Modelli di partito. Il «contagio» da sinistra (e poi il suo rovescio)

The article starts from a theoretical category introduced by Maurice Duverger, the idea of ​​«contagion» in party models: the innovations produced by some parties tend to be imitated also by parties with different and opposing political orientations and different social bases. In the historical phase of the creation of modern parties, the new socialist parties induced phenomena (althoug limited) of imitation of their organizational structures by conservative and right-wing parties. In the second part of the article, a widespread and superficial reading of the «party crisis» as a general and univocal phenomenon is contested: not all parties are in crisis and not all for the same reasons. Indeed, in recent decades, an inverse phenomenon can be seen: the «contagion» comes from the right. The parties of the left are especially in crisis, as they have not been able to deal with social changes, supported by their own autonomous political culture, and have ended up adopting and introjecting party models and political ideas which, instead, were perfectly functional to the needs of the right. It was not a given that this would happen: indeed, any deterministic vision according to which social changes make the current form of parties inevitable should be criticized. And it is not obvious today that left-wing parties have lost their role and cannot interpret in new forms the classic functions that these parties have performed in the past: in particular, giving voice and representation to the weakest parts of society. But, to this end, a far-reaching theoretical and political work appears necessary, which relaunches a normative theoretical reflection on parties, drawing from their own history the elements that can once again be valorised, taken up and reinterpreted.