Downloaded from were contemporaries of the initial emergence of parties; on the contrary, antiparty views persisted until early in the twentieth century, although many basic themes and underlying assumptions underwent changes When the competitive politics of partisan groups first became the subject of hostile commentary, little distinction was made between &dquo;party&dquo; and &dquo;faction.&dquo; The Founding Fathers were apt to use the terms interchangeably, referring to what was to them a single phenomenon. Thus Madison, in his strongly worded objections of Federalist No. 10, most often referred to &dquo;faction&dquo; and the &dquo;spirit of faction,&dquo; but occasionally also to &dquo;party,&dquo; and in some instances to &dquo;the spirit of party and faction.&dquo; Washington, while most often identifying party as the object of his warning, also alternately spoke of &dquo;party&dquo; and &dquo;faction.&dquo; Because these men and their contemporaries did not have two distinct &dquo;party&dquo; and &dquo;faction&dquo; forms of politics before them, they could and did use the two terms as synonyms.3As political parties emerged and developed into distinct forms of political organization, the notion of &dquo;party&dquo; has outgrown early attitudes of opprobrium. With the acceptability of the legitimacy of political parties has come more objective consideration of party politics; this can in no better way be underscored than in noting the status which the concept of &dquo;party system&dquo; has achieved, together with its various subclassifications, such as &dquo;two-party system,&dquo; &dquo;multi-party system,&dquo; &dquo;dominant-party system,&dquo; etc. We may point also to a parallel and more recent evolution in attitudes toward interest groups. Hostile reactions have widely attended public discussions of &dquo;pressure groups,&dquo; in the nineteenth century and much of the present century. There has been a widespread tendency in both Europe and America to question the propriety of such inherently &dquo;selfish&dquo; groups for the political order. In the words of Professor Eldersveld, &dquo;they were considered by scholars as well as muckrakers, as engaged in questionable techniques and pursuing questionable goals. They were not considered as sanctioned by the community nor as having a legitimate regime status.&dquo;¢ In recent decades, however, interest groups ibid., pp. 26-41.

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The 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.

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