PD 2007/2009 : analysis of the "genetic phase" of a party : (with some theoretical considerations on party change)

Between 2007 and 2009, the (italian) Democratic Party has tried twice the direct election of national secretary and the national party delegates through an election extended to his voters. The evolution of "genetic phase” (Panebianco, 1982) of that party is a good case study of party change, as regards the recruitment mechanisms into active political framework, the models of participation, the characteristics of membership, the political culture and so on. The bumpy ride that has marked the origins of PD, characterized by low degree of institutionalization, low degree of organisational interdipendence, limited autonomy from the environment, has provided a "genetic phase" totally ineffective, which inhibited the leadership (too many leaders for too short a period of two years) from the construction of the shared values that they should have during the constitutional phase, preventing the process of institutionalization to produce a complete incorporation of values and goals as developed at the time of birth. Similar difficulties were observed in the "genetic phase" of the Communist Italian Party-PDS (Bellucci, Maraffi, Segatti, 2000). Here we find the demonstration of two things: 1) in the case of parties born for "merger" or "reconversion" from other parties, there is a strong path dependency from organizational history and political militancy experience of people making up the new party, 2) the dynamics on "genetic phase” of a party are not so linear as one might deduce from some standard theoretical hypotheses. Through analysis of data on two surveys conducted in 2007 and 2009 on the audience of delegates of the PD National Assembly, we try to reconstruct the "genetic phase" of that party and to put forward new theoretical hypotheses on dynamics of party change during nascent state.