Programaci´ on Gen´ etica

The political system in South Tyrol-Alto Adige is one of complex power sharing, developed due to the particular nature of the past ethnic conflict and the intervention of the

international community. In political science, the system, or model of government in the province is known as consociational democracy, which followed after a process of

dissociative conflict resolution (see Markusse 1997, Wolff 2008 Pallaver 2014).

Dissociative refers to the process of separating conflictual groups in order to find a

“negative peace”, one in which there is an absence of personal violence and where groups are socially and spatially separated (Pallaver 2014:2-3). Consociational refers to an approach to governance developed to avoid territorial break up in places where there are inter-ethnic conflicts (Markus 1997:77). As Markus describes it, ‘[t]he theory on consociational democracy describes a type of political and societal order enabling the

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accommodation and control of seriously conflicting interests in so-called plural or culturally segmented societies.’ (1997:78). As applied in Bozen-Bolzano, there are four key features:

 The legally recognised language groups are represented in the autonomous provincial government and subordinate organisations;

 Linguistic groups retain decision-making autonomy in relation to questions not of common interest;

 The presence of each language group is present in political organs and (provincial) public administration through a system of proportional representation; and

 Each language group retains the power of veto to defend their vital interests (Adapted from Pallaver 2014:6-7) As Fraenkel-Haeberle underscores, these rights pertain to groups rather than individuals (2008:274) and, as we have seen, the notion of ethnicity is conflated with language.

The provincial government is controlled by Südtirolervolkspartei (SVP), who holds an absolute majority. SVP, according to the party’s constitution, represents the interests of the German and Ladin speaking groups. The nature of the political system in the Province of Bolzano can be defined as ethnoregionalist, that is, people generally vote along ethnic lines. In the case of Italy, although the term ethnic is used to describe minorities, the correct legal term, under the law DL 482/1999, is linguistic minorities. Thus the ethnic and cultural nature of politics in South Tyrol this is defined through linguistic identity

(Lantschner & Poggeschi 2008:226-7; Pallaver 2014). The mechanisms to safeguard the rights of each linguistic group in the Province of Bolzano mean that SVP must include at least two Italian speakers in the eleven person provincial cabinet. Thanks to a law

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introduced 31^st January 2001, Ladins may be included, even if their appointment proportionally over-represents them with regards to their numerical presence in the territory.

Table 1 shows how the main political parties are seen by Pallaver (2009), a political scientist who specialises in the province’s political system. He divides the main parties by whether they have a presence in the national political scene (i.e. fielding candidates in other places in Italy) or are solely based in the province and region. It should be noted however that these regional parties may still send deputies and senators to the national parliament in Rome, as Südtirolervolkspartei does. Pallaver also differentiates between those who aim themselves at particular language groups and those who seek to appeal across the ethnic/linguistic boundaries. The only regional party aimed specifically at Italian-speakers is Unitalia.

Table 1 The Political Parties of South Tyrol Alto Adige. Adapted from Pallaver 2009:248

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Table 2 shows how these main political parties fared in the 2008 election and the number of seats won for the period 2008-2013. Of the thirty-five seats in the autonomous

provincial council, Südtirolervolkspartei (SVP) won eighteen out of thirty-five, giving it a simple majority. However the complex arrangements described above mean that SVP must choose a coalition partner which has elected representatives from the Italian-speaking minority, although not necessarily from the party which gained the most seats.

As such, SVP chose Il Partito Democratico (PD), a centre-left Italian party.

Table 2 Seats won by political party - Provincial Council 2008-2013. Adapted from www.retecivica.bz.it

22 1.3 From Then & There to Here & Now

Concepts can only be understood within the context of their times. This is even more true of whole perspectives, whose concepts have their meaning primarily in terms of each other, of how they make up a set.

(Wallerstein 2004:1)

In this section I look to present key events and people, from the distant past to the

historical present. Or following Wallerstein above, I seek to identify the ‘concepts…within the context of their times’, found during research, in discourse about language (but also territory) in the province. The aim is to illuminate what follows in the data chapters, rather than provide a chronological history of the geographic region, as interesting as that may be. I discovered and came to include this historical information in broadly two ways and although I cover the methodology in greater depth in the following chapter, it is worth a brief mention here. The first approach was through background reading at and near the beginning of the research process. The second approach was ethnographic, that is, by interrogating the data in the chapters that follow. This means that there is an emphasis, especially as we move closer to the present, on discourses and social action through time which focus on language and/in education, place names and the Fascist-era monuments which still stand in the province and city of Bolzano-Bozen.

The events, characters and ultimately ideas which are presented here have become deeply semiotic. They enter discourse, index something and mean something. However

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what they mean today when compared to the past – what is remembered or forgotten, backgrounded or foregrounded – provides insight into the itineraries of certain discourses (after Scollon 2008), and the discourse processes themselves, as social action and

discourse in the present index social action and discourse in the past, as exemplars of Bakhtinian chronotopes (Bakhtin 1981).