Social change and political transformation
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Eastern Bloc socialist regimes are the historical events that marked the premature end of The Short Twentieth Century (Hobsbawm 1994). They sounded the death knell for the traditional political parties with strong ideological foundations. But the deeper causes of these changes reside elsewhere. Indeed, it is not possible to separate the analysis of the political transformations that took place at the turn of the 21st century from the study of contemporary processes of change in both the economic and socio-cultural spheres.
This chapter will examine these changes and their reciprocal conditioning effects to illustrate the principal metamorphoses of industrial society and, along with them, the evolving functional mechanisms of the political sphere and the constitutive process leading most recently to the formation of ânew partiesâ.
We begin with an analysis of changes in the economic realm. Regarding the 1800s, it is well known that Marx and Engels (1848), in the Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, describe the development of modern industrial society in the 19th century as the history of class struggle between oppressors and oppressed. Unlike other classical authors who addressed the same theme (Durkheim 1893; Weber 1922), the dichotomous representation of political conflict between two opposing classes constitutes the foundation of Marxian analysis.1 Despite its undeniable complexity, its underlying thesis is easily synthesized. As holders of opposing material interests, the social classes, understood as homogenous groups of individuals occupying the same place in the capitalist process of production, become protagonists on the international political scene by way of a progressive development of collective consciousness aimed at the organization of the conflict and the conquest of power.2 In the Marxian reading of modern society the classes conceived as being in competition with each other are, in the last analysis, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In this conceptualization, the centrality attributed to the idea of social class is indisputable. In the functional model of capitalist economy described with exceptional rigor by Marx in Das Kapital (1867â1883), class relations are conceived and incorporated in the relations of production, and more precisely in structures of property and control characteristic of that same form of social relations (Crompton 1993).
Marxian theory paints a perfectly representative picture of the processes of change transforming modern society. Nevertheless, in the course of its history, the market economy modeled on industrial production has shown a significant transformative capacity, which in the short term allows it to effect profound change in prevailing power relationships. As early as the closing years of the 1950s, debate had already begun concerning the crisis of social classes. Ralf Dahrendorf (1959), in his book Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society, asks what appears to be a rhetorical question: âdo we still have a class society?â And again, âare there still classes?â Dahrendorfâs reflections highlight the innovative potential of a capitalist society. In his view, although founded on solid and creditable grounds, class theory is no longer sufficient by itself to explain the complexity of the functional mechanisms of contemporary society.
The discussion about the overcoming of a class-divided society (this discussion is distinct from the debate over inequality, which in the early years of the 21st century became more heated in Europe than it was during the âGlorious Thirtiesâ)3 became more intense in subsequent decades. One of the most telling testimonies in this regard came from the British sociology of Lee and Turner (1996), which preceded the Blairian reflections on the Third Way (Giddens 1998). Lee and Turner defined class theory, typical of modern society, as a âweakâ theory, incapable of providing a causal explanation of the historical changes in contemporary society.
This line of thinking intersects with the reflections put forward by authors engaged in the study of globalization. According to Ulrich Beck (2002), in a complex and globalized economy, the concept of social class becomes a âzombie categoryâ, largely inadequate for the task of describing structures of inequality and contemporary political practices. For this reason, a full understanding of the mechanisms of social complexity is conditioned on an analysis of the ties linking the globalization process to the restructuring of the capitalist system of production implemented by businesses and large mass organizations through strategies of decentralizing, delocalizing and outsourcing of production (Castells 1996).4 In this regard, one of the most important contributions to the critical interpretation of modernity and the advent of âpostmodernityâ is that of Harvey (1989). In the view of the American philosopher, and the theme of much of the discussion in response to his work, the political and cultural transformation that has occurred in western countries is the consequence of the transition imposed by post-Fordism following the rise of a renewed capitalist model capable of theorizing and imposing the dominance of economics over politics (Harvey 2005; Cahill and Konings 2017; Cahill 2018).
This transition has led to a restructuring of the institutional relationship between government and the market, unbalanced in favor of the market in the name of competition and the promotion of individual, private desires over collective and public objectives (Brown 2015). These are the same principles that have animated and contributed to the founding of the neoliberal capitalist model. All of this has led to the search for a new political rationality which promotes the logic of competition and rivalry as the universal behavioral norm, swallowing up every ambit of the human sphere and producing new dynamics of subjugation that threaten to erode the premises and foundations of democratic political systems (Dardot and Laval 2010). In this perspective, at the turn of the 21st century, neoliberal capitalism became the dominant model for the international economic system, showing itself to be much stronger than its most important critics could have imagined. The power of post-Fordist capitalism, and particularly the force of the neoliberal capitalist system, is rooted in its capacity to reproduce the conditions of its own survival regardless of the contingent difficulties created by its political adversaries and by transformations in the outside world (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999). What has been taking shape is a form of âpostcapitalismâ capable of self-preservation despite frequent and recurring cyclical crises and the effects produced in terms of social inequality (Mason 2015).
These changes, attributed to the modalities of transformation in the economic sphere, have also produced important outcomes in the sphere of political relationships, leading to a direct â not static but ongoing â correspondence in modern society between modes of industrial production and forms of political organization. In his attempt to prove that correlation and dependence, Marco Revelli (2013) asserts that all the â20th century organizational machinesâ which operated in industrial society shared the same characteristics (whether they were factories, armies, political parties, churches, or large bureaucracies) showing an âintrinsic tendency toward giganticismâ and the incorporation of the masses into large organizational systems (Marinelli 2017). This model, also adopted by highly ideological mass political parties with a hierarchical internal organization, structured around a rigid pyramidal nucleus with a large and militant base (Duverger 1951), entered into crisis upon modification of the configuration of economic relationships that had structured traditional forms of political participation. In other words, with the onset of the transformation of the capitalist model of economic production, with the abandonment of the Fordist industrial system and the emergence of neoliberal capitalism, the social configuration that up to that moment had contributed to the structuring of the forms of political organization interpreted by the bureaucratic mass parties began to break down. In this context, there began to arise models of âlightâ political parties, more functional to the representation of newly organized interests centered on the pursuit of post-materialist needs (Inglehart 1977, 1996) with a low ideological content and a less structured internal organization. In the face of renewed external conditions, the electoral marketplace, too, has taken on fluctuating and unstructured characteristics with citizen-electors who demonstrate increasingly unpredictable and incoherent behavior in the political space of contemporary democracies (Mair 2013; Morlino and Raniolo 2017). All of this has led to profound changes which have combined to transform the institutional framework that had been taking shape in Europe in the second half of the 20th century, giving rise to constantly changing political organizations (Scarrow et al. 2017).
But thatâs not all. Overlapping with changes in the economic sphere, an equally significant role in modifying political relationships has been played by social and cultural transformations produced by the process of âindividualizationâ characteristic of the history of European democracies (Macpherson 1962; Blumenberg 1960, 1982; Taylor 1989, 1991; Laurent 1993). The term âindividualizationâ refers to an historical process of emancipation of the individual from forms of belonging proper to traditional societies, such as the family, lineage, social status, religion and community. This emancipatory process tends to increase the level of self-consciousness, stimulating the push for self-determination and self-realization and allowing the individual to experience a greater degree of freedom than in the past (Habermas 1981a, 1981b). In premodern societies, the value and position of individuals depended substantially on the value and position of the group to which they belonged. Members of the same group shared the same values, lifestyle, economic condition and cultural position. Thus, social status was acquired at birth, and the chances of social mobility were few or none at all. Nevertheless, despite the cost measured in terms of individual liberty, this framework allowed for the formation of stable and enduring organizational models.
In the modern era, although in very different conditions compared to the past, the division of society into classes continued to ensure to individuals a formalized modality of collective belonging. It is the breakdown of social classes (recalled above) that has suddenly accelerated the move toward models of increased human self-realization. This expression is meant to indicate the principle according to which the individual, increasingly independent from his/her own personal social ties, finds himself in the condition of being able to choose his/her own destiny, becoming solely responsible for his actions, despite the continued presence of real limits on individual choice and profound inequalities among members of the same political community (Germani 1991; Laurent 1994; Dumond 1983). The progressive growth of individual liberty has been matched by significant decomposition of the social fabric and safety nets constructed in the past (Bauman 1999, 2000). Outstanding, in this regard, is a robust process of disaggregation that contributes to the unraveling of interpersonal ties and produces individuals who are increasingly isolated from the tight fabric of social relationships that still persisted in modern society. In line with this critical reading of the social transformation process, Robert Castel (1995) has introduced the concept of dĂ©saffiliation, referring to the effects of progressive disaggregation in contemporary society and, along with them, the risk of breaking preexisting ties among the population of a given political community. According to Castel, the renewed organization of social relationships typical of the post-industrial era runs the risk of creating a partial or total lack of social cohesion and, as a consequence, the elimination of a sense of the individualâs sense of identification with and belonging to a common social unit.
The result of the combined effects of the transformation of the capitalist economic model and progressive process of social individualization has been a growing detachment of individuals from their respective groups of belonging, sparking a profound transformation of the mechanisms of democratic regulation (Elliott and Lemert 2006; Elliott 2016). The relationship between individuals (undergoing an intense process of individualization) and politics (dissociated from the class relations typical of the modern era) has brought about a further redefinition of the modalities of representation, thus provoking the breakdown of traditional political parties and the dissolution of the formerly close connection between the pursuit of objectives of a general interest and rigidly structured models of political organization. This is the context of the rise of the phenomenon of personalization, which, in the contemporary era, is causing a profound transformation of the principle of representation at the base of all western democracies. This process, in concomitance with the process of progressive social individualization, enlarges the importance, the power and the functions of the leader in the political sphere, diminishing the weight of groups, movements and parties in the processes of identification, socialization and construction of collectively important political phenomena (McAllister 2007; Poguntke and Webb 2005; Karvonen 2010; Garzia 2014; Raniolo et al. 2015; Balmas and Sheafer 2016).
What we have described so far has led to a weakening of the mediation mechanisms of traditional politics and, therefore, the redefinition of the social bases of democracy and the institutional dynamics of the distribution of power. The consequence is a deterioration of some of the roles classically associated with political parties, such as the functions of aggregation and articulation of interests and demands emerging from the electorate (de Nardis 2019; Anselmi and de Nardis 2018). In this context, political parties have experienced a progressive reduction of the legitimacy that they enjoyed in the past, both in the input phase of the political process, that is, in their relationship to civil society, and in the output phase, in relation to their capacity to govern in terms of policies (Caramani 2017). What we have, then, is an acceleration of the search for and emergence of new models and instruments of participation, which, far from being generated by the formalized cleavages in the scheme proposed by Lipset and Rokkan (1967)5 appear to be structured around new fractures and renewed social conflicts. In the following section we will examine these considerations to arrive at a better understanding of the reasons for the decline of traditional forms of political organization and the rise of the European ânew partiesâ.
Old and new European cleavages
Economic, social and cultural changes in the contemporary era have contributed to the structuring of a more highly complex political space compared to the past (Kitschelt 1994; Kriesi 1998). There is, therefore, a need for further reflection in order to understand the nature of the ongoing process of change and the characteristics of the social fractures that are bringing about the reallocation of conflict and with it the birth of new forms of political organization. The origins of these changes lie in the emergence of new needs and the rise of renewed economic and socio-cultural models at the turn of the 21st century, with important effects in the political sphere.
We begin our reflections on these changes starting from the genetic approach of Lipset and Rokkan (1967).6 Their study of the development of political parties starts with the long-term systemic effects connected with the phenomenon of the so-called freezing proposition. The belief is that the parties present on the European political scene through the second half of the 20th century reflected, with few exceptions, the structure of the social fractures of the 1920s so that the parties active in that period continued to maintain over the mid to long term their exclusive ties with a specific segment of the population. These ties enabled them to make constant appeals to the ideological or religious divisions and/or to specific ethnic characteristics capable of producing significant consequences even many years after their initial appearance (Norris 2004). According to this interpretation, traditional social cleavages constitute the precondition for the formulation of true and proper âlong-term coalitionsâ founded on the alliance between certain sectors of the population and the political organizations that appoint themselves to represent their interests (Viviani 2016). In line with this thesis, and in relation to the continuous and strikingly fast transformations occurring over the course of contemporary history, several studies subsequent to the work of Lipset and Rokkan (Bartolini 2000, 2005; Deegan-Krause 2007) continue to see a relationship between the appearance of other social fractures and more recent processes of political construction, thus highlighting the relationship between the formation of ânew cleavagesâ and the foundation of what can properly be called ânew partiesâ. In particular, the international literature refers to the new social fractures in an effort to explain the development process of three different types of political parties, each with its own ethos: neo-fascist, green, and populist.7
The first category of parties grows out of the political climate generated in Europe between the two world wars, at a time when frequent democratic crises contributed to the establishment of authoritarian and totalitarian political regimes. In line with what had happened in the past, the effects produced by the tradition/innovation dichotomy would seem to have persisted even into the second post-war period, giving rise to political organizations of neo-fascist derivation faithful to the old reactionary principles and originating from the explosion of problems connected to the development of industrial society, which had given rise to historical fascism in the early years of the 20th century (Ignazi 1994).
The second category of parties, on the other hand, is the product of the post-industrial evolution occurring in Europe between the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s in defense of the environment and in favor of âsustainable developmentâ. In this case, the political interpreters able to represent this form of formalized interests were the green parties, capable of giving voice to needs and values of a prevalently âpost-materialisticâ nature as opposed to the âmaterialisticâ needs and values rooted in economic conflict. It is in this regard that Dalton (1988) distinguishes Old Politics, centered on the defense of interests and values tied to traditional social fractures, from New Politics, arising out of post-materialist concerns focused on the rights of minorities, the improvement of nonconventional lifestyles, the protection of the environment and grassroots participation.
Last, the third category of parties evoked by this system of classification is traceable to carriers of contrasting visions of identity vis-Ă -vis the standardizing effects of neoliberal capitalist economic and production models and the globalized economy. These parties have come to the defense of the linguistic and cultura...
