Political Party Funding and Private Donations in Italy

Book excerpt: Despite any evidence against it, political parties still represent the most important collective actor in a democratic political system. Their role in representing pluralism and their electoral centrality is not undermined, even when it is strongly questioned. As long as political parties can be understood as representative actors articulating political demands, this book focuses on the capacity of Italian political parties to mobilize resources and financial resources in particular. Through the analysis of private financial donations to political parties, a neglected source of information that will be fundamental in the near future, the author assesses their connective capability with specific interests’ representatives in the last decades in order to provide evidence of their changing representational role as collective actors.