Religion and political parties: the case of Italy

Italy presents an interesting case for the analysis of the relationships between religion and political parties: for more than 40 years starting from the beginning of its Republican history, the Christian Democratic party (DC) firmly held on to power. Despite all its contradictions and complexities, the DC was, in fact, the political point of reference for Catholic Italians and the Catholic Church. Considering that Catholicism was actually a ‘religious monopoly’ (Diotallevi 2002), the DC also exemplified the representation of religion in the institutional political field. Its demise triggered a complex reorganisation of the role of religion in politics, calling into question Italy’s unclear secularism. Italian secularism is characterised by the constitutional separation of religion and politics, on the one side, and, on the other side, policy collaboration, the public role of Catholic institutions and organisations, which is taken for granted, and a historically rooted Catholic culture, broader than religious affiliation per se, which permeates the political culture itself (Cipriani 2003; Garelli 2014; Ventura 2014). The absence of a unified channel and model for bringing religious claims into the political sphere, the increasing visibility of religions other than Catholicism, and current developments in political representation have profoundly transformed the relationships between political parties and religions and continue to do so (Giorgi 2018). The scholarly literature on religion and political parties in Italy has focused mainly on three interrelated aspects: the effects of the religious cleavage (that is, religious affiliation and religiosity rates as predictors of party voting); the relationships between political parties and religious actors (the Pope, the Catholic Church, the Episcopal Conference, religious movements, or religiously-inspired associations); and the role of religion in party ideology and discourse. Since Italy is well known to be a Catholic-majority country, scholars’ attention has overwhelmingly focused on Catholicism, seldom touching upon non-religion and atheism. Other religions have remained virtually undiscussed, and this contribution takes a step towards filling this gap in the political science and political sociology literature. The next section is devoted to the first phase of Italian republican history, which was dominated by the DC. The second section discusses the current transformations involving the relationships between political parties and religions. The third section draws attention to the role that other religions are likely to play in Italy’s near political future.