ABSTRACT: The historical interpretation of the Radical Party based on the reconstruction of the various phases of Radical developments from 1955 to 1977.

Index:

I From The Old To The New Radicals

II The Solitude Of A Minority

III The Campaign For Divorce

IV A Party In Search Of Its Self: From The Congress Of Refoun-

dation (1967) To The Congress Of The Relaunching (1972)

V Opposing The Regime With Civil Rights

VI For A Democratic Revolution

VII In The Country And In Parliament

("THE NEW RADICALS", The History and Sociology of a Political

Movement, Arnoldo Mondadori, Publishers, October 1977)

1. POLITICAL PARTY, PRESSURE GROUP, MOVEMENT: THE PR AS AN ATYPICAL PHENOMENON

The June 20, 1976 elections resolved at least one doubt that had bothered commentators, politicians and even many Radical Party sympathisers for a long time and that had been a point of debate: whether the PR was to be considered a true political party or rather a simple pressure group, even if of a rather special order and different from others of the kind operating in Italy. The PR's candidacy in the election campaign and the winning of four seats in the Chamber of Deputies made this question, de facto, obsolete. It was evident to all that the PR was a true party if, by this term, one means to indicate a voluntary association that competes with others on the basis of a specific program and that asks the political community for a consensus on this program. (1) This question had been raised very often as an intentional device for contesting the PR's participation as competitors on the political scene: (<< Let the Radicals do their job of collecting civil rights demands; we will take care of the necessar

y political mediation >>). But this did not mean that the question was without some foundation since the PR was a political party sui generis that for a long time had operated (and still today in great part operates) with methods befitting a pressure group.

The specific character of the PR, a group hard to fit into any category of political party (or pressure group), (2) can be traced on at least three distinct levels: a) its internal organisation; b) its methods of political battle; c) its relations with "civil" and "political" society. (3)

In general, the commonly accepted distinctions between pressure group and political party are apparently very clear: the first is a group that has been formed with the intention of influencing the power-holders (or their opposition), whereas the second is an association that exists for the purpose of acquiring direct power itself. But at closer glance this distinction is not very satisfactory: first of all, because the distinction between power and influence are in themselves not so precise. The thesis appears to be weak which distinguishes power from influence because the former has sanctions at its disposal - which the latter does not - to use against those who do not obey. This criterion, in fact, does not suffice to distinguish the two types of social action and those who employ them. A pressure group too, may often be able to apply sanctions. For example, an association of entrepreneurs, which is certainly a pressure group, has many weapons at its disposal to use against a government recalcitrant t

o its requests. In the second place, the fight for power in the first person, according "to the rules of the game" that are consolidated in a particular political system (for example, the elections of a democratic-representational regime), is not a helpful criterion for distinguishing between who is competing for the exercise of power and who tends merely to exercise influence. To give only one example taken from recent European political history, if one took candidacy in the elections as the only criterion, it would be difficult to classify as "pressure groups" (or, contrarily, as "political parties") the political dissent movements that arose in 1968.

In reality, the distinction between party and pressure group can be based neither on the difference between power and influence nor on the will or lack of will to exercise power directly. What really seems to distinguish a party from a pressure group would appear to be whether its political goals are global or, on the contrary, particular. Whereas the pressure group represents particular interests and works for provisions favourable to them, the party, even when it represents limited social interests, deliberately works or tries to work (when it is in power) for the organisation and functioning of the entire society. (4) Thus one must look to the political goals of each association and it is not always easy or possible to find an unequivocal answer. The case of the PR is typical from this point of view: if one considers the "fight for civil rights" to be a sectorial issue (as the Italian left did for long), important for the purpose of democratising society, but insufficient in itself for a radical reor

ganisation of society, then the PR must be considered a pressure group (even today when it sits in Parliament) that is seeking through political initiatives to impose on the rest of the Italian left its specific civil battles (as it did successfully on divorce at the time). If on the other hand, as the Radicals themselves see it, the fight for civil rights is understood as an instrument, a lever, to set off a general transformation of social relations on the basis of a specific social model ("libertarian socialism"), then the PR must be considered a political party (and its extreme differences from other parties - as we shall see - are not enough to exclude it from this category).

By now it is widely held that parties cannot be studied and classified on the basis of a single criterion, but only of global criteria - the roles they play in the political system, their ideology, their internal organisation, the class or group interests they represent etc., but that these and other criteria must still all be combined. The investigation into the nature of the parties, however, must be kept distinct in theory from that of their role within a political system. (5) With regard to the first aspect, one must consider two specific levels: the type of internal organisation (whether by election, cadres, or leading personalities, etc.) and its relations with the external social ambience (social foundations and characteristics of political representation). As for the second aspect, two other levels must be analysed: the nature of the political project and the method for political action. Clearly, each of these four dimensions is connected to all the others. The inner organisation depends upon

and also influences the party's social foundations. Political project and method of action are strictly interconnected, and each of them acts upon the organisation and the foundations.

The preceding breakdown has been made for purely analytic purposes, to allow us to consider the party in a systematic and orderly way. It is not meant to indicate four empirically separable aspects of parties which could only be done by using a theoretical artifice.

In the first part of these notes we will consider the characteristics of the PR above all from the standpoint of its organisation and social foundations. In the second part, the focus will be on the interconnection between method of action, political project and the more general socio-political context which acted upon the Radical Party and upon which it acted.

2. NORMS, STRUCTURES, CHARISMA: THE CONTRADICTIONS

On the strictly genetic level, the Radical Party is an "internal creation", born, that is, from within the political society, as Maurice Duverger put it. (6) The Radical Party was born and developed from the will of members of the political society (the dissenting wing of the Liberal Party, the university students of the UNURI) without the intervention of external social forces. It was a political class of various cultural extractions to father it, and in the entire first phase of its existence it was the characteristic expression of a small minority of "enlightened" intellectuals. At the beginning of the '60s, when the "Radical left" inherited the whole party, the PR underwent its most important change and became, at least partly, a movement of political dissent. (7) But the Italian society of that period was not yet ready to accept a "different" kind of politics, rigidly controlled by the party system as it was, and composed of compact subcultural segments all encased in their own non-communicating ca

psules. For this to happen profound changes were needed in civil society and its relations with the political system. This occurred at the end of the '60s with the explosion of the first collective movements. The renaissance of civil society, in an autonomous form and partially detached from the mediation of the traditional political forces, the growth of substantial areas of social autonomy, will have decisive effects upon the Radical Party (even if only measurable after a long time) and the possible success of its political appeal. The process of society becoming independent are at the roots of the PR's growing capacity to act as a political movement that can directly transmit emerging social demands to the political system without mediation - distinguishing itself in this, and in this above all, from other leftist groups. We will return later to this, the most important aspect of all.

Let us for now consider their internal organisation. A classic distinction among political parties is that between the committee-based party and the apparatus-based one. (9) The latter made its first appearance in Europe during the last century in a period of restricted suffrage and with the aim of representing the interests of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy in Parliament. It was made up of a combination of restricted committees of local notables, all of whom gathered round their own candidate, and scattered throughout the national territory. There was neither party discipline nor a centralised structure. Each committee directly financed their own campaign to elect their candidate. The central organs limited themselves to co-ordinating the committees' activities without imparting directives. There were no moments of collective confirmation of the political line. After the introduction of universal suffrage this kind of party was disarmed all over Europe, but it remained in some cases as the organis

ed expression of the upper classes interests. In the Twentieth Century, however, these classes generally chose to imitate the organised parties of the workers movement.

The Socialists, and after them the Communists, had and have a completely different structure from the committee-based parties. They were apparatus-based parties, centralised, with a more or less rigid party discipline and coherent ideology. The backbone of the apparatus-based party was a goodly number of political professionals, functionaries, members of the central organs, members of Parliament, all with regular pay. Inasmuch as this kind of party was to organise and represent the subservient classes of society and could not count on contributions from well-to-do members and sympathisers, it introduced financing by the regular and obligatory payment of membership dues. The money that came in contributed to financing all the party's principle activities, from its press organs to the salaries of the functionaries, to its multifarious other activities. There were a lot of these last because, unlike the party of notables, the apparatus party did not work only during election times (it was not a simple "ele

ction machine") but pursued a continuous and intense program of propaganda and indoctrination. Besides the election campaigns, it's principle aim was in the education and recruitment of the masses. The vertical connections (between the top levels and the peripheral ones) was rigid and strong. The peripheral elements had to follow faithfully the directives of the top levels (but this was more markedly the case among the Communists than the Socialists). The apparatus party was the prototype of the modern "mobilisation party". Its appearance on the scene forced its political adversaries, the right-wing parties, to reorganise. Thus these latter developed a central bureaucracy, introducing stricter ties between top levels and periphery and trying to impose party discipline. But, of course, their different political aims and social bases obstructed any true internal homogeneousness that could compare to the leftist parties and so these attempts failed in almost all cases.

Parties of notables and of apparatuses represent the principle types, but certainly do not exhaust the infinite range of organisational possibilities manifested by modern political parties. The social and political changes in Western political systems have given rise to considerable structural changes in the larger number of parties. Today it is the mixed solutions that generally prevail: some apparatus parties have gone back to older forms of organisation (by patronage or notables); others have changed in the direction of "election machines" with regard to their political activity while becoming "grab-bag parties" in their function as social representatives; still others have maintained many features of their origins unaltered even while showing symptoms of progressive electoralisation.

In original apparatus parties one finds a considerable amount of homogeneousness between political projects and organisation. Centralisation, monolithic structure, and rigid internal discipline were all features corresponding perfectly to the party's political aims: the destruction of capitalism and the reorganisation of society through the nationalisation of production and, in the case of the Leninist party, the dictatorship of the proletariat. This type of party did not lend itself, organisationally, to a different political project, to a proposal of a "self-governing" socialism that would substitute decentralisation for centralisation, socialisation for nationalisation, the expansion of areas of freedom for bureaucratic despotism. In large measure, the lack of credibility of many Socialist parties, including the Italian one, (12) derives from the fact that once they had rejected the idea of a centralised, bureaucratic Socialism, they were not capable of adapting their internal structures to a differe

nt political proposal. (13)

If an analysis of the Radical Party that is anything other than superficial is to be accommodated in this general framework, then another factor is needed: one must distinguish the norms that regulate the life of an organisation from its effective behaviour, which is always at a certain distance, bigger or smaller, from the former. On the level of norms, of its "formal constitution" (the Party Statute that went into effect in 1967), there hardly can be any doubts that the Radical Party is one of the few "Socialist" formations that tried hard to reach the objective cited above (adaptation of the organisation to the political project). On the level of its normative structure, the PR is the case of a modernising party based on the maximum degree of organisational decentralisation consistent with a unified political formation. Obviously it is just as different in this from the large parties of the historical left as it is from the small parties of the "new left" which in substance have taken the former as t

heir model. (One should think of such groups as the PDUP for the Communists or of Avanguardia Operaia [Democratic Party of Proletarian Unity and Workers' Vanguard, ed.]). The generally valid equation apparatus party = modernising party does not hold for the Radical Party. The PR is lacking in a bureaucracy and hence also in a nucleus of professional functionaries that is characteristic of Leninist-style groups (like the two cited above). The rejection of professionalism is in this case - as stated in its Statute - (14) a deliberate political choice deriving from the general ideological options of the party.

The vertical connections are weak as a result of the decentralised structure. The local groups organise themselves independently in base-units (the associations) and in organisations with wider connections (the regional parties). The maximum of political independence compatible with maintaining unity is expressly guaranteed by the Statute. (15) The National Congress determines the political objectives and elects the central organs, but each local association has the right to develop independently its own political actions without being bound to any central directives. In actuality this means that the interests of the activists of the single associations are much more important for the purpose of local political action than any directives of the Congress or the Secretariat. Specific political objectives (anti-clericalism, anti-militarism, defense of minorities, etc.) and the forms and methods of action thus remain at the discretion of the single associations and can project different images of the PR in

different regions. The only exceptions, obviously, are the referendum campaigns and, in general, the initiatives that require a common, co-ordinated effort of the entire party.

The Congress is open to all members who have the right to vote (even if in this case it is an established practice rather than a statutory disposition). This is one of the aspects that demonstrates better than others the open structure of the PR. The mechanisms by which the Congressional decisions are made are founded on the principle of direct democracy and rejection of delegated authority. Once more it must be affirmed that this is not a choice necessarily imposed on the party (by its small size, the weak organisation, etc.) which is proved by the fact that other small organisations - like the PDUP, AO, LC (Lotta Continua, ed.), for example - acting from other political presuppositions have rigorously maintained the principle of delegated authority and of the "closed" structure, even in their congresses.

Those few organisational features mentioned are enough to testify to the atypical nature of the PR: it mobilises the masses on specific political objectives, but it lacks a bureaucratic apparatus; it maintains an "open" structure where tools of direct representation mix with the more traditional mechanisms of political delegation (a mixture, as we shall see, that is consonant with its type of political action) and a weak vertical hierarchy as a consequence of its federative and decentralised structure.

All the organisational features of the PR indicate the attempt to build a vehicle consonant with its political goal of libertarian Socialism founded on the rejection of bureaucratic professionalism and centralisation (the latter being the probable if not inevitable consequence of the former) and on the rejection of delegated authority wherever this is feasible. From the normative structure it is thus a new political experiment inasmuch as decentralised and federative structures up to now have been primarily features of parties of notables directed towards the defense of the status quo and only rarely attempted by innovative and modernising parties.

But of course there is always a gap between "formal constitution" and "material constitution", between the norms and the structures of effective power. The real structures of a party, in fact, depend not only upon the norms but upon the forms of the social and political ambience in which a party operates. It should be noted that the distance or gap between the norms and the real structures is not something fixed and immutable. It is a variable and, given certain conditions, can be reduced to the point where, if there is not a total coinciding, there is at least a remarkable closeness between the behaviour foreseen by the norms and the actual behaviour. This is an important observation, because in the case of the PR, as in many other cases, it is easy to discover distortions between the normative structure and the actual distribution of the power of decision .

Even after 1967 (when the Bologna Congress approved the Statute currently in force), and until very recently, the PR's presence was very small and unequally distributed throughout the country. The imbalance of geographical distribution, its relatively massive presence in the capital and the organisational weakness of its other associations (with the exception of Milan after 1972 and a few other regional seats), were factors that had a negative effect on the functioning of the entire organisation. This was the reason for certain tendencies which were usually blamed on the "Roman" leaders, but more probably ought to have been attributed to the weakness of the party in other regions, to the centralised direction of the campaigns of national interest. This was the cause for "inconsistencies" in their internal communications, and finally, it was the cause of the "charismatic" or supposedly charismatic quality of the Radicals' leadership.

From the beginning of the '60s - when the first growth of groups in the provinces began to be consolidated - and before the more recent organisational growth that today seems to have weakened if not eliminated the imbalance between the party's top levels and the regional groups (but there is still a great deal to be done), the "material constitution" of the PR was such that, due to organisational weakness, the maximum power of decision was concentrated at the "centre" (the original group of leaders) even if this objective tendency was partially obviated by the basic mechanisms foreseen in the '67 Statute for the defense of democratic procedures.

It is well known that in large, complex organisations the tendency towards bureaucratisation and the meagre participation of the grass roots generally provoke almost unarrestable pressures towards the constitution of top-level oligarchies that annul internal democracy. (16)

In a small organisation lacking in bureaucratic compartments, internal democracy can still have a difficult life, but for opposite reasons. In many cases, however, it is a question of an "optical illusion": the group of leaders does in effect have a disproportional amount of power to decide (as in large organisations), but only because the periphery is too weak and disorganised. There seem to be certain "thresholds" of organisation, above and below which internal democracy cannot function totally. A weak organisation necessarily corresponds to a strong centre (because internal communications are made difficult by the disorganised and politically fragile regional groups, etc.).

When in a subsequent phase the state of the party organisation improves, the possibility of internal debate increases as does the participation of the grass roots in the decision-making process. Beyond a certain threshold every increase in the growth of the organisation is transformed into bureaucracy, internal democracy is again suffocated and oligarchic tendencies get the upper hand. All the available data indicates that the PR has recently entered into a growth phase that, if the hypothesis made here is correct, should substantially strengthen its internal democracy. This means that the new condition of the party's organisation should allow for its internal practices to conform more to the "statutory norms". It also means that a new "modus vivendi" ought to be established between the top levels and the grass roots with probable, if not inevitable, internal tensions and conflicts arising from the transition.

The smaller the organisational strength of a party, the more its chances of success depend on the quality of its leadership. "Charisma", as is well known, is a term that is by now commonly used, and generally used wrongly to denote any successful leader who has the gift of charm. But sociological literature from Weber onwards uses it rather to indicate a psychological relationship based on the followers' attributing "heroic qualities" to the leader. (17)

But besides the fact that charisma is a quality difficult to establish empirically, (18) the fact remains that one should in no case overestimate the value of the conversion-mobilisation capacity of the supposedly charismatic leader. The acute observation has been made that <<... unless one believes in the miracle of an absolute origin (as Weber's theory of charisma would lead to do), one must submit that the prophet who succeeds is the one who formulates a message for the use of the groups or the classes he is addressing that they are disposed to hear and understand because of the objective conditions which determine their material and symbolic interests. In other words, one must invert the apparent relations between the prophet and his audience. The religious or political prophet always preaches to the converted and follows his disciples at least as much as they follow him, since the only ones to listen to him are those who, because of everything they are, have given him a mandate to teach them the le

sson >>. (19)

The relationship of leader-follower, even when it appears to indicate the presence of charisma in Weber's sense, is much more plausibly of the "transactional" type. The adherence to the leader has a rational rather than an emotional basis (not in the sense that emotion is entirely lacking, but in the sense that only very rarely does it represent the principle basis of leadership). This means that: << From a transactional perspective, those who follow the leader are consciously drawing up the balance of costs and compensations among a certain number of perceived options, and consequently they adhere to the initiatives of the leader which offer the biggest advantages >>. (20) Naturally, in a small party which has no control over material resources, following the leader will be connected exclusively to the satisfying of favours and the distribution of symbolic compensations.

Nevertheless, any political group requires the involvement of followers both in order to defend its identity and in order to act on the external environment. And so, if the network of internal organisation is lacking or insufficient, it is more probable that charismatic features will be found among the leaders to fill the "organisational vacuum" and to hold the group together. In any case, the charismatic features will be more visible than they are in large bureaucratic organisations. (21)

3. THE AGGREGATION OF INTERESTS, SOCIAL CONTROL AND SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS

Other than the selection of its leaders, the environmental constraints and the character of its organisation, what determines the position of a party within the political system is the specific relationship it has with external society. Let us return for a moment to the previous distinction made between party and pressure group. The former is distinguished from the latter, we have said, by the different quality of its political demands, the one being "general" and the other "particular". This means that in the majority of cases the party "aggregates" the "particular" demands of the different social groups, thus mediating between various and sometimes divergent demands and arranging them in a general political program. That this is the principle function of parties is proved, contrarily, by the disintegrating effects produced in the political system when the parties lose their ability to aggregate the demands and become the spokesmen of particular or sectorial interests. (22) To say that the party aggre

gates the political demands means that it is a mediator between civil society and the decision-making apparatuses of the State. The party accepts many demands, rejects others, facilitates or blocks the access of other demands to the political channels. Political society (the totality of parties and interest groups), which was once the privileged seat of the fight for power and of negotiations between the representatives of different social demands, acts as a filtering and selecting partition between the civil society and the State.

The main difference between the PR and other parties seems to be this: the PR transforms the specific demands of the social sectors for which it speaks into direct political action without a preliminary process of aggregation and mediation.

Let us clarify this aspect better. Every political party has a multitude of ties and channels that connect it to society. The Communist Party, for example, is certainly the principle representative in Italian society of the industrial workers, but it also expresses the aspirations and interests of substantial middle-class fringes and is connected by its collateral organisations to the young voters, women, etc. These various fringes and sectors make specific political demands, often (and always more often as the party's social base broadens) in conflict with each other, and sometimes in conflict with the strategies chosen by the party leaders. The work of the party thus in large part takes the form of mediating between the different demands and channelling them towards unified political objectives. (23) At its top levels, therefore, negotiations (compromises) take place between political lines that often differ. From this point of view the abortion issue is exemplary.

The strategy of the historical compromise (collaboration between the Communists and the Christian Democrats, ed.) imposes in itself the avoidance of conflict with the DC and the Church. On the other hand, the party is subjected to pressures from Communist women as well as from progressive public opinion that want the liberalisation of abortion. This is the reason for constant attempts at compromises with the Vatican and the DC on the one hand, and the pro-abortion sectors of the party on the other. This results in oscillating between more advanced and more backward positions, oscillations that do not reflect the uncertainties or subjective inadequacies of the party leaders but rather are produced by structural contradictions.

In the same key we can also read the attitudes vacillating between rejection (the accusation of "fascism" made against the students' movement) and attempts at partial acceptance of the demands of the "intense minorities" and their channelling into the mainstream of Communist political strategy: that is, the particular relationship of "institutional mediation" that the PCI maintains with social avant-garde. (24) From all that has been said, we deduce that the political party in contemporary society, even when in the opposition, is always a structure for representation and at the same time a structure for social control. Expressions such as "aggregation of interests" or "institutional mediation" are indicators of this constant ambivalence in the relationship between party and civil society.

The Radical Party seems to be different in this very point: that it assumes the representation of the interests (needs) of social sectors but it does not exercise any control over them. It does not aggregated demands but accepts them and proposes them directly to political society. This appears to be a consequence of the particular relationship that the PR maintains with the collective movements. Its decentralised and federative structure allows for this kind of relationship. Moreover, the institutional bond between party, federated movements and collective movements allows for this. In fact, the PR finds itself at the centre of a complex relationship with civil society that allows it to receive, without bureaucratic mediation, the demands of the collective movements. The movements federated with the PR and the other political groups which refer themselves to this party have a privileged connection - if not all in the same degree - to the collective movements (to the struggles of the soldiers, of women

, of ethnic and sexual minorities, and with all those who are excluded or shunted aside in one way or another). The PR's way of synchronising with these movements derives precisely from its institutional bond with the single federated movements ( Women's Liberation Movement, League of Conscientious Objectors, the homosexual league FUORI, etc.) which in turn are rooted in the various dissenting movements. (25) In part this also explains the ability of the PR's political actions to anticipate issues that will soon become the goals of mass movements: the anti-militarist battle that preceded the more generalised form of protest in the barracks; the abortion fight that was begun before it became the fulcrum of the struggle and the growth of the feminist movement. In politics, certainly, the ability to anticipate problems also requires the gift of intuition and thus the political ability of the leaders which is an intensely "subjective" element. Nevertheless, the principle cause seems more likely to be of a str

uctural, or objective, kind. Significant consequences derive from this particular relationship: the PR maintains the characteristics of an anomalous political party, halfway between a true and proper party and a political protest movement. Of the former it lacks the structures of social control and the unifying compensation (aggregation) of diverse political demands; with the former it shares the tie with civil society without bureaucratic mediation.

This particular relationship is reflected in the characteristic political action of the PR which is constantly in violation of "the rules of the game" and the political competition to which the other parties adhere. By not aggregating diverse demands but by frequently inserting them directly into the political political system thanks to its particular structure, the Radical Party's actions become unpredictable because they are expressed in terms of a logic which is not that of the inter-party relations but of the changing and continually erupting social demands which the collective movements represent with their ups and downs.

In this above all the difference between the PR and the other parties seems to consist: whatever goals they may have (whether conservative or progressive), the parties always aim, by definition, to exercise hegemony over civil society and to have exclusive direction of the sectors that they organise and/or represent. The PR's political project, which results less from the Radicals' declarations than from the characteristics of their organisation, their connections with the social surroundings, and their political actions, is rather that of returning to civil society the expression of its political autonomy and "shooting down" the mediation of political society, at least in part. The principle aim of the PR is the independent expression of the social processes outside of and often against political society as is shown by their choice of the referendum as their preferred political instrument. (26)

In concluding, we will try to evaluate the implications and also several unresolved problems of this project. For now we only observe that it appears to be in any case an answer to the social and political changes underway. But in order to understand this aspect, it is necessary to settle down to a different level of analysis, to have at one's disposal several credible interpretations on the functioning of late-capitalist political systems, and the Italian one in particular.

NOTES

1) Cf. J. La Palombara and M. Weiner (editors), "Political Parties and Political Development", Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1966.

2) The literature on pressure groups is very broad. For a general analysis of the phenomenon see, for example:

D. Fisichella (editor), "Partiti politici e gruppi di pressione", Il Mulino, Bologna, 1972; G. Wootton, "I gruppi di interesse", Il Mulino, Bologna, 1975; G. Passquino, "I gruppi di pressione", in "Dizionario di politica", UTET, Turin, 1976.

3) For a thorough study and a redefinition in terms of the political sociology of the classical concepts of "civil society", "political society" and "State", see: P. Farneti, introduction to P. Farneti (editor) "Il sistema politico italiano", Il Mulino, Bologna, pp.7-60.

4) On the various possibilities of the roles of political opposition in Western systems, cf.: R. Dahl (editor), "Regimes and Oppositions", Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1973; and G.J. Graham, "Consenso e opposizione: una tipologia", in "Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica" I (1871), pp.93-121.

5) M. Duverger, "Party Politics and Pressure Groups", Thomas and Cromwell, Co., New York, 1972, p.5.

6) M. Duverger, "I partiti politici", Comunità, Milan, 1970.

7) On the differences between movements and parties, see

D. Apter, "A Comparative Method for the Study of Politics", in "The American Journal of Sociology", III (1958), pp. 221-237.

On the genesis and the changes experienced by the PR, cf. part I of this volume.

8) The effects of <<'68>> on the PR were only indirect in the sense that for its matrix and its inspiration it has a completely different origin from the other political groups of the "new left" that arose on the crest - but also a bit on the ebb - of the student aand workers mobilisation at the end of the '60s. And yet, those movements created the sturctural and cultural pre-conditions of the Radicals' subsequent politics by profoundly changing the previous relationship between civil society and the political system. On this point I am in agreement with Francesco Ciafaloni's intepretation proposed in << Una sinistra liberale figlia del'68 >>, in << Argomenti Radicali >>, II (1977), pp. 113-116.

9) M. Duverger, "I partiti politici", cit. On the internal organisation of political parties, see also: W.E. Wright (editor), "A Comparative Study of Party Organisation", C.E. Meril Co., Colubus, 1971; D.W. Abbott and E.T. Rogowsky (editors), "Political Parties: Leadership, Organisation, Linkage", Rand McNally, Chicago, 1971; W.J. Crotty, (editor), "Approaches to the Study of Party Organisation", Allyn Bacon, Boston, 1968.

10) The classic case is that of German Social Democracy. The expression "Grab-bag party" and the analysis of this political formation comes from Otto Kircheimer, "Le trasformazioni dei sistemi partitici dell'Europa occidentale, in G. Savini (editor), "Sociologia dei partiti politici", Il Mulino, Bologna, 1977, pp. 177-201.

11) This is the case of Western Communist parties. Cf. D. Blackmer and S. Tarrow (editors), "Il communismo in Italia e in Francia", Etas libri, Milan, 1976.

12) Cf. A. Panebianco, "Analisi di una sconfitta. Il declino del PSI" in A. Parisi and G. Pasquino (editors), "Continuità e mutamento elettorale in Italia", Il Mulino, Bologna, 1977, pp. 145-184.

13) The French Socialist Party, of course, constitutes the most important exception in Europe. See the analysis of the bright and dark sides of Mitterand's party in V. Wright and H. Machin, "The French Socialist Party: Success and the Problems of Success" in

<< The Political Quarterly >>, XLVI (1975), pp.36-52. For an acute attempt to compare the French and Italian left, see

S. Bartolini, "Per un'analisi dei rapporti fra partiti socialisti e communisti in Italia e in Francia", in << Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica >>, VI (1976), pp.439-480.

14) Cf. Art. 1.2 of the Statute.

15) See the articles relating to the local associations.

16) Cf. Roberto Michels' classic analysis, "Sociologia del partito politico", Il Mulino, Bologna, 1967.

17) M. Weber, "Economia e società", Comunità, Milan, 1968, vol.II, from p.238; and in its wake, the interpretation of G. Roth, "I virtuosi e la controcultura", in << Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia >>, XII (1972), pp. 431-452.

18) R. Bendix and G. Roth, "Scholarship and Partisanship: Essays on Max Weber"", University of California Press, Berkeley, 1971, chapters XVIII and IX.

19) P. Bourdieux and J.C. Passeron, "La riproduzione", Guaraldi, Florence, 1975, p.69-70.

20) J.V. Dowton, "L'adesione all leadership nei movimenti di rivolta", in A. Melucci (editor), "Movimenti di rivolta", Etas libri, Milan, 1976, p.90.

21) Naturally the relationship leader-follower can have different values according to whether by folllowers one means party members or "outside" sympathisers, e.g. the voters. The presence and the weight of "charismatic" features can vary in the two cases: whereas it appears probable that membership in the PR has no charismatic basis, it is possible that this is true for at least some sectors of outside sympathsiers as seems to be shown by the strongly "personal" character of the Radical vote which results from the course and distribution of the preferential vote. On this point, cf. the analysis of the vote of June 20, 1976 contained in this volume.

22) A. Pizzorno, "Elementi di uno schemo teorico con riferimento ai partiti politici in Italia", in G. Savini (editor), "Partiti e partecipazione politica in Italia", Giuffrè, Milan, 1972, pp.5-40.

23) Cf. the various analyses contained in D. Blackmer and S. Tarrow, "Il communismo in Italia e in Francia", cit. It must naturally be indicated that the PCI does not limit itself to mediating among various interests but exercises a true hegemony over its electorate and, more generally, on the social groups it organises and represents. Mediation among irreconcilable interests and the ensuing political oscillations of the top levels are thus always a more or less temporary failure of its capacity for hegemony.

24) F. Stame, "Nuova sinistra e sinistra storica", in << Quaderni Piacentini >> 58-59 (1976), pp.53-61.

25) Of course, an interprative model necessarily simplifies and impoverishes a reality that is always much richer, more complex and contradictory. The relationship of the PR, its federated movements or leagues and collective movements has submitted historically to many variations in dependence, above all with regard to two factors: 1) the greater or lesser vitality (and duration) of the collective movements which, in turn, has influenced the varying vitality of the federated movements or corresponding leagues, and 2) the origin of the federated movements, the fact, that is, that the federated movement was born independently of the PR (FUORI) or else was created by the party purposely to join up with the corresponding collective movements (MLD [Women's Liberation Movement, ed.] and perhaps today the Anti-nuclear League), or, finally, was itself the catalyst of a collective movement (LID - the divorce league, ed.). On the movements federated with the PR, see the appendix.

26) On this point see M. Teodori, "Radicali e communisti: the real reasons for the conflict", in << Argomenti Radicali >>, I (1977), pp.33-47.