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DURING THE 1970S MANY OF THE SIGNS OF DISARRAY WHICH HAVE CHARACTERIZED EARLIER NATIONS AND CIVILIZATIONS IN DECLINE, WERE MANIFESTED IN THE UNITED STATES. TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS AND VALUES WERE ASSAULTED BY INDIFFERENCE, SCORN, AND THE RISE OF CULTS. IMMORALITY AND AMORALITY WERE RAMPANT IN POPULAR CULTURE AND IN THE PUBLIC AND PERSONAL LIVES OF LEADERS AND SUBJECTS ALIKE. AMERICANS MURDERED MORE HUMAN BEINGS VIA ABORTION THAN HITLER KILLED DURING THE HOLOCAUST OR STALIN DEVASTED DURING HIS GREAT PURGE. CIVIL RIGHTS STRIFE, VIETNAM, WATERGATE, STAGFLATION AND OTHER POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC TRIALS PRODUCED A STRIKING DECLINE IN THE CONFIDENCE PEOPLE FELT FOR POLITICAL LEADERS, PARTIES, AND THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL PROCESS ITSELF. A PLETHORA OF THIRD PARTIES EMERGED AS A RESULT OF THE CREDIBILITY GAP, BUT NONE MADE MUCH IMPACT EITHER ON THE INTELLECTUAL COMMUNITY OR THE PEOPLE AT LARGE.

The ascension to power of Chile's Christian Democratic Party (PDC) in 1964 generated a great deal of optimism on the future of Latin American politics. Eduardo Frei Montalva, the party's successful presidential candidate, was a thoughtful, politically astute intellectual who preferred careful analysis to florid demagoguery. To a continent enamored of ideologies, his movement proposed a social-Christian value system rooted in individual dignity, in the uniqueness of the human being, in economic pluralism, and in social and political democracy. Roman Catholicism with which the Christian Democrats were associated, but not officially connected, was one of the "few crosscutting and unifying forces" in Latin America and served to legitimize the movement with both traditional and modernizing elites. Frei's party evinced a mass membership with a branch structure3 linked to auxiliary agencies (which provide medical, dental, legal services, and the like). It relied on an efficient, paid bureaucracy rather than a coterie of notables to operate the organizational apparatus; public opinion polls rather than uninformed guesses to chart political strategy; dues and voluntary contributions rather than "mordidas" and graft for financial sustenance; and specialized organs rather than personalism to aggregate such increasingly important sectors as women, peasants, urban poor, and students under the Christian Democratic standard.

THE ITALIAN CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY LEADERSHIP IS PRESENTLY BEING CHALLENGED BY A THIRD GENERATION OF MEMBERS WHO SEEK TO SUBSTANTIALLY ALTER PARTY POLICY. BECAUSE OF RESISTANCE FROM THE CENTER TO THIS ENCROACHMENT TWO IMPORTANT EFFECTS CAN BE NOTED. FIRST, A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF THE YOUNGER GENERATION ARE DESERTING THE DC AND SEEKING ALTERNATE POLITICAL SOLUTIONS.

ABSTRACTThe Italian Christian Democratic Party leadership is presently being challenged by a third generation of members who seek to substantially alter party policy. Because of resistance from the center to this encroachment two important effects can be noted. First, a significant number of the younger generation are deserting the DC and seeking alternate political solutions. This group is largely leftist in sentiment and have sought to create either a "new left" or have actually joined Communist and Socialist electoral lists. With the removal of this first group from party participation a second group, rightist in political orientation, is gaining in strength. Although this is a slow movement, and not necessarily irreversible, it does reflect the increased importance of the laical left on Italian politics and the removal of the DC left from active support of the party.

ABSTRACTThe main theoretical question confronted in this article concerns the nature and character of the Christian Democratic party (DC) in Catania and in Southern Italy. The Catania DC was transformed in the early fifties from a party of representation led by "notables" to a modern party under the direction of a new class of party professionals. The DC has become a mass party, containing various characteristics attributed to the mass party model in the literature; but it lacks some mass party features and contains others which are extraneous to it. The particular use of the party's mass membership in the intraparty struggle for position and power and the employment of the instrument of clientelism for achieving its goal, is what distinguishes the Southern Italy party. A mass‐based structure, clientelism and the use of public resources for distributing benefits are the main characteristics of the mass clientele party. The article examines the structure and the mode of operation of the mass clientele party; the principal sets of social, economic and political conditions necessary for the emergence of such a party; the functions it performs in the regional and national political systems.