The party and democracy in the post-industrial era

The paper argues that parties are losing legitimacy because of their adaptation to the changing environment. In the passage towards the post-modern or “liquid” society parties had to respond to the shrinking of their resources produced by a decreasing membership in front of rising organizational costs. The solution to parties’ difficulties has been found in penetrating the state precisely to exploit its resources to their benefit. In order to acquire more public resources they have to expand the patronage side of their activity. But this expansion has the negative effect of depressing the parties’ symbolic and collective incentives for membership, so crucial to the parties’ legitimacy. In this way parties are trapped into a vicious circle: more resources they acquire, the more they lose confidence and legitimacy.