Clientelismo, privatizzazione del pubblico e governo di partito

The central theme of this article is clientelism considered as a social and political phenomenon. Our attention is focused on the one hand on clientele as a type of social relationship rooted in territories and communities and, on the other, on a particular type of linkage between citizens and political institutions represented by clientelism. The clientele system appears to be intrinsic to the processes of social modernisation, but also to the massification of politics (not only in the democratic sense) and, therefore, to the emergence of modern political parties. On the one hand, it is connected with phenomena such as personalization and particularism, on the other with privatisation of public resources and institutions. We show this double level (social-political, horizontal-vertical) first of all by reconstructing the relationship between politics and society in the South of Italy and how this has changed over time: from land to political clientelism, from notable to bureaucratic clientelism. Then, we highlight the close connections between clientelism, party government and quality of democracy. Thus clientelism appears as intrinsic to the same imperatives of party competition and to the logic of democratic government, hence its persistence. But, at the same time it reveals itself as a factor of deterioration and subversion of democracy.