Dizionario di Politica

Authors: Bobbio, Matteucci, Pasquino
Summary: The entry defines factions, notes the factors contributing to their development, and considers how to resist their influence or growth, focusing in particular on Italy. Factions are groups possessing a measure of autonomy within a political party, aimed at furthering their own agendas and obtaining political offices and spoils for their members. There are many ways to classify factions, for instance by breadth, duration, role within parties or governing coalitions, leadership, and so on.
The entry asserts that factions are generally seen as harmful to politics. They complicate the task of organizing parties; they tend to cause instability and internal conflict within coalition governments; and, most fundamentally, they are not representative of the public at large.
The entry concludes by surveying the chief factors that tend to produce factions: a presidential-constitutional system, extreme and polarized pluralism, electoral systems based on intra-party competition (such as primaries), the use of secret ballots in parliamentary assemblies, proportional representation systems, administrative decentralization, loss of discipline, heterogeneity of parties' social composition, and ideology.