If we read the number of voters from the post-war period to today, we see that in the 1950s the percentage of voters was very high. Scrolling through personal memories and chronicles, we remember section secretaries, parish priests and list representatives who had maps and lists with which they sent to hasten those who had not yet gone to vote.
Many of us have read or seen ‘Peppone and Don Camillo’.
The value of participation, identity with the parties and sense of community constituted a great WE which manifested itself in the vote as an individual, social and even partisan commitment. Everyone proudly said that they belonged to the Community to which they gave their suffrage and preference.
Don’t go and vote… it wasn’t a given.
We were emerging from a dramatic period abstinence by democratic practices and everyone wanted to participate in the construction of the new democracy.
There was full availability to be the President of the polling station or the Scrutineer; the places were strictly parceled out and when in an electoral section the President or the Scrutineer It wasn’t up to ushere appears the Representative of the list who presided over the polling station, bare included, and without pay.
The sixties, seventies and eighties: they are characterized by the economic boom, and by social status important and widespread. There is still a high participation in the elections, with the first signs of a decrease linked to the departure of those who no longer recognize themselves in the ‘electoral body’ of the various parties.
Citizens, grouped by community, Classes, etc., were in direct correspondence with the Parties in terms of social class, ideology and correspondence between the proposed model of social and institutional life. The Parties were an expression of the electoral body that nominated them to represent them.
The economic boom creates the first I distinct from the many WE of political and social communities; however, the presence of social well-being, guaranteed by healthcare, education, etc., maintains the social trust that the actions of communities, parties and associations create.
Citizens’ affection for voting is maintained because the consensus is clear
guence between participation and social and economic results for citizens.
There is another important element in the affection for voting: the territory matters. The candidates proposed in the lists are known, and no Party Secretary would have allowed himself to catapult in the lists unknown characters who are not integrated into the territory. Being able to be catapulted was only possible if recognized, in the history of the Parties, as elements of strength proclaimed for the Party. The Independent they were accepted as long as they were discussed in the territorial offices and recognized as a prestigious candidacy.
These are the decades in which the NOI chooses the candidates and determines those elected. This period coincides with that of the maximum presence and diffusion of social services, welfare, economic growth and consumption. A society is being built which, despite all the contradictions that history recognizes, sees strong economic growth, spread of social services, guarantee of health and education for all.
Is it perhaps too simplistic to say that citizens believe in it, recognize themselves in the parties and can choose the candidates? Maybe yes, but they go to vote.
Elections are still organized on the NOI, and political and trade union actions can count on very strong mobilisations. We also find the value of WE in the first season of concertation in which we tend to overcome the contrast to rediscover the WE between the world of work and that of business. The NOI is expressed by the Workers’ Statute.
Things changed in the nineties, and Italy also moved more and more towards IO values. It is superfluous to remember the slogan of ‘Three THE’ of Berlusconi (Business, Internet, English), the Yuppi, growing individualism.
The party branches are closing, the oratories are increasingly deserted, their dusty and dirt football pitches are abandoned and the kids are starting to attend football schools. The Parties give up the Secretary (figure of the NOI) and hire the Leaders (figure of the IO). The electoral lists are compiled by the Leaders through exhausting negotiations with the current leaders; the candidates will go to ask for votes from an area that does not know them and which should vote for them in
as ‘goods guaranteed’ by the leader and the current bosses.
The gates of participatory descent are opening. The ‘WE let’s go vote it becomes more and more’I’m going to vote. This passage from WE to I arises from a question that WE ask ourselves: Why? Cui prodest? Social guarantees and trust in politics have diminished, as they now deal too little with everyday life, everyone experiences the relationship with voting participation in terms of personal evaluation. In the chatter it resonates louder and louder and more often: nothing changes anyway, they are all the same‘kill kill I know they’re all of one race. The State does not guarantee the path towards the well-being of citizens, the “Palace” with its “Annexes” has taken over politics by alienating the territories.
So, if I don’t see my direct convenience, explain to me Why vote!
It is towards this world of IOs (Leaders and Candidates), which asks the many WE to vote for them and have them elected to the Institutions, that distrust and suspicions are consolidated, accompanied and amplified by the decline in Welfare: attempts are being made to contain the public debt with the decrease of services and the welfare state instead of with a policy of development and real growth. Health? The citizen either pays for it, or is satisfied with ‘less and less valuable goods’. The school? Horse camp…. Research and the University? So far they have been funded too much. It is better not to talk about international cooperation. Then begins game of cuts. After all, the State and Society have an ever-increasing and constantly rising debt, combined with heavy expenses for the corruption system and missed collections caused by tax evasion, which mean that the barrel is already scraped.
WE are asking ourselves more and more insistently about participation in the vote: what are we going to do?
And as in the Rossini crescendo in which ‘slander is a breeze‘, becomes ‘a roar of cannon‘, participation becomes increasingly thinner up to the percentages of the last European elections.
Among those who continue to frequent the polling stations as voters, there are certainly many I who directly or delegate can participate or enjoy the advantages that institutional representations can guarantee. It is no coincidence that local elections attract a greater number of voters.
Part of the NOI culture also continues to frequent the polls
who cannot lose the good practices of participation. They vote for a list and, if they don’t feel represented, they vote (but they don’t always do so) with a blank ballot to demonstrate that not being represented by the lists on the list, they vote for the list that isn’t there. Unfortunately, invalid ballots are also disappearing from the percentages of voters.
It is a sad end and, confirming the progressive disaffection from participation, they disappear from the analyses public of the vote the absolute numbers. We only think about percentages, measuring social consensus on the relative numbers of participants as if the problem of representation and legitimacy of delegation did not concern the entire body of those with the right to vote.
It is clear that such a complex topic cannot be simplified or reduced; one consideration, however, is certainly legitimate: abstention from voting coincides with the ever decreasing participation of citizens in active politics, but also with the collapse of the welfare state and the worsening of social conditions. The more concern grows for a State that does not guarantee the well-being of its Citizens, the more thewhat am I going to do.
Citizens therefore become a sum of IOs, each aiming to guarantee themselves a bit of well-being in this social malaise which does not find an answer in collective actions. Everyone feels it less and lessmore and more monad.
So?
There are no formulas, there are processes of political culture, institutional culture, social culture of development and formation of social well-being.
*Pedagogist
