Abstract

Italian parties have clearly lost any control on the processes of political communication. Confronted with Berlusconi's capability to dominate the personalization of politics and to stress its spectacularization, the centre-left parties, inadequately equipped, suffer the challenge of personalization. However, their recent resort to a variety of primary elections make it imperative the passage to some form of well-focused personalization. The Democratic Party has written the primaries in its Charter, but so far its use does not seem to be crowned with success precisely when shaping and personalizing its leadership.