The Italian Democratic Party from Merger to Personalism

The Partito Democratico (PD) was born as an original Merger Party on the cusp of the economic crisis in October 2007. The party’s genesis and formative years were critical to the party’s failure to institutionalise around a new common ideology or vision, as a result of the persistence of two party souls which could not find unity. Rather than a genuinely ‘new’ reformist party, the PD resembled an organisational vehicle through which the two former parties could continue their struggle. This weakened the organisational nature of the PD and made it a candidate for takeover by a dominant, personal leader such as Matteo Renzi. He set about establishing a personal party whose existence has in many ways confirmed the failure, if not exhaustion, of the PD’s mission to become the reformist party of the majority.