Abstract
This article examines the relations between parental politics and the choice of activists entering radical movements of the communist left or neo-fascist right between the late 1960s and early 1980s in Italy. Analysis reveals a dominant pattern of parent–child continuity that reproduced the main sociopolitical cleavage but also some discontinuity (with activists from non-partisan households over-represented). Overall the findings confirm the importance of primary social networks while also suggesting claims about generational revolt in the postwar West neglect the patterned complexity of intra-family political relations; overstate the importance of discontinuity; and underestimate the resilience of established cleavages.
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