http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6686-5969
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Abstract
The paper investigates party-union relationships in Italy (1946–2014) by hand-coding parties’ parliamentary speeches and trade unions’ congress motions. In line with the cartel party thesis, a time series analysis shows that the ideological closeness between the left-wing Italian General Confederation of Labour and left-wing parties deteriorated when the Italian Socialist Party (1980) and the heirs of the Italian Communist Party (1998) converged toward the centre of the ideological spectrum. Conversely, the closeness between the Catholic-inspired Italian Confederation of Workers’ Unions and the heirs of Christian Democracy increased after 1994, when the former party’s leftist factions became the major part of the Italian Popular Party.
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Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the general conference of the Italian Political Science Association in Milan. We are grateful to the discussant and to the participants of our panel for their suggestions. We also thank the editors of South European Society and Politics and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Finally, we thank Liborio Mattina, Marcello Natili, and Furio Stamati for their detailed suggestions.
Notes
1. We ignored the smaller Italian Union of Workers (Unione Italiana del Lavoro – UIL), which was created in 1950 by union members belonging to small centre-left parties (such as the Italian Republican Party and the Italian Socialist Democratic Party), because it represents only approximately 10 per cent of unionised workers.
2. Small parties, parties not linked to the two main trade unions, or new parties (which cannot be considered splinter groups of the historic ones) have not been considered in the analysis.
3. The categories used to create the economic dimension are described in the online appendix.
4. Article 18 of the Statute of Workers’ Rights, which dated from 1970, required employers with 15 or more workers to reinstate – not just compensate – permanent workers whose dismissal was ruled unjust by the courts. Renzi’s labour market reform softened its application: automatic reinstatement became limited to null and discriminatory dismissals. Employees dismissed for other reasons, such as restructuring, will be compensated only if the dismissal is later found to have been illegal. Illegal disciplinary dismissals are subject to reinstatement only under extraordinary circumstances (for details, see Sacchi Citation2015).