La democrazia senza partiti

[Autom. eng. transl.] Overwhelmed by the wave of personalization of politics and the rhythms of the society of entertainment, the parties have now changed their face and are irremediably distant from twentieth-century political machines. Today the parties seem to many only masks that clumsily conceal the interests of small and large factions, phantasmatic presences without consistency, destined to remain among the memories of a world definitively lost. So will there be a democracy without parties? Will citizens directly influence policy choices without the intermediation of organized structures? Or, rather, will we have to deal with a new, lighter and more fluid party mode capable of intercepting changes in the demands of society and its sectors? These are the questions that move Damiano Palano's reflections. His reconstruction of the process of transforming the 'steel cages' of the twentieth century into today's and future' liquid 'parties brings the heart of the problem to the fore: to give real substance to that mysterious and elusive object that we usually call' European democracy '.