Il partito oltre il "secolo breve": tracce per un ripensamento

This article critically examines the debate on the 'crisis’ of political parties. The paper focuses on two points. First, it emphasizes that the 'crisis' is today a crisis of a specific type of party, the mass-based party, which in Europe had his golden age during the “the Short Twentieth Century” (1914-1989). Second, it argues that the contemporary transformation must be understood as a product of three processes: a) the 'fiscal crisis' of democratic states, b) the 'crisis of governability' of all Western political systems, c) a 'cultural' process, which is a result of the Western belief that history has ended in 1989 and of the fall of progressive cultures of the Twentieth Century.