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Territory, religion, and vote: nationalization of politics and the Catholic party in Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2016

Piero Ignazi  and
Spencer Wellhofer
Piero Ignazi*
Affiliation:
Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Spencer Wellhofer
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Denver, Denver CO 80208, USA
*
*E-mail: piero.ignazi@unibo.it
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Abstract

This analysis challenges the consensus that, in post-war Italy the Catholic party [Democrazia Cristiana (Dc)], actively supported by the Catholic Church, fostered a process of vote nationalization. The paper, drawing upon a more fine-grained level of analysis, different statistical measures, and within and across regional models, provides a more nuanced interpretation. According to our analysis, although the Dc effectively acted as a homogenizing agent until the late 1970s, after that decade the processes of modernization and secularization fostered the decline of religious-based politics, and of the Dc itself. Such decline opened the way for the re-emergence of a territorial cleavage and a consequent dis-homogenization of Italian electoral politics. The paper demonstrated that the impact of modernization and secularization on the vote for the Catholic party is more significant considering the five Italy’s geo-political areas rather than the country as a whole. Moreover, the divergent path in the five areas testifies the re-emergence of territory in the Italian electoral behaviour. Territorial heterogeneity, modernization, and secularization were central to the collapse of the Dc.

Keywords

secularizationDcnationalization of voteItaly
Type
Research Article
Information
Italian Political Science Review / Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 21 - 43
Copyright
© Società Italiana di Scienza Politica 2016 

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