The Territorial Representativeness of Italian Ministerial Elites: From the Regional “Parity Norm” to the Rise of Technocrats

Filippo Tronconi,Luca Verzichelli

doi:10.1017/nps.2021.56

Abstract

AbstractThe territorial composition of governments (that is, the geographical origin of its members) has received little attention from political scientists. However, prime ministers, ministers, and junior ministers clearly have a territorial characterization and preferential attachments to specific places that can potentially affect the way decisions are made and resources are allocated. In this article, we focus on these aspects, showing the evolution of the territorial representativeness of Italian governmental elites over the last four decades and proposing some interpretations of its changes. In particular, we describe the transition from a balanced regional representation (the “parity norm”) to a multitude of different patterns of territorial representation that we observe across parties nowadays. We propose three explanations for such changes: the first is based on the transformation of the party system in the nineties, with the emergence of parties such as the Northern League, with a specific regional focus; the second is based on the regionalization of the Italian state and its consequences on political career paths; the third is based on the increasing recruitment of technocrats in ministerial offices.

Highlights

Governments, their functions, and powers; their partisan composition; their relations with other constitutional bodies; and the processes leading to their formation and dissolution, are all topics extensively covered by political science research
Long-Term Patterns of Territorial Representativeness of the Italian Government To test the validity of the above expectations, we have assembled an original dataset by collecting the regional origins of all of the members of Italian governments from 1976 (Andreotti III government) to 2021 (Draghi government). This data will allow us to run a diachronic analysis covering the final period of the so-called first republic – the one less dominated by the Christian Democratic elite – and the following period, including the governments of the age of bipolar alternation (Cotta and Verzichelli 2000) and those formed after the economic crisis of 2008–2011, when the Italian party system moved to a tripolar format at both national and regional levels (Chiaramonte and Emanuele 2014; Tronconi 2015)
If we look at the pattern of territorial representation of the Italian ruling class in terms of macroregional distribution, we discover that the balance between northern and southern representatives has not changed a lot over the years

Summary

Introduction

Governments, their functions, and powers; their partisan (or non-partisan) composition; their relations with other constitutional bodies; and the processes leading to their formation and dissolution, are all topics extensively covered by political science research. The above discussion can be summarized by the following expectation: Expectation 2: Since the mid-1990s, the federalization of Italy and, the availability of attractive executive offices at regional and local level, have made ministerial positions less interesting for politicians with political experience at the subnational level.

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Results

Conclusion