William Lee Eubank, Arun Gangopadahay and Leonard B. Weinberg, "Italian Communism in Crisis: A Study in Exit, Voice and Loyalty," Party Politics , 2 (January, 1996), 55-75.

First Paragraph:
Rarely do partisan ideas expressed in open political discourse conjoin with the abstract concepts of social science. However, Achille Occhetto's ideas for the reformation of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), advanced immediately following the fall of the Berlin Wall, set in motion contending forces who advanced their arguments in the language used by Hirschman (1970) in his discussion of Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. This convergence provides us with the unusual opportunity to apply these ideas to an organization in a state of decline and to test them empirically.

Figures and Tables:
Table 1: Votes for motions and membership change.
Table 2: Support for motions and electoral support.
Table 3: Rifondazione Comunista membership.
Table 4: Internal-external relationships.
Table 5: PCI-far left electoral differences.
Table 6: PCI-far left electoral relationships.
Table 7: Regression analysis.

Last Paragraph:
In a general sense our findings emphasize the applicability of Hirschman's ideas to the phenomenon of change in political party organizations.However, in our view, the concept of loyalty in particular requires reconceptualization in order for it to capture the intense feelings often at work when political parties undergo radical change.