Parties between continuity and change since 1980s – Italy and beyond

The articles in this Special Issue all focus on the roots of the spectacular collapse of the Italian party system between 1992 and1994 that as we have sought to make clear lay in the 1970s and 1980s. The articles illustrate how diverse those roots actually were, and how often they went into opposite directions. The authors have looked at how the main (government) parties involved, most notably the Socialists, Liberals and Communists, assessed their own status and evaluated the growing dissatisfaction of many citizens with them. They have reviewed the critical views of outsider parties and politicians such as those of the maverick DC-politician Mario Segni and those of the Radical Party. And they have considered the cultural reflection of growing civil discontent, most notably on Italian television. Notwithstanding these differences, however, there are two striking similarities that surface and became ever more strongly pronounced and urgent as the 1980s proceeded. First, it was broadly agreed that the relationship between Italian parties, all parties, and citizens was not working and that the cause of the disease lay with the former. The diagnosis of the observers inside the parties of both opposition and government (and echoed on TV in even more plain terms) was that parties had alienated themselves