Ideology
The Democratic Party is a big tent centre-left party, strongly influenced by the ideas of social democracy and the Christian left. The common roots of the founding components of the party reside in the Italian resistance movement, the writing of Italian Constitution and the Historic compromise, all three events which saw the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party (the two major forerunners of Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy and the Democrats of the Left, respectively) cooperate. The United States Democratic Party and American liberalism are also an important source of inspiration.
The party stresses national and social cohesion, green issues, social progressivism, progressive taxation and Europeanism. In this respect the party's precursors strongly supported the need of balancing budgets in order to comply to Maastricht criteria. Under the leadership of Veltroni, the party took a strong stance in favour of constitutional reform and of a new electoral law, on the road toward a two-party system.
Read more about this topic: Democratic Party (Italy)
Famous quotes containing the word ideology:
“Liberation is an evershifting horizon, a total ideology that can never fulfill its promises.... It has the therapeutic quality of providing emotionally charged rituals of solidarity in hatred—it is the amphetamine of its believers.”
—Arianna Stassinopoulos (b. 1950)
“Commerce is greedy. Ideology is bloodthirsty.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“There is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)