Ten Secretaries in Fifteen Years: Leadership and Organisational Changes

In its still short history, as a party that has not even reached fifteen years of life, Italian PD had four party leaders elected in the primaries, as well as four “Regent” Secretaries elected by the National Assembly and a President Acting as Secretary elected by the appointment of the National Assembly. The failure to consolidate a stable leadership, together with the construction of a new ruling class, is one of the great limits of the PD, a party that seems to be victim of a sort of “Kronos Syndrome” that leads it to kill its children. The chapter critically examines the profiles of the various leaders who have succeeded at the head of the party, starting with those directly elected in the primaries. It thus highlights how each party leader has failed in trying to affirm their own idea of a party. And how in this way the party ever ends up replicating the same dynamic, as in a sort of Nietzsche's “eternal return of the same” which effectively prevents the PD from completing its institutionalization process. Each leadership failure is followed by an attempt to restore cohesion into a party that has in the meantime divided, due to strong conflicts between internal fractions. This task is carried out by the so-called “Regent” secretaries which are elected by the National Assembly once the previous leader resigns. Then, the transition managed by each “Regent” secretary ends with the election of a new party leader in the primary, in an effort to create a “new beginning” that each time proves as unrealistic as it is ineffective. In this way, the succession of four Secretaries with profoundly different styles of leadership and ideas of the party organizational model did not allow the party itself to consolidate over time a political culture, a ruling class and an organizational model. The chapter ends by examining the current phase, under the leadership of the new Secretary Letta, who in his own way, and for the umpteenth time, is trying to rebuild a party that is constantly a victim of itself.