Simone Tedeschi, born in Genoa in 1980, presents a wide-ranging political essay that fully satisfies both those who want to delve deeper into a subject they already master, and those who are approaching a political science text for the first time. “The Democratic Party. Origin, organization and identity” has a clear and informative style, and provides the less experienced reader with the tools needed to understand the work. Starting from the “prehistory” of the Democratic Party, and analyzing the factors that led to changes in its system of thought and its internal structure, the essay examines every stage, contradiction and turning point of an organization that has seen many strong and contrasting actors, and moments of general consensus and defeat. A story that, in addition to being accurate in every detail, also manages to interest and involve with its many food for thought.
Tedeschi's work bases its discourse on the complex and troubled genesis of a party that has transformed and redefined its boundaries over the last eleven years. He questions the path taken by the PD, the thrust given by the various leaders in the field, the clashes between the various exponents of the group and the outcomes of programs and ideologies that are often in conflict with each other. A political essay that is supported by a flowing narrative that lightens the weight of the topic discussed, and that piques the curiosity of those who do not know the background of the origin of a party whose history is extremely engaging, whatever their political beliefs. There are three fundamental questions that the writer asks himself in the six chapters of the work: what are the reasons that led to the birth of the Party? What models did its organizational development follow? What is its identity? Through a journey made of history and political analysis, Tedeschi goes to the source of the question, summarizing the stages of the formation of the "parent" of the PD, Prodi's Ulivo, which in 1995 saw the light in the coalition between ex-DC and ex-PCI, and which then in 2001 returned in force with the merger of the DS and the Margherita in a new project led by Rutelli, who however was unable to provide a stable model to a centre-left not yet fully aware of itself. From the narration of the purposes and challenges of what was the embryo of the PD, we then move on to the true heart of the work: the birth of the Democratic Party on 14 October 2007. Tedeschi recounts with pertinent examples, tables and quotes the irreparable internal split within the Ulivo in 2006, the central meeting in Orvieto, the election of Veltroni as Secretary of the nascent PD, the approval of the Statute, the Manifesto of Values and the Code of Ethics on 16 February 2008, up to the changes in power, which had a significant impact on the process of institutionalisation of the party, from Franceschini to Bersani and finally to Renzi with his vocation for "scrapping", and the harsh defeat in the elections of 4 March 2018. Fundamental and analysed with extreme care is the discussion on the reasons that led to the birth of the Democratic Party, on the need felt by the entire political scene for a concrete alternative to give perspective to the centre-left (and therefore even to its natural opponents) and above all stability in the Government. A vocation, that of the PD, to remake Italy, to be an inclusive and democratic party that brings citizens closer to politics, and that welcomes within itself a pluralism of interests in a reformist perspective. A challenge that Simone Tedeschi has recounted and judged in its lights and shadows with great professionalism.
The book is based on the doctoral thesis and related research that Simone Tedeschi carried out at the University of Pavia from 2008 to 2011. The thesis only dealt with the founding phase, while the essay also refers to the various stages of the party's institutionalization process, and the political-organizational characteristics that it then assumed permanently in its ordinary life. The work is therefore composed of a reasoned history of the history of the PD starting from the foundation of the Ulivo until its birth on October 14, 2007 and in its subsequent eleven years of life. Tedeschi asks what remains today of the ambitions of a party that wanted to restore self-awareness to Italy, that wanted to open up to the new and restore a political scene that was now anachronistic and corrupt. The volume develops over six chapters, each of which first reconstructs the events in the form of a chronicle and then analyzes them from a political science point of view. The first chapter focuses on the “prehistory” of the Democratic Party, the second and third focus on the founding phase, analyzing its organizational processes and political-programmatic aspects, the fourth deals with the institutionalization phase, the fifth deals with the PD in its ordinary life, and the last chapter attempts to draw the conclusions of the discussion, composing a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of the Party in close connection with the development of Italian democracy.
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