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The Transformation of Italian Politics, 1990-1996

Between 1990 and 1996, Italy went through a profound political transformation. During this time, Italy's three largest parties and entire party system collapsed; a new electoral law was promulgated; nearly a third of Italy's members of Parliament, two former Prime Ministers, and several important business leaders were indicted in a massive corruption scandal; and several other key figures were assassinated in a wave of violence. This period also marks the entrance into government of two political parties that had been excluded since the end of the Second World War: the former Communists and the former Fascists. It also marks the entrance of the Lega Nord and of Silvio Berlusconi and his party, Forza Italia into Italian politics.

In the academic literature, the political system that existed between the end of the war and the transition period is often called "the First Italian Republic"; the period since then is therefore called "the Second Republic". The choice of these terms is deliberate, for they impute a revolutionary character on the transformation. During this time, there was no coup, no mass protest movement, and no constitutional amendment. On the other hand, a group of excluded parties forced institutional change on a hostile incumbent government, and went on to replace it; by landslide margins Italian voters approved referendums to limit political parties' power; and a new electoral law was passed, dramatically altering the behavior of political parties and the composition of parliament.

Whether or not this was an actual revolution is a semantic issue; Italian politics has been radically changed.

[edit] You Can't tell the Players without a Scorecard

[edit] The Political System of the First Republic

Prior to the political transformation, Italy had a stable, stagnant, corrupt party system. Its main features were short-lived coalition governments; amorphous centrist governments led by the DC; insulation of political elites from the will of the electorate; and, non-ideological public policy built around political patronage and pork-barrel spending. Legislation took the form of microlegislation -- regulations and allocations taylored to specific circumstances. The system rested on the following institutional factors:

[edit] The Proportional Representation Electoral System.^[1]

Italy was divided into 27 electoral districts, and seats in the two houses of the Italian Parliament (the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies) were divided within those districts proportional to the votes earned by a particular party. On average this meant that a party needed to receive around 2% of the national vote to enter Parliament.

This suited most parties' preferences. The mainstream parties were fragmented and the PCI was Italy's second-largest party. A PR system allowed each of them to enter parliament, where they would be able to form coalitions with each other, thereby excluding the PCI from government. A majoritarian system would have risked PCI-led government. At the same time, the system served the PCI. The left-wing vote was split between the PCI and the PSI, and PR ensured its entrance into parliament. The system also served the small parties' interests.

Not only did the PR system allow small parties to enter parliament, it in fact encouraged factionalism: there were few institutional consequences for breaking from a larger party. In the 1960s, the Italian parliament had on average 14 parties represented. In the 1960s, this rose to 17 parties. Seeking a consensus among such a large number of actors proved very difficult, and the PR system contributed heavily to Italy's tradition of short-lived governments.

The main loser was the Italian electorate, who had to suffer through unstable government (though, to be sure, the entertainment it provided fit with Italians' sense of drama). More importantly, the PR system insulated party elites from the will of the electorate. The system of preference voting, in which voters were given three or four preferences on a party list, actually enabled party leaders to select their (faction's) preferred candidates for the entering parliament by creatively interpreting the results. While the parliament was broadly representative of the electorate, the government was formed through back-room deals and did not reflect the will of the electorate.

Although it was the second-largest party, the PCI never entered government.

[edit] The Conventio ad Excludendum.

A Communist-led government was unthinkable in a NATO state and among most of the Italian electorate. This was the ideological foundation behind 40 years of DC-led government: only the DC could guarantee exclusion of the PCI. Because it was able to do so, the electorate was willing to be able to put up with its government.

The exclusion of the PCI grossly magnified the pivotal role played by the smaller parties while entrenching the DC and its elite in power. As there was no viable opposition, there was little to induce strong electoral alliances or permanent governments with the DC. Coalitions were made and broken for the benefit of the party, not the the electorate.

It also meant that there could be no alteration in government. The electorate could not reject one set of policies and embrace another; Italian government was not ideological and converged on an amorphous center, at least in terms of policy. Because parties were not able to sell ideologies, the sold the next best thing: patronage, pork-barrel projects, and favors for special interests. Over time this became egregiously corrupt.

The MSI, the former Fascist party, was also perpetually excluded from government. As it was mostly a fringe party on the right, the effects of this were less severe.

[edit] Consensual politics.^[2]

Consensualism is a term to describe a political system comprising mutually exclusive political parties, in this case the PCI vis-a-vis the other parties, and the way to deal with that divide. The PCI recognized its perpetual exclusion in the late 1950s, and came to abandon its fealty to the Soviet Union after the Prague Spring in 1968. Coalitions comprised several parties with different interests, and a vote on a bill from the PCI was as good as any. By seeking legislative support from the PCI, the governmental parties were able to co-opt it.

Consensualism benefited the governmental parties because enabled the passage of legislation, and because it toned down the rhetoric and vitriol of the PCI. Consensualism benefited the PCI because gave them a role in government. Its exclusion from government meant that it offered voters little other than its (radical) ideology. By participating in the legislative process, the PCI was able to develop its own patronage networks via microlegislation, specifically to the benefit of the one of the largest labor unions, the CGIL, and those regions it controlled in municiple government, mainly in the center of the country. At the same time, the PCI was able to play the role of opposition, and garner votes from its core base of support.

[edit] Scambi occulti and franchi tiratori

Scambi occulti and franchi tiratori are terms that mean "secret vote" and "sniper voters". The Italian parliament used for some bills a system of secret voting, in order to guard the safety of MPs from reprisal outside of parliament, and to give them some freedom from the parties' leaderships. As votes of no confidence could be attached to individual bills, this enabled individual MPs who were dissatisfied with the composition of the current government to bring it down, which contributed to instability in Italian government. At best, this stymied the legislative process.

This institutional factor is less important than the other three, and was abolished in 1988.

In short then, many of the problems associated with Italian government stem from these institutional factors. The exclusion of the PCI removed ideology from Italian politics and magnified the role played by small parties. The PR electoral system enabled the small parties to enter parliament, and insulated political elites from the electorate. Together they gave few incentives against factionalism, and introduced centripedal forces into coalition politics, leading to governmental instability. That created the opportunity for the governmental parties to co-opt opposition from the PCI; indeed, much of the system's durability rested on its ability to convince politicians to go along with it. And without an ideological basis beyond anti-communism, Italian governments had little way of earning votes other than through patronage networks, which proved highly susceptible to corruption.

[edit] The Italian Social System

At the same time, the political system rested on the social system that existed in Italy at the end of the war. At that time, Italy was still a highly agricultural society. Industry was confined to the north of the country and around Rome, while Sicily and the Mezzogiorno (southern peninsular Italy) were downright backwards. The majority of the electorate was both Catholic and anti-communist. The DC was able to exploit this: its clericalism and anti-communism provided a unifying (if insubstantial) ideology, and invested considerable state resources the South, preventing a resurgence of Fascism in the region. Often such resources ended up in the hands of the Mafia, particularly Cosa Nostra in Sicily. Returning the favor, the Mafia completed the patronage-based political machine by means of intimidation, bribery, and vote-rigging.

Like Germany, Italy had its own Wirtschaftswunder after the war; its GDP even surpassed that of Great Britain in 1987,^[3] albeit temporarily. Italy's socio-economic development undermined the social system upon which its political system rested. Economic growth induced rapid urbanization and rural-urban migration, particularly from poor regions in the south. With urbanization comes secularization, evidenced -- shockingly so at the time -- by the 1972 referendum that annulled Italy's divorce law. It's Catholicism became less of an advantage to the DC.

2,000 Italian lire, or about € 1.03. Recurring devaluations and a weak currency benefitted Italian exports. As Italy developed a service economy, that became less important.

More importantly, as the economy grew, voters became more and more interested in the quality of their government. Although the ownership in the Italian economy was still based on family-controlled enterprises, rather than stock markets or large banks as in other countries, the Italian public still had a very large interest in guarding its property from state interference; given the levels of corruption, such interference was always a danger. Meanwhile, the international market into which Italy was integrated required stable rules of the game that allow for long-term planning, rather than advantages gained through personal contacts (including bribery). Similarly, Italy has traditionally had a weak currency, and often devalued its currency. This made Italian exports more competitive by reducing their cost on the international market. At the same time, this, and market-distorting government waste, caused high levels of inflation, typically over 10% per year. As the size of Italy's service sector grew, the benefits accrued to the export sector by this policy became less important to the overall economy. And as the general wealth of the population grew, Italians became more and more concerned for the value of the currency in which it was denominated. Finally, the Italian public -- especially in the North -- or at least those members of the Italian public not benefitting from patronage networks, grew tired of the levels of waste in their government. It should be no surprise that the Italian political transition came on the heals of an international neoliberal movement and the Maastricht Treaty, or that it took place within a deep recession.

The Italian electorate's greatest priority was preventing the PCI from entering government, and as long as the threat of communism existed, major reform was unlikely. That should not imply that they did not attempt to correct the problems they saw. The first party to capitalize was the PSI, which, under the leadership of Bettino Craxi since 1979, abandoned its socialist principles and became, in the eyes of its critics, a party of yuppies. In the 1980s the PSI increased its electoral strength by chanting slogans of reform, and Craxi became prime minister in 1983 -- the first prime minister not from the DC. Unfortunately, the PSI soon became simply a vehicle for Craxi himself, who was opposed to any reform that did not benefit himself or his party. In fact, Craxi and the PSI came to symbolize all that was wrong with Italian government.

Rather, it was the Lega Nord, and then later Forza Italia, that would successfully exploit the electorate's dissatisfaction.

[edit] The Challengers: The PDS and the Lega Nord

Umberto Bossi: "La Lega ce l'ha duro!"

[edit] The Referendum Campaign

[edit] The 1992 Election

[edit] Tangentopoli

Giovanni Falcone, public prosecutor, assassinated May 23, 1992

Silvio Berlusconi and Bettino Craxi in 1984.

[edit] The April 1993 Referendum and the New Electoral Law

[[Image:CarloAzeglioCiampi.jpg|thumb|left|110px|Carlo Ciampi headed a "technocratic" government, 1993-1994]

[edit] The Run-up to the 1994 General Election

[edit] Berlusconi's First Government

[[Image:Berlusconi stalin.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister of an unlikely coalition]]

[edit] Dini's Government

Lamberto Dini headed Italy's second "technocratic" government, 1994-1996

[edit] The 1996 General Election, and Beyond

[edit] Conclusion

[edit] References

1. ^ For a thorough discussion of the concepts raised here, see Carles Boix (1999). "Setting the Rules of the Game: The Choice of Electoral Systems in Advanced Democracies." The American Political Science Review, Vol. 93, No. 3. (Sept., 1999).
2. ^ See Fabbrini, Sergio (2000). "Political Change without Institutional Transformation: What Can We Learn from the Italian Crisis of the 1990s?" International Political Science Review, Vol. 21, No. 2.
3. ^ See the survey from The Economist, "Adio Dolce Vita", November 2005.

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