The RESEARCH ON NATIONAL DELEGATES group of the Party Observatory “Aldo di Virgilio” intends to continue a long-term research project on party middle level elite begun in 2004 under three interuniversity programmes (PRIN 2004, 2006 and 2008) cofinanced by the Ministry for Education and Research and by the four participating universities: Bologna, Cosenza, Florence and Trieste.
National party delegates are not simple party members but activists with a long history of political militancy. In many cases they have a certain social visibility due to organizational or electoral positions in politics and local associations. They are often familiar with relationships between the parties and society and between the local party and the central party organisation. Party delegates can be considered privileged witnesses who have experienced from within, party transformations induced by external forces. Their values and attitudes are therefore more elaborated and stable than those of simple party members, and this is why in Italy they represent a bridge between old and new parties.
Studying parties starting from the viewpoint of their national delegates means capturing a crucial observation point, above all in a historical period of party transformations such as the last 20 years, when splits, fusions and extinctions have been the rule.
The research project on national delegates aims to analyse cultural, organisational and strategic changes in the various Italian parties starting from the point of view of their middle level elite. It will be based on surveys conducted during the national assemblies and/or congresses of the main Italian parties. The questionnaire used in these surveys has a general part common to all parties and a specific part, adapted to the characteristics of each party and the context in which the survey is conducted.
In recent years the attention of the NATIONAL DELEGATES research group has concentrated on ltalian left-wing and centre-left parties. Surveys were organised in the following national meetings: the founding congress of SINISTRA ITALIANA held in Rimini, 15 February 2017, the national assembly of the PARTITO DEMOCRATICO held in Rome, 7 May 2017,, the national assembly of LIBERI E UGUALI held in Rome, 3 December 2017, the national assembly of the PARTITO DEMOCRATICO held in Rome, 17 March 2019; the national assembly of the PARTITO DEMOCRATICO held in Rome, 12 March 2023.
Since 2024, the research group on delegates from the Aldo Observatory on Virgilio Parties collaborates with the ITALIAN POLITICAL PARTIES DIGITALIZATION (IPAD) group, which - thanks to funding from the Ministry of University and Research, involving the Universities of Cagliari, Naples, and Turin - aims to analyze the transformations made within the main Italian parties through the digitalization process.
SCIENTIFIC COORDINATION SINCE 2024: Prof. Paola Bordandini and Prof. Luca Pinto