Party delegates are a "strategic group" of political actors because they are the motor of party organisation and often represent key elements of civil society and the party community. Their opinions, values and attitudes are more articulated and more stable than those of simple party members, sympathisers or electors, due to their experience and usually long militancy. Theirs is thus a crucial observation point in the historical context of party transformation of recent decades.
Despite the centrality of these party activists, not much attention has been paid to them. The first comparative study based on party delegates dates to the 1970s. The European Political Parties Middle-Level Elites (EPPMLE) project was ambitious, involving 12 European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Spain, France, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal and Great Britain) and 68 parties, with surveys conducted in the corresponding national congresses, most between 1978 and 1981. The researchers for Italy were Gianfranco Pasquino and Piero Ignazi of the University of Bologna. In Italy the surveys concentrated on the following parties: PdUP, PSI, PSDI, DC, PLI and MSI.
Similar studies were sporadically resumed in Italy by various authors, but it was not until 2004 that a true research team was formed – the Observatory on Party Transformations – that for almost a decade systematically sounded almost all national congresses of Italian parties, irrespective of size.
The project of the Observatory was financed by three interuniversity research programmes (PRIN) that involved the Universities of Florence (coordinated by Marco Tarchi, who was also national coordinator of PRIN), Bologna (coordinated by Aldo Di Virgilio), Cosenza (coordinated by Francesco Raniolo) and Trieste (coordinated by Anna Bosco). The programme had the aim of reconstructing the structural characteristics of new Italian parties and examining the evolution of their interactions with the social and institutional environment. Various research instruments were envisaged: analysis of political communication and internet sites of parties, study of their statutes and electoral programmes, detailed interviews of personnel responsible for party organisation and communication, reconstruction of electoral strategies and investigation of congress delegates.
The Bologna unit of the Observatory (directed by Aldo Di Virgilio and Paola Bordandini) was concerned with the methodological coordination of party delegates research, initially in collaboration with the other units and autonomously since 2011 when PRIN funding ended.
In the period 2004-2011, sixteen Italian parties were studied (PRC, FdS, PdCI, SEL, Verdi, IdV, DS, PD, DL-Margherita, Radicali Italiani, UDEur, UDC, Forza Italia, AN, MSFT and La Destra) through 18 surveys (DS and DL-Margherita were interviewed twice, the second during their respective dissolution congresses prior to merger with the new Democratic Party) and almost 5000 interviews.
A further survey was conducted during the third national assembly of the Democratic Party held in Milan on 15th December 2013. On that occasion, 350 interviews were collected.
The results of the single inquiries on delegates conducted by the Observatory, with their records, comments and information of samples, were published in the series I PARTITI ITALIANI A CONGRESSO. RICERCHE SUI DELEGATI by Clueb, Bologna (Bordandini and Di Virgilio 2009-2013).