Personal vote in Southern Italy: particularism or universalism?

Abstract

In the South of Italy, the personal vote has represented a synonym for clientelism, understood as a political exchange between votes and particular benefits. The available literature traced the roots of clientelism, from the 1950s onward, to either cultural or structural social determinants, such as cynicism, disenchantment, fatalism or, on the other side, lagging or lacking economic development. Only recently, Political Science has tried new approaches to this phenomenon, by adopting rationalist frameworks to define the strategies underpinning the clientelist bargain. Such a perspective proposed new concepts, a “virtuous clientelism” resembling the Anglo-American constituency service: in this type of clientelism, both voters and candidates are inspired by the desire to provide universal benefits to their community, rather than being limited to egoistic gains. This research wants thus to uncover this type of clientelism through a qualitative research involving in-depth semi-structured interviews, performed with a sample of electors in four of the most important regions of the Italian Mezzogiorno: Calabria, Campania, Apulia and Sicily. This research also provides a map of the desires, expectations, hopes and disillusions of the southern Italian voters. Hence, this study does not limit itself to the research question and goes on to provide more insight on the private and public reasons underpinning political choices and to open further avenues for qualitative research on the topic.In the South of Italy, the personal vote has represented a synonym for clientelism, understood as a political exchange between votes and particular benefits. The available literature traced the roots of clientelism, from the 1950s onward, to either cultural or structural social determinants, such as cynicism, disenchantment, fatalism or, on the other side, lagging or lacking economic development. Only recently, Political Science has tried new approaches to this phenomenon, by adopting rationalist frameworks to define the strategies underpinning the clientelist bargain. Such a perspective proposed new concepts, a “virtuous clientelism” resembling the Anglo-American constituency service: in this type of clientelism, both voters and candidates are inspired by the desire to provide universal benefits to their community, rather than being limited to egoistic gains. This research wants thus to uncover this type of clientelism through a qualitative research involving in-depth semi-structured interviews, performed with a sample of electors in four of the most important regions of the Italian Mezzogiorno: Calabria, Campania, Apulia and Sicily. This research also provides a map of the desires, expectations, hopes and disillusions of the southern Italian voters. Hence, this study does not limit itself to the research question and goes on to provide more insight on the private and public reasons underpinning political choices and to open further avenues for qualitative research on the topic.LUISS PhD Thesi