The Italian Party System before the crash: parties and the challenge of renewal in the 1980s

ABSTRACT As many historians suggest, the collapse of the Italian party system in the early 1990s was the result of dynamics that had troubled the political system in the previous decade. This Special Issue examines the parties’ views on the loss of their capacity for representation and governance in the 1980s. The focus is on how aware the political actors themselves were of the ‘crisis’ of the political system and the need for reform of some of its aspects/articulations, what strategies of delegitimization of the system they themselves had aimed at, and, possibly, what strategies they put in place or attempted to put in place to get out of the crisis.