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A crisis of legitimacy in Italy: the scandals facing the First Republic (1992–1994)
Author(s) -
Briquet JeanLouis
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
international social science journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.237
H-Index - 43
eISSN - 1468-2451
pISSN - 0020-8701
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2451.2010.01719.x
Subject(s) - legitimacy , centrality , politics , dysfunctional family , political science , political economy , economic system , sociology , economics , psychology , law , mathematics , combinatorics , psychotherapist
Based on the study of the political crisis in Italy in the early 1990s, this article discusses the standard models of delegitimation currently used to explain regime crises. While such crises can be linked to long term structural determinants (a dysfunctional political system, a deficit of diffuse legitimacy), they are also the product of internal struggles within the governing sectors. In focusing attention on these struggles, the aim is to challenge the centrality of the role attributed to public dissatisfaction in regime crises and to thus to consider delegitimation as an effect of the recomposition of the party landscape rather than a factor in that recomposition.