Modernization and the Shape of the Political Spectrum. The Case of Italy (1994-2022)

We investigate the current polarization of the political debate around the world. In attempting to do so, we present a pluralistic typology of the political spectrum, based on four attitudes, rather than the classical two: conservatives vs. progressives. In our typology conservatives are split into two sub-types: conformists and moderates, and progressives are split into other two subtypes: reformists and antagonists. The main tenet of the proposed typology is that the extreme types (i.e. conformists and antagonists) are residual forms of the pre-modern era, while the intermediate types (i.e. moderates and reformists) take the center stage much later, during the modernization process. However, modernization is not an irreversible event and periodically history presents breakdowns of this process [1]. The historical period in which we currently live in seems to be one of such critical times, where polarization implies the predominance of the dichotomy “conformists vs. antagonists” rather than “moderates vs. reformists”. The theory here presented is applied to the case of Italy, where the electoral votes between 1994 and 2022 have been reclassified and assigned to each of the four aggregative poles (i.e. conformists, moderates, reformists and antagonists). The results fit with the theoretical hypotheses, insofar as the polarization of the political spectrum is quite evident, despite institutional reforms enacted by the Italian Parliament to converge on the two-party system of modern countries (moderates vs. reformists). In the conclusions we identify two explanatory factors of such a discrepancy between institutional goals and voters’ choice.