Social Structure and Political Competition: The Italian Case
With the end of the Fourth French Republic and the apparently effective performance of the Fifth Republic, France no longer provides an obvious touchstone for studies of “unstable” democracies. Perhaps as a result of the search for another such example, there has been an increase in American scholarly interest in Italy. Recent research—when combined with the studies of LaPalombara, Barnes, and Zariski, and with the studies conducted by Italian political scientists—provides a fund of organized and readily available information which may be used to test both general hypotheses and specific ones about Italian politics.
Economic Development and the Transformation of the Italian Party System
"That socialism is a necessity has never struck the masses with the compelling force of a flash of lightning.... As long as misery, the lack of basic necessities, was the condition of the majority, the need for a revolution could be regarded as obvious. . . . Nowadays, in the richer societies, it is not so clear that the status quo represents the greatest possible evil."'1 How European politics have changed since the class-bound polemics of a generation ago! The statement above was written not by a staid social scientist but by an advocate of the radical European Left. It is well known that an economic miracle has transformed Europe sociologically since the war. But has it also had the political result of stilling the radicals on both fronts and transforming their political parties into identical marketing organizations? Such a proposition, self-evident to some, has seldom been treated as an empirical question. Particularly in the light of recent events in Europe, the time is ripe for more careful inquiry into the actual linkage between social and economic change on the one hand and changes in the party system on the other. Students of Western European politics have identified three general areas of change in the party system which are said to be related to the economic miracle of the postwar period. First, economic change is said to have contributed directly to a slackening of social conflict, and thence to a depolarization of the political struggle. The argument runs roughly as follows: "As the wealth of a nation increases, the status gap inherent in poor countries, where the rich perceive the poor as vulgar outcasts, is reduced. As differences in style of life are reduced, so are the tensions of stratification. And increased education enhances the propensity of different groups to tolerate each other, to accept the complex idea that truth and error are not necessarily on one side."2 Second, the old mass-party structure-based upon a high ratio of members to voters and a dense network of sections-is changing to a looser aggregation, particularly under the electoral impact of the mass media
Italian Influence on the Development of Calvinist Scholasticism
THIS ARTICLE TRIES to show that the rise of Calvinist scholasticism, which was the most important development in Calvinist theology during the second half of the sixteenth century, stemmed largely from several converging Italian influences, particularly from the writings of Peter Martyr Vermigli and Jerome Zanchi. Here Calvinist theology refers not only to the personal thought of John Calvin but also to the teachings of the founders of the Reformed or Calvinist tradition as it spread out from Geneva and Switzerland to France, Germany, England, Scotland, Poland, and the Low Countries. In this context Calvin emerges as the brightest star in a galaxy of Reformed theologians which includes Heinrich Bullinger, Pierre Viret, Theodore Beza and Wolfgang Musculus as well as Martyr, Zanchi and others. These theologians were often more influential than Calvin himself at a given place or time or on a given point of doctrine. Bullinger, Martyr, and Martin Bucer were all more important for spreading Calvinist ideas to Edwardian England than was John Calvin. Early Elizabethan Protestantism looked more to Zurich than to Geneva, as did early Polish Calvinism. German Calvinism owed more to Heidelberg than to Geneva.' These leaders developed their theologies sometimes in mutual dependence, sometimes with surprising independence. By no means was their relation to Calvin simply that of disciple to master, for each gave a personal nuance to his style of Calvinism. Thus the sixteenth century Jesuit Cornelius Schulting states on the opening page of his five volume polemic against Calvin and Peter Martyr that Martyr was clearer and far more learned than Calvin.2 Recently John Bray has pointed out that research in seventeenth century Calvinism leads "to the conclusion that the impact of Calvin upon the Calvinistic movement has been greatly over-rated. It may well be that some of