Parties and interest groups in Italy: The case of pensions policy

The present contribution aims to shed light on the interaction between political decision-makers and interest groups (IGs) through an historical approach, embracing two decades of Italian pension reforms. The aim is thus to focus on party–group relationships, through a rigorous definition of the changing modes of interaction between the two and the study of the key endogenous and exogenous factors that have shaped it. The present contribution confirms, on the one hand, some broader trends in IG politics in Italy: the progressive disentanglement of parties and IGs, and the fragmentation of the policy arena. New actors see a role in the reform process. On the other hand, we also outline some peculiarities of the field. This is the case of the changing role of IGs between the 1990s and the more recent reform processes in the 2000s and 2010s. Party–group relationships have gone through social concertation, where social partners played a key role, in the 1990s; the articulation of a more complex policy arena with the new financial and banking sector playing a role in pension funds and the increased competition between political and social actors in the 2000s; and the increased hostility of decision-makers towards the social partners and a political and economic context that has favoured a more unilateral governmental approach to reforms in the last decade. These varying party–group relationships appear to be linked to some potential explanatory variables: among them, the most relevant one seems to be the role of the European Union.