are a crucial link in a party’s organizational chain because they constitute a bridge between the party membership and its leadership (Rohrschneider, 1994) It is they, who must transmit the opinions and moods of members and supporters to the governing bodies and, at the same time, make the party’s political line known at the local level
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