RENATO MANNHEIMER e GIACOMO SANI

Cultura politica e identificazione di partito

N. 146

Summary — In the last twenty years, the concept of political culture, especially in the version associated to the work of Almond and Verba, has gained wide currency among italian political scientists. Research on specific aspects of Italian political culture has lagged behind, however. The first part of this article contains a review of a number of problems of political culture research with particular emphasis on the micro-macro linkage and the use of surveys. The second part of the article is devoted to a specific aspect of Italian political culture. The focus is on the concept of party identification which is deemed to be a significant component of political culture. It is shown that the measures of party identification traditionally used in the anglo-saxon context are problematical in the Italian arena. For this reason, it is suggested that alternative indicators are more appropriate. Two such indicators are presented and tested using data drawn from a national study of the Italian electorate conducted in the Spring of 1985. The findings indicate that party identification in Italy is a viable concept that can be usefully employed since it does not completely overlap with cultural identification and habitual voting.