In parliament in recent years, parties, acronyms and political groups have multiplied, the result of splits and mergers of those who arrived in the chambers with the 2018 elections. which boast numbers equal to or even greater than those of parties rooted in society.
The mobility of parliamentarians from one political group to another is certainly not new.
Often, those who change their location are dismissed as turncoats, but the change itself does not necessarily represent a malfunction of the policy. Think of the cases in which a party decides to support a government against which it fought in the electoral campaign. In these cases, individual dissenting parliamentarians can decide to leave the party, and therefore the parliamentary group. In short, there may be legitimate reasons behind a change of jersey. And, more generally, it must be considered that the freedom of each elected person also towards his own party – the so-called prohibition of the mandate – is one of the foundations of parliamentary democracies. What is striking, however, is the consistency that this phenomenon has reached in the most recent legislatures, and the often opaque reasons on which the shirt changes are based.
Among the reasons that explain this phenomenon, the main one has to do with the transformation undergone by politics with the advent of the so-called second republic, at the beginning of the nineties of the twentieth century. It is then that the popular parties founded on ideas disappear and are replaced by organizations similar to electoral committees gathered around the figure of a charismatic leader. And those leaders often even take their name. Once the ideas have failed, the objective for which we act is no longer the affirmation of an ideal project but the simple management of power. At the same time, the political clash turns into a perennial electoral campaign with brisk tones and often bordering on personal attack.
All this worked for a while, also soliciting new forms of citizen participation, but also paving the way for populiusm. For some time, however, having reduced politics almost exclusively to communication, and the use of tones destined for the most part to enhance one’s leadership and not political projects, no longer pays. Parties and movements are no longer able to mobilize even their own base, while many voters simply move away from any form of participation. The proof lies in the percentages of abstention, which are of such dimensions as to undermine the legitimacy of the democratically elected political representation.
However, no party seems to really want to deal with this crisis, also because it would mean taking on a historical responsibility, of which they still appear unaware. But it is nevertheless difficult to escape reality: presenting oneself without ideas, in the end one also remains without votes.