Italian Personalist Parties: Features and Reasons for Emergence

The article highlights that the personalization of politics as one of new trends in the development of European political parties. The author argues that this is reflected in the emergence of personalist parties in the EU member states. It is shown that Italy is the leader in the number of such parties. The overall objective of the article is to identify the main features of these parties, as well as to show the role of the majority electoral system as an explanation for their emergence. Much attention is paid to the conceptual definition of personalist parties. It has been found that such parties are usually led by a dominant leader who determines the direction of the party’s development; and a poorly structured organization, as well as the absence of intraparty democracy. Based on the method of comparative analysis of specific cases, the author identified a number of features of personalist parties in Italy related to their ideology (populism and euro- scepticism), the origin of the parties, and the status of the founders. The article discusses the reasons for the emergence of personalist parties in Italy. The author focuses on the high role of the introduction of the majority system in parliamentary elections (electoral reform in 1993) as an explanation for the creation of these parties. The main cause-and-effect mechanism lies in the specifics of personality-oriented electoral systems: voting for individual candidates, the use of single-mandate constituencies, the emphasis during the election campaign on the candidate’s personality, greater autonomy of politicians from parties, etc.