Interest Groups and political Parties in Italian Agricultural Policy: Powerful Farmers With and Without Parties

The article is about the transformation of party-group relationships in Italian agricultural policy. The political context and the policy dynamics have shaped different relations between farmers’ organizations and political parties along Italian political history. The existence, in Italy, of a dominant party initially structured party-groups relationships, and the supremacy of the former featured the wider system of relations among parties, groups and other policy actors. These relations have lasted a long time but effective dynamics changed - from party dominance to interest groups autonomy. In order to understand the party-group disentanglement in agricultural field it is essential to look at political and institutional factors as well as at the crucial role played by farmers organizations in the policy making. The analysis focuses on the relationship between parties and farmers’ organizations in the first decades of the of the Italian Republic. We will go into in depth analysis of the changes that occurred after the 1990s and related either to political crisis or CAP reforms.