The first camp consisted of those groups Communists, Socialists, Actionists, generally supported by the working class that wished to enact a political and social revolution on the basis of the Resis- 6 Political Change in Post-War Italy tance, or at least to enact a radical reform of the socio-economic order. The second camp consisted of those groups the Christian Democrats and Liberals PLI supported by the Allies, the Monarchy, the Vatican, the large industrial groups and the existing state personnel that wished to retain the status quo, or at least some version of it, by resisting any structural changes to the old order.
The power struggle was played out on two levels: At the first level day-to-day government , despite the aspirations of the Resistance movement to achieve a break with the past, the conservative forces gradually re- established control, and 'a political, administrative and economic settlement emerged, far more moderate than had seemed conceivable in April ' Woolf b: This was facilitated by the willingness of the left to compromise on many issues or not to oppose developments taking place.
Purges of state personnel were brought to an end, and the bureaucracy rapidly expanded. The Constituent Assembly was denied legislative powers and the right to decide on the Monarchy's fate. The capitalist economy was refounded through the return of industrialists who had fled during the Liberation and the emergence of powerful industrial groups reminiscent of the liberal and Fascist orders. Some Fascist corporative structures and state monopolies survived, and these, combined with informal agreements which restricted competition, provided the foundations for the development of large state and private monopolies, which exploited both American aid and the economic boom of the s.
Accusations of patronage and corruption quickly became rife Woolf b: The left's reluctant acceptance of this 'inverting' situation derived from two factors. On the one hand, the Communist leader Togliatti recognized the constraints imposed by the international situation, and especially the American pressure being brought to bear on the Prime Minister, De Gasperi.
On the other hand, Togliatti's optimism about the progressive nature of Christian Democracy and the hkely continuation of the grand coalition of three major parties was misguided Ginsborg Certainly, by the time the elections to the Constituent Assembly were held in , the forces of conservatism had largely reasserted themselves, and the so-called wind from the North was spent.
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De Gasperi's decision in May to exclude the two main left-wing parties from government completed this trend, constituting 'an important moment in the process by which Christian Democracy acquired a conservative label and Italian pol- itics were polarized into two irreconcilable, almost uncommunicating, extremes' Mack Smith This increased the importance of what could be achieved in the drafting of the Con- stitution the second level. It is here that the differences between the two camps' con- ceptions of the post-war order surfaced most clearly.
True, the common fear was, perhaps inevitably, the 'dictatorial abuse of executive power' Allum The Christian Democ- rats and their allies wanted a Constitution characterized by a strong system of 'checks and balances'. They argued that the Fascist experience had demonstrated the dangers of concentrating too much power in one branch of government. However, it was evident that the position was also motivated by fear of a left-wing majority attempt- ing to drive through sociahst reforms. They also wanted recognition of Catholicism as Political Change in Post-War Italy 7 the official state rehgion through incorporation of the Lateran Pacts, giving special privileges to the clergy, as well as the outlawing of divorce.
The parties of the left, although renouncing a claim to a socialist Constitution because the conditions, Togliatti said, were not right aspired to what was described as a 'pro- gressive democratic' republic. Their focus was less on the Fascist abuse of parliamentary democracy than on the weaknesses of the liberal order that had allowed fascism to come to power in the first place. Their proposals were to locate power in a single-chamber National Assembly, which would allow the 'will of the people' to prevail, and to incor- porate in the Constitution a number of social and economic rights, or 'positive free- doms'.
Their inclusion would provide a constitutional justification for - if not an obligation on - future governments to carry through policies of a socialist nature.
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The overall result of this confrontation was a curious compromise, aptly captured in Piero Calamandrei's comment that, 'To compensate the left-wing parties for their failure to effect a revolution, the right-wing forces did not oppose the inclusion in the Constitution of the promise of a revolution'. Besides containing rights to work, to participate in the management of firms, to strike, and to receive a reasonable living wage, the Constitution also places an obligation on the state to address social and economic inequalities, and private enterprise can be limited with an aim to ensuring its 'social function'.
This was secured through several constitutional guarantees: The compromise was the outcome more of a series of hard fights and votes over incompatible proposals than of an effort to overcome differences in the name of anti- Fascist unity. True, there were moments when the latter appeared to prevail e. This had the effect of ensuring that several of the final articles were either self-contradictory or contradicted by other articles, or so watered down as to be largely meaningless.
In short, the Constitution 'left all options and all solutions open: The judiciary, in fact, did not wait on the Chris- tian Democratic victory in the April elections to snuff out the 'promise' of a rev- olution. In a ruling in February , the unpurged Court of Cassation established a constitutional distinction between norms that were subject to immediate enforcement [norme precettizie and those that were 'programmatic' and could therefore only be 8 Political Change in Post-War Italy achieved at a later date. This not only nullified the intents of the proposers of the more progressive aspects of the Constitution, but at the same time justified the subsequent failure to repeal a large part of the Fascist penal code.
This was subsequently used by Minister of the Interior, Mario Scelba, to create a large police force, suppress left-wing protests, and deny freedoms guaranteed by the new Constitution Neppi Modona The judiciary as a whole became notorious for its uneven treatment of Fascist crimes which often went unpunished compared with partisan offences which were vehemently prosecuted, even when the offences were trivial. The abundance of acquit- tals of Fascists and prosecutions of partisans 'seriously called into question the idea that the anti-Fascist "values of the Resistance" were in any way integral to the iden- tity of the new Republic' Duggan Perhaps more serious was the impact of the Christian Democratic election victory on the organizational aspects of the Constitution.
Many of these had remained a 'promise' too, because it was up to Parliament to pass the necessary enabling legisla- tion. However, having secured an electoral majority, the Christian Democrats and their allies lost their enthusiasm for 'checks and balances', and various institutions were established only after considerable delay: The failure to implement the regional system meant that the Prefect and the centralized state remained in full force.
In the case of the National Council of the Economy and Labour, the enabling legisla- tion effectively emasculated it as an organ with any influence. The left, on the other hand, despite having opposed various aspects of the Constitution, became the most ardent supporter of its full implementation. To summarize, despite the prominence of anti-Fascist unity, the post-war settlement was characterized by a power struggle, one that took on an increasingly polarized char- acter as the Cold War rapidly developed. In that struggle the left was unequivocally defeated.
Its failure to secure an electoral majority in the first elections of the new Republic was only one aspect of this defeat. Already there were strong elements of continuity with the old state, the s and s being characterized by 'a curiously schizophrenic climate This was made easier by the fact that the popular passions aroused by the Resistance and the Republic were increasingly overshadowed by an alternative view: From this perspective, Fascism had less to do with Italians than with 'a cast of outlandish buffoons' who had now been removed from the scene; the experience was not, therefore, to be taken seriously.
Neo-fascism was quickly reborn as a party the Italian Social Movement, MSI and commanded a small but significant and growing vote, and the fear of a return to fascism constituted an important part of left-wing culture in the s Duggan All of this undermined both in feeling and substance the notion that a break with the past had occurred. While the most visible continuities were with what had just passed fascism , perhaps of more significance were the continuities with the charac- Political Change in Post-War Italy 9 teristics of the liberal order that had preceded Fascism, characteristics that Fascism had not changed in any way, since it had been unaccompanied by any socio-economic rev- olution.
If one were to summarize rather brutally the main deficiencies of the liberal order , one would emphasize the low legitimacy of the regime as a con- sequence of several factors: Indeed, as the Christian Democratic 'party regime' developed in the post-war period, it became apparent that the features persisting since Unification had remained intact, albeit often in modified form.
The parochial outlook of Italians continued to bedevil attempts to forge a national state and identity; up to a third of the popula- tion's votes were - in effect - wasted as a result of the conventio ad excludendum 'exclusion convention' operated by the parties to bar the Communists and for a short period Socialists from power; the south remained underdeveloped and became, through patronage, one of the pillars of Christian Democratic power; the nature of the party system ensured that there was no alternation in government, but only 'periph- eral turnover'; the centralized system of government remained firmly in place; and the absence of state authority in the face of other power centres became commonplace.
However, of the various differences between the features of the liberal order and the post-war Republic, one stood out above all others: Trasformismo, as a formula for perennial rule, had been predicated on the absence of disciplined mass parties. The post-war settlement witnessed a rapid change in this respect; but if this was a sign of political maturity, when overlaid with the other deficiencies, it also had some less welcome consequences. The Italian political system until the 1 s There is little doubt that the new parties served a purpose that had gone unfulfilled under Fascism and the liberal order: However, if before , there could be said to have been a merging of party strategies and national interests, this was no longer the case once the Cold War descended on Europe Battente In Italy, this was because of the electoral strength of the left-wing parties, and especially the PCI, and the perceived threat it constituted through its links with the Soviet Union.
The domestic political situation therefore represented a microcosm of the international Cold War and the tensions prevailing therein. When combined with the Fascist experience from which the country was just emerging, it caused a grave legit- imacy deficit, with Italian citizens feeling alienation, mistrust and detachment from the political system e.
Apart from religion, civil society - in terms of civic, professional, cultural and interest groups - was weakly organized and certainly incapable of providing a foundation for the development of party politics, as had occurred in many other European democracies Pasquino b: In a Cold War situation, the parties' subsequent integrative capacities heavily condi- tioned the manner in which consolidation of the regime occurred. As different interpretations of the party system have indicated, the DC was, to some extent, compelled to govern indefinitely by the situation in which it found itself see chapter 3.
Hence, the 'exclusion convention' which became the pivot on which the party system developed. It might be concluded from this - and from the destiny of the post-war settlement - that the DCs long period of rule was predicated on winning an 'ideological war' through a forceful and coherent strategy to establish and maintain hegemony, even at the cost of harsh repression of the left.
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Some evidence, furthermore, would tend to support this thesis: Yet, if a DC plan to retain power existed, it was more complex and less coherent than this, if for no other reason than the fact that the outcome of the 'swindle law' and the Tambroni government demonstrated that a forceful hegemonic strategy was not viable. If it had been, then the result might have been an outlawing of the PCI; but De Gasperi resisted American pressures to do just this because of his fear that it would prompt a civil war Leonardi While the parties were engaged both publicly and secretly in an 'ideological war', the leaders of the parties were careful not to allow either the public image or the subterranean reality to translate into a con- frontation in general political practice, because of their fear of the consequences see chapter 6.
It was, therefore, a war in which neither side was prepared ever to engage in battle at least in public. In this way, 'ideology - paradoxically - did not divide, but unite; or, better, united at the same time as dividing' Mastropaolo Italian polity and society were, therefore, structured around two competing 'churches', or solidarity systems, with the two main parties acting to mobilize and rein- force their respective worlds, since their legitimacy depended on them. This structured and stabilized voting behaviour and integrated the working classes into the political system see chapter 4.
The modus vivendi between party elites, meanwhile, allowed Political Change in Post-War Italy I I them to operate the rules of plurahstic democracy and achieve economic growth Mastropaolo , at the same time as the presence of extremist elements at the subterranean level reinforced hostility and destabilized any attempt to reduce ideologi- cal polarization. This competitive structuring had a significant impact on the State, since it led to the development of a 'spoils system', originating in the weakness of the DCs organization and its fragmented and fragile social base, Catholicism and anti-communism see chap- ters 2 and 4.
In the s, the Church was replaced by the State as 'the decisive pole of party activity'. Party reorganization in the s, and the extension of the state sector into the economy combined with an absence of formal state funding of parties until prompted a transformation of the DC from what were two distinct party types a party of notables in the south and a mass party in the north into a form of 'catch-air party resembling a national 'syndicate of political machines' AUum The State became the vehicle by which the DC could provide the resources to make its electoral constituencies more secure.
Yet, in keeping with the DCs aim of avoiding increased polarization and an actual confrontation, the 'spoils system' was not exclusive; rather, it included not only the ruling coalition partners but also, over time, the main opposition party powerless to prevent it, but finding that the system suited its own institutional strategy. The DCs hegemony, in short, was 'soft', rather than monopolistic and rigorously imposed Tarrow It was partly the product of the party's own strategic decisions, but also of the peculiarities of the Italian situa- tion and the responses of other parties to that situation.
This was due to the monopoly of party control exercised over government, on the one hand, and institutions, the economy and culture, on the other e. The consolidation of democracy in Italy occurred, therefore, through the tute- lage, or 'democratic pedagogy', of the parties, which provided channels through which citizens learnt the culture, values and procedures of democracy Nevola If this compensated for but did not solve the problem of the lack of legitimacy Morlino c , it also carried with it an inevitable degenerative impact on govern- ment, institutions, the economy and political culture.
The authority of the Prime Minister, Cabinet and Parliament were all undermined by the strength and dictates of the parties. This instability was overlaid with aspects of enduring stability in terms of the political parties making up the successive governing coalitions, the ministerial class and policy immobilism. Vassallo uses two dimensions to measure the strength of party government - the power of nomination or resources of patronage, on the one hand, and the degree of policy direction exercised, on the other - and Italian party government was strong only in relation to the former.
Italian policy making lacked any sense of broader national interest. It became geared towards producing leggine 'little laws' for clien- 12 Political Change in Post- War Italy telistic constituencies, and factionalism inside the main governing party grew as a con- sequence of the struggle for control over the vehicles of patronage Pasquino ; Dente ; Cotta and Isernia These effects had significant implications for institutions, the economy and political culture.
Dahrendorf argues that the well-being of nations - the extent to which integration of society occurs - depends not just on citizens' access to the market eco- nomic resources , but also on their access to politics and culture entitlements. The development and guaranteeing of entitlements on a universal basis, moreover, depends on democratic institutions.
Institutions become the basis for the diffuse sense of citi- zenship and identification with democracy March and Olsen In Italy, as Car- tocci argues, the economy successfully produced provisions, but institutions failed to produce universal entitlements. Due to the primordial role of political parties, institutions failed to function on the basis of efficiency and availability to all.
When an institution becomes regulated by sectional or partisan rather than universalistic criteria, the capacity of the institution to promote integration in society declines. En- titlements which place citizens on an equal basis effectively become provisions: Institutions become a cause of social disaggregation because people 'cede entitlements to obtain provisions'. Consequently, in Italy, 'a culture of favours prevails progressively over that of rights', and institutions are held in low esteem Cartocci This explains the persistence of strong subcul- tures, as well as cultural traits such as 'amoral familism' - originally defined by Ban- field as the inability to act together to achieve any common good beyond the material interest of the nuclear family - both of which have hindered the construction of a national identity and sense of community see chapter 3.
On the contrary, party penetra- tion of what was the largest state sector of the economy in the Western world affected not only the nature of that sector but also the structure of, and competition within, the private sector see chapter Italian capitalism took on a distinctive character, dominated by a clannish power structure, which involved collusive practices and pro- tection from competition through a network involving a few big banks, large private industry, state holding companies and political parties.
Economic growth, moreover, was characterized by structural and territorial distortions, where the most spectacular successes occurred in areas and sectors where state regulation could be avoided and where political subcultures were strong see chapter This 'model' of the Italian political system was not, of course, unchanging. However, the paradox was that the main features of change worked together to undermine the stabilities on which it rested, thereby making an 'earthquake', if not inevitable, at least increasingly likely by the s.
The denouement of the system In the course of the post-war period, Italian society became increasingly secularized and modernized. This was combined with a decline of ideological hostility and the effective end of the 'Communist question' see chapter 4. The sapping of two of the Political Change in Post-War Italy 1 3 pillars of DC support Catholicism and anti-communism was compounded by the fact that the party's social base was strongest amongst two declining population groups - peasants and the independent middle class - and weakest amongst two growing groups: If this was a factor contributing to a rising tide of societal dissent, it also had two other effects.
The decline of Catholicism and anti-communism increased the party's dependence on its third pillar of support patronage , and these changes in class structure made impera- tive a widening of the DCs political alliance. This widening occurred first through the PSI and later the PCI in a more restricted and short-term manner that failed.
The dissent that manifested itself in the late s and the s was, wherever possible, accommodated or bought off. The widening of the alliance, in its turn, increased further the pressures on the party's patronage system as the newcomers expected a share of the spoils. This was not a problem while the economy was experiencing growth, but once this was called into question in the s, the public deficit and debt began to spiral upwards under a combination of patronage and the accommodation of dissent see chapter 2.
In this way, the logic of the system began to outlive its origins. By the s Italy had become a modern society with ideology and traditional forms of militancy and social conflict in decline, and the international environment undergoing rapid change. These changes, while sapping the strength of the main parties, rendered obsolete the 'exclusion convention', thereby destroying the main rationale on which the system had rested the need to avoid a full-scale confrontation.
Yet, the parties, trapped within a clientelistic power logic, were unable and unwilling to draw the consequences of these changes in terms of either adapting their organizations in the way that other European parties were doing Barnes or modifying existing political alliances to prompt alternation in government. Instead, energies were channelled into vainly experimenting with neo-corporatist and institutional attempts at reforming the anomalies of the system Mastropaolo Neo-corporatism was never likely to succeed, in view of the peculiar nature of the way in which State-interest group relations had developed in the post-war period, constrained as they were within a 'partitocratic' logic see chapter 5.
Even in the pres- ence of the supposed conditions facilitating it, neo-corporatism did not function, and was eventually killed off by the referendum on the scala mobile Bull ; Lange Institutional reform was launched by Bettino Craxi PSI leader in , and was combined with his attempt to make more powerful the Prime Minister's office.
The issue dominated Italian political debate thereafter see chapter 7.
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Yet, reform attempts were constantly sabotaged by the parties themselves, 'which feared that one way or another any institutional reform might curtail their power or their political rents, that is the advantages they were drawing from their political location in the party system and institutional system' Pasquino The impression was that the debate was designed to do little more than publicize an apparent commitment to reform.
The decline of the ideological premiss on which the system was based, but the failure of the parties to draw the consequences, increased the dependence on patronage and spoils, and the system began to degenerate. This degeneration was reinforced by the fact that those operating at the subterranean level had abandoned the strategy of anti- 14 Political Change in Post- War Italy Communist coup and terrorist threats in favour of securing influence over the system through more subtle methods involving finance and corruption see chapter 6.
Over time the relationship between clientelistic tendencies, maladministration and organized crime produced a level of corruption that became systemic. The pentapartito governing coalition that ruled Italy in the s became increasingly obsessed with lottizzazione 'sharing out' , their programmes being based on a systematic and corrupt distribution of the country's resources to retain power and shore up legitimacy Pasquino The economic boom of the s encouraged this profligacy, despite the fact that the boom was achieved on the basis of an eco- nomic model whose distortions were still growing.
In fact, the decade witnessed a growing public deficit and public debt that, in the long run, would be hard to sustain, but which were not tackled by the political class see chapter 2.
All of this, moreover, ran counter to the demands of the broader international system, which were becoming increasingly difficult to meet see chapters 10 and Financial markets were demanding higher interest rates on Italian debt; the EU through its regulations was forcibly opening the Italian economy to foreign compe- tition; and new corporate regulations were making it increasingly difficult to sustain the existing collusive and clannish practices.
Economic internationalization and the EU were introducing 'a new style of politics into southern Europe, based more on north- ern "Protestant" or "technocratic" norms which fit ill alongside the personalised, clien- telistic politics of the south' Bull and Rhodes a: The structural adjustments needed to thrive, if not survive, in this changing economic system could not be carried through by the existing regime Guzzini If all this suggests that there was a certain inevitability about the denouement of the system Bull and Rhodes a: There were four key factors that became intertwined.
The first two opened up two 'fault lines' in Italian politics that facilitated and enhanced the impact of the other two factors. First, the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the transforma- tion of the PCI into a non-Communist party of the left effectively ended the 'Communist question'.
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It should also have had an effect on the ruling parties, but the reaction of the DC and the PSI to the PCI's operation was cynical and arrogant, if not disbelieving. It had always been assumed that the resolution of the 'Communist question' would place pressure on the governing parties to come to terms with the new party. However, the PCI's transformation was a protracted affair, lasting fifteen months, and threw the party into the deepest crisis of its history.
For the DC and the PSI, therefore, locked into a stagnant power-sharing arrangement, symbol- ized by what was known as the CAF Craxi-Andreotti-Forlani axis, it became appar- ent that coming to terms with the former Communists might not be necessary at all. They seriously misread the seriousness of the situation and the wave of public indignation and protest that was about to engulf them. These adjustments could be realized only through raising taxation, which would be unpop- ular, and reducing public expenditure, which would undermine the parties' power base.
Failing to qualify, and thus relegating Italy to Europe's 'slow lane', was not a feasible option in a country so enthusiastic about European integration. In this way, the single currency exploded the contradiction that had been at the heart of Italy's 'flawed Euro- peanism' throughout the post-war period. Its long-term enthusiastic pro-European stance had been consistently contradicted by the country's concomitant failure to bring its political and economic structures up to the European average as well as its failure to play a more productive role at the European policy-making level itself.
This con- tradiction was a product of the blocked nature of the political system. Paradoxically, it was precisely the impact of European integration that assisted in ending the anom- alies of the political system, and allowed Italy's 'flawed Europeanism' to begin to be overcome. Third, the judiciary began to uncover the pervasive corruption present in the system, and public prosecutors were given encouragement by the changed domestic and inter- national situation to pursue this ever more vehemently see chapter 8.
For them, the end of the Cold War meant that the governing parties could be thoroughly investigated without the prospect, if toppled, of bringing to power an anti-system party. The results of the April elections significantly denting the governing parties' electoral strengths and the prominence and support given to the anti-corruption campaign rein- forced the judiciary's determination, and also made it more difficult for politicians to employ their usual practices of insabbiatnento 'covering up' in relation to 'incon- venient' investigations.
Finally, small and large entrepreneurs proved willing to confess, volunteering detailed information about their bribe taking and the politicians involved Newell b: Fourth, the long-term high levels of popular dissatisfaction with Italian democracy were finally translated into a serious protest against the regime Morlino and Tarchi Previously, this dissatisfaction had been kept in check by the presence of 'constraining factors' the regime's anti-fascism and the anti-Communist role of the DC.
The declining efficacy of these factors was evidenced in the emergence of new parties and protest movements notably the Northern League and the referendum movement, which secured the abolition of preference voting in Subsequently, several 'incentives' for protest also emerged: What followed was nothing short of dramatic. In the period between the April and March elections, nearly all of the main political parties suffered organiza- tional and electoral collapse the PCI and the MSI surviving through changing their names , and the political class was decimated.
New and in some cases recycled politi- cians, parties and alliances came on to the scene see chapter 3. A decade of political change has followed, which has been gradually reshaping the Italian polity. The sheer drama of what hap- pened in the early s, with the focus on politicians and political parties and the key role they played in the First Republic, gave the impression that a veritable revo- lution or palace coup was taking place Gilbert This tended to direct attention towards the collapse of the political parties as constituting the essential motivating factor for the changes across the Italian polity that occurred subsequently and are still occurring.
Yet, while it is undeniable that the transformation in the parties constituted an important cause of changes that subsequently took place Newell b: The dra- matic changes in party politics, therefore, should be seen less as the beginning of a process of fundamental change across the system, than as the first and most dramatic moment of change, as a consequence of long-term international and domestic pres- sures being exerted on the old order.
The subsequent party transformation acted as a catalyst and prism for those changes, as well as causing other changes to occur. The long-term pressures, moreover, did not disappear once the parties had collapsed. As noted above, one can, broadly speaking, identify two 'fault lines' running through the current Italian system: The collapse of the parties in the early s, while putting an end to some key aspects of the old regime, did not automatically reform the system in such a way as to enable it to cope better with these pressures. Rather, the collapse and reconfiguration of the parties provided the potential for this, by ending the monopoly of power of the old governing parties and, it was hoped, making way for the establishment of a new political class com- mitted to reform.
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In other words, if there was a palace coup in the s, it involved the removal of specific politicians and parties, not politicians and parties per se. It is difficult to conceive of liberal democracy without political parties, and there was never such a prospect in Italy even though, at the height of the crisis, the parties were not capable of sustaining party government, and the President had to resort to appointing 'technocratic' governments. Consequently, once the 'party political sphere' began to reformulate and reassert itself, it began inevitably to claw back its control over reform and the management of change.
This tendency was reinforced by the easing but not ending of economic pressures once it was known that Italy had qualified for the single currency. However, since the parties had been victims and not vehicles of the changes that occurred in the early s, it was far from inevitable that the reassertion of the party political sphere would produce a reform of the system.
The failure to achieve such a reform - or at least the failure of the changes that have occurred to meet the expectations generated by the revolution in party politics - can be explained by four factors. Political Change in Post- War Italy 1 7 First, the party-political arena itself remains in some turmoil see chapter 3. While the revolution in party politics ended the old party system and produced electoral reform, this did not automatically produce a new, stabilized party system.
There has been a slow process of bipolarization, but the contours of the party system are still prone to considerable change. Second, in this unstable situation, the party political sphere has none the less estab- lished its own dynamic, and political parties their own autonomy, with party strate- gies, as in the past, quickly focusing on party-political interests. Party competition has become embroiled in new issues that have caused deep divisions over questions of reform. This is not to suggest that parties are inherently against reform, but rather that the pressures to agree on reform produced by the sense of crisis and urgency of the early s have long passed.
As long as coalitions remain essential to achieve change, the parties can often act as veto players in relation to reforms that are not seen to be in their interests. Third, this tendency is reinforced by the fact that the party-political sphere is not, of course, autonomous of broader economic and social interests, and in various quar- ters there is still stiff resistance to many of the changes often identified as necessary to open up Italian capitalism see chapter The lobby of politicians, bureaucrats, state holdings managers, financial institutions and trade unionists against the privatization and liberalization of the Italian capitalist model remains strong.
Fourth, the dramatic changes of the early s produced a new dominant political party Forza Italia and politician Silvio Berlusconi , yet whether their putative com- mitment to reforming the political system is genuine remains open to question. Berlus- coni could be viewed as a quintessential product of the First Republic, and someone who launched his political career to try to protect his own personal interests.
Despite his polit- ical rhetoric of reform, he has brought to the heart of Italian government a conflict of interests which has yet to be satisfactorily resolved. This is between his position as Prime Minister and his control of 90 per cent of private television networks, which currently secure 43 per cent of the total average of television viewers. The fact that Berlusconi has been the main political beneficiary of the collapse of the First Republic has had a direct bearing on the reform debate in two interrelated ways.
The first is that policy reforms in several sectors have been subject to fierce oppo- sition at the parliamentary and societal levels because they appear to have been for- mulated with the Prime Minister's judicial and commercial interests in mind. This has applied particularly to three areas: Eurobarometer data, as summarized in Corriere delta Sera, 1 3 May The second way in which Berlusconi's position influences the reform debate is that many of those who once aspired to achieve a strengthening and stabilization of party government now have reservations as to the wisdom of such a development while he remains Prime Minister in a bipolarized system which privileges majority rule, and while the centre left remains so divided that it cannot present a credible governing alternative.
This concern applies particularly to institutional or constitutional reform.
Invisibili
Guerra in tempo di bagni: Parla Gandolin by Luigi Arnaldo Vassallo 4 editions published between and in Italian and held by 19 WorldCat member libraries worldwide. Vassallo Gandolin by Luigi Arnaldo Vassallo Book 13 editions published between and in 3 languages and held by 14 WorldCat member libraries worldwide. Diana ricattatrice by Luigi Arnaldo Vassallo Book 7 editions published between and in 3 languages and held by 12 WorldCat member libraries worldwide.
Guerra in tempo di bagni by Luigi Arnaldo Vassallo Book 5 editions published between and in Italian and Undetermined and held by 10 WorldCat member libraries worldwide. Nel mondo degli invisibili by Luigi Arnaldo Vassallo Book 7 editions published between and in Italian and English and held by 10 WorldCat member libraries worldwide. Gli invisibili by Luigi Arnaldo Vassallo Book 2 editions published in in Italian and held by 9 WorldCat member libraries worldwide. Pensato e Mangiato, il cibo nel vissuto e nell'immaginario degli italiani del XXI secolo. Mito Storia e Tradizione, Diodoro Siculo e la storiografia classica, 2 copie presenti.
Patologia e Terapia delle Faringe, fosse nasali e della laringe, volume secondo. Giurisprudenza Italiana, Rivista Universale di Giurisprudenza, prof. Diagnostica delle Malattie Chirurgiche, traduzione di G. Pascale con 48 incisioni. Dei Metodi Clinici, l'esame degli organi del petto e del ventre compresa Laringoscopia. Istituzione di Anatomia dell'Uomo come base per la fisiologia e per le applicazioni pratiche.
Nuova Enciclopedia Italiana ovvero dizionario generale di scienze lettere industrie vol. Dei Fiori et costumi et cibi ovvero bell'italia venezia milano torino genova firenze roma napoli palermo, 10 copie. Trattato Teorico Pratico di Diritto Civile, delle donazioni fra vivi e dei testamenti. Trattato di Chirurgia Clinica, seconda traduzione italiana Ceccarelli, 2 volumi.