a right, a loophole or an impairment? – working world

At this stage of the stabilized crisis of political parties and the unstoppable growth of social disaffection with politics, the question posed in the title of this note could sound rhetorical.

He wrote some time ago (therefore now the trend should be considered in broad consolidation) Linda Laura Sabbadini (State): “Currently it is considered normal to go to vote, like not to go to vote. Placing the ballot in the ballot box is perceived less and less as a right, and even less as a duty, and more and more as a faculty to be exercised”.¹ Put like this, even subjectively, the expression “loophole” sounds moralistic and the word “impairment” could be anti-historical.

However, the reflection – which must be done with particular sense in these lightning-elections summer – is to try to verify if the three connotations today, on closer inspection, coexist. Both on the sociological level and on the level of public ethics.

Let’s start with the forecast data.

I write on the first day of September and this morning is the Corriere della Sera is Republic update the discussion data. . . . Nando Pagnoncelli (Themselves), sul Courieresteem “the gray area of ​​indecision and abstention at 38.3%”. For now, therefore, about ten points more than the outcome of the polls in 2018. But adding up the undecided and abstain it is logical to think – and he also says so Pagnoncelli – that a share will tend to make a choice in the final squeeze of the campaign, so the final gap will probably be with a more significant outcome than in 2018, in any case between 30 and 35%². On the other hand, Riccardo Luna focuses on the youth group between 18 and 25 years of age Republicaccompanying his analysis with a SWG survey and estimating that youth disaffection is now expected to range between 34 and 38%³.

Stefano Iannacone, in the newspaper Tomorrowin the first start of the electoral campaign, balanced the fact that this young group votes for the first time for the Senate (stimulating factor) with the context, however, negative for young people which constitutes depressive material for this generation, to the point of hypothesizing an abstention to 45% (which is the general figure of I don’t vote both to the last European and to the very last administrative ones in Italy). Giuseppe De Rita (interviewed by Stefano Cappellini on Republic) paid close attention to the phenomenon of abstention by relating it to a widespread sentiment that brings out a collective disappointment: “For many, elections are no longer the magic moment of truth”. And he adds: “I believe that the greatest limitation of Italian politics is in its static nature. Our electoral campaign is a daily fight about who offers more protection to citizens. We give you this, I give you more, then I raise. The ability to go further is completely lacking. In Vietnam America the singers said we shall overcome, go beyond. In dynamic and modern societies, leaders need the courage not to limit themselves to protecting but to explore, try, take risks. It’s like the difference between hillbillies and sailors. For heaven’s sake, the mountaineers are very intelligent, but the mountain that blocks the view only leads them to think about keeping their environment in order, those who stay by the sea have another perspective. Well, our leaders are very mountaineers. And then they are entangled in a dead heat”⁴.

Plurality of causes, plurality of measures

In abstention there are at least five factors which partly mix, partly disaggregate in reality. Technical-bureaucratic conditions that do not favor voting behavior (especially for non-residents). Conditions of difficulty and personal impediment. Misunderstanding of the elements of the offer, together with the non-perception of correspondence of the offer with one’s motivation grid for voting. Disaffection with politics in relation to disappointments and criticisms regarding the performance of the “elected”. Rational sentiment of protest.

Gianfranco Pasquino, former senator and reputed political scientist, summarized the causes, in fact, policies of abstentionism, expressing these three evidences:

• the tendency to participate only in the electoral rounds considered most important: generally the turnout is much higher in general elections than in administrative ones;

• the strong similarity between the proposals and ideas of the various candidates and of the various coalitions, with the consequence that the victory of one or the other would have little impact on citizens’ lives;

• the crisis of the parties, which are no longer able to mobilize voters and bring them to the polls.

Institutions, parties, media, little interest

A first major public discussion should be illuminated by a much clearer and much more mediatized explanation of the characters and dimensions of these so different factors.

But no one favors this clarification.

• The political parties do not do it, they ignore everyone on the phenomenon, they do not seem to want to contribute to the delegitimization that the phenomenon itself produces towards them and, tend to appear progressively more inclined to accept the thesis of conservative origin according to which “democracy is who is there”.

• The media don’t do it, except to launch the theme “abstention was the first party in the elections” which, without explanations, does not move behaviors one iota.

• The institutions that have long since given up on civic education tasks in electoral matters do not do it, limiting themselves to making the electoral machine work and communicating addresses and times.

Some scholars of political sociology do it, who also on this occasion contribute in an almost clandestine way to point out important things: the link between abstentionism and poverty/indigence, for example⁵ or the relationship between the phenomenon of not voting and anti-politics⁶. Professor Sabino Cassese did so in the recent public debate, returning on August 15th on wound democratic of the discredit of the parties, detailing and analyzing the darting definition of Mauro Calise (“fragile, insubstantial birds”).

The crux of the reflection is the insufficiency of internal democracy of the entire system of Italian parties, thus failing the framework of legitimization that Piero Calamandrei expressed to the Constituent Assembly on March 4, 1947: “A democracy cannot be such if the parties are not democratic too”.

The international scenario and the American trends of this phenomenon (since 2016 the bar of not voting has exceeded 40% in the USA and in the midterm elections the “minority” of the electorate regularly votes) would then need much more enlightenment and discussion , also because it is within this still obscure range that the most realistic analyzes are made on the next evolutions of US politics, on which the fate of Western democracy largely depends.

In reality, the only “system” subject that has had substantial concern in recent months regarding the issue of growing abstention has been the Draghi government. By denying the purely technocratic-financial approach dl emergency government regarding a thorn in the side on one side of the parties but on the other side also of Italian democracy as a whole, Mario Draghi instructed the minister for institutional relations Federico D’Incà in December 2021 to set up a commission of experts (largely representatives of the competent administrations), chaired by Franco Bassanini, who in April delivered a report centered on the analyzes (which retrace the plural framework of the reasons) to arrive, however, also at proposals for intervention on the reduction of the phenomenon, acting on many of the technical aspects -bureaucratic (Minister D’Incà estimated that “con the creation ofelection pass we could act with a 20% reduction in abstention” ⁷). Of course, the early dissolution of the Chambers has, for now, thwarted the implementation of the measures.

One fact is emerging in the analysis of electoral flows and deserves to be remembered here, because it explains that some political forces should act more than others in a meditated and social way on the issues that the growing evolution of abstention poses to Italian politics and society since the second half of the 70s, in unstoppable form. And that is that the origin of the vote from the centre-left is twice that of the centre-right in the current composition of abstentions. This element is also widespread in liberal democracies. For example, Japan (which is on the edge of 45% of abstentions) has seen the recent electoral battles marked by expectations (later disappointed) between right and left, according to an analogous paradigm.

The writer has also imagined – dealing with the theme elsewhere – that political citizenship, above all of territorial expression (the real one, of course, and not the one generated fictitiously by the parties during the electoral rounds) could claim permanent attention, even of the type socio-pedagogical, to the causes of the crisis of political parties in fueling abstention, demonstrating the interest instead of “civic” politics and the institutions to fight with some results the philosophy of “democracy belongs to whoever is there”. In other words, modifying its cynical aspects and bringing that 30% of Italy administered in the territories from below to take charge of one of the diseases with very little diagnosis and no therapy from which the democratic quality of Western countries suffers.

A right to be cultivated with less cynicism

Here we are now in a position to take up the little provocation of our title. Knowing that never before has the “fraud” character of the unchanged electoral law swelled the ranks of abstention, i.e. in the face of a substantial marginalization of the citizen-voter to vote by making the collective choice of voters prevail over the vertical choice of party leaders to impose “appointed” and moreover making emerge a dominant further dangerous for the health of political parties. Zeroed civil society in the listswe read in some newspapers.

• Is abstention a right? No question. But it is a right which, in terms of the quality generated, presents sterility and scarce creativity. As the philosopher Giorgia Serughetti recently wrote “when the place of democratic politics remains vacant, other powers – from market forces to authoritarian components – find the space to advance”⁸.

• So is it a “loophole”? In many ways it is, including that of making the Montanellian paradigm of “vote by holding your nose”. But the provocative nature of the growth of this “loophole” would be worth it if the cultural and communicative antitheses of a legitimate social pedagogy around the crisis of politics were really put into arms. It has been declared in Italy for some time, producing emergencies within emergencies, but we have not seen the repair yard rise in its promise of change.

• As for the “impairment”, it is easy to add up the factors of democratic decrease briefly mentioned here and elsewhere, certainly by others more competent, better explored.

Participation can generate cohesion and non-participation can increase conflict. But it is not such a linear process. So much that to speak of impairment one should imagine an almost irreversible transformation, like the one the European Union was risking, were electoral disaffection structurally fell below the 50% threshold.

Abstentionism is on the rise, but has not yet completely unbalanced the principle of a “true” majority of the electorate. And yet if everything continues to be silent, we will soon be able to move from the therapeutic contest to the bland context of palliative care.