The Italian Partito Democratico: An ‘Agnostic’ Party, Between Technocratic and Populist Discourses.

Italy has often been portrayed as a ‘laboratory’ for the transformations of Western European democracies (Lazar 2013). More recently, a great deal of attention has been paid to the crisis of the Italian party system, the experience of Mario Monti’s government and the emergence of Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement. Building on this, we will claim that the recent vicissitudes of the Italian Democratic Party epitomize the way traditional partisan actors can adapt and incorporate both populist and technocratic discourses. More specifically, we will argue that, in the Italian case, this followed the conscious rejection of a traditionally strong political culture in favour of a milder project of ‘agnostic’ party. The paper will firstly reconstruct how and why a group of party leaders and sympathizing intellectuals started to imagine a new party model. Secondly, we will analyse the key-features of the new-born PD, conceived and presented as a post-ideological force relying on the conciliatory and deliberative understanding of politics typical of the "Pensiero debole". Thirdly, the paper will investigate the effects this new conception had on the party’s mutations and day to day functioning, undermining its capacity to create a coherent political agenda. Lastly, we will claim that this forced the PD to alternatively build upon populist and technocratic discourses to gain votes and exit the agnostic impasse. As a way of conclusion, we will reflect on the paradox of embracing ‘agnosticism’ as a way to distance oneself from strong world-visions, while being eventually forced to incorporate alien ideational elements.