Mirror of Italy

...By the early 1960s, Italy was well on her way to becoming one of the eight leading industrial nations of the world but still lacked a tax and school systems, an approach to agricultural, energy and labor problems, social services and a public administration geared to the requirements of twentieth century society...

...The Christian Democrats are in many ways the children or the grandchildren of the Popular party founded in 1919 by Don Luigi Sturzo...

...The keys to this apparent paradox can be found in the nature of the party and in the circumstances attending its rise to power...

...After World War II, the country has actually had more than forty governments and most of them have been in trouble throughout their precarious tenure...

...Most of the measures agreed upon when the PCI gave its support to an all-Christian-Democratic government were blocked or watered down...

...As a result, for the first time in five years, the government is again a center-left coalition which includes the Socialists, while the PCI stays in the opposition and may be confronted again with the threat of political isolation...

...Even some of the Christian Democrats' major achievements have been marred by their shortcomings and mistakes...

...In the following years, Italy went through a strong but disorderly boom, fueled mostly by a steep rise in productivity and a slow increase in wages...

...Complete failure has been the lot of those Catholic activists who, out of frustrated ambition and/or intellectual arrogance, have moved into the Communist camp and have tried to use the media controlled or influenced by the PCI to appeal for defections from the Christian Democratic ranks...

...Yet since late 1945 the Christian Democrats have retained control of the premiership as well as of most key Cabinet posts, successfully turning down all challenges to their unity and primacy at the polls...

...and the Atlantic alliance with an outdated social and economic status quo in Italy itself...

...Such an oversized victory, however, fueled rather than weakened the conflicting pulls and strains within a party which was already a confederation of forces cutting across the fabric of Italian society and including both militantly conservative and earnestly progressive groups...

...Quite a few Italian and foreign observers concluded that the Christian Democratic party was about to disintegrate and in any case would be soon replaced by the PCI as the major political force in Italy...

...This largely explains why the center-left governments made so little progress in implementing their own pledges of social and institutional modernization and why the Italian economy has yet to emerge from a pattern of runaway inflation and recession...

...The "Popolari," however, quickly withered away after being dumped by the Vatican bent on an accommodation with the Fascist regime...

...This switch was again apparent in the local elections held this June in most parts of Italy, while the PCI failed to recoup its recent losses and the Socialists polled 13 percent of the votes for their best performance since the early 1960s...

...Nor was it surprising that the PCI, as the major opposition party, should be in a position to be the main beneficiary...

...But a great opportunity was lost to attack promptly and vigorously such long-standing problems as tax and land reform, the development of the South and the updating of relations between the state and the citizen...

...The storm was bound to hit the Christian Democrats most forcefully since they were the mainstay of the establishment and widely regarded as the embodiment of its most resented aspects (patronage, corruption, inefficiency, abuses of power, arrogance, or neglect toward popular pressure for change...

...In May 1974, a referendum to repeal a recent law introducing a limited form of divorce turned into a stunning defeat for the Christian Democrats (and for the Catholic church...

...Yet, their domestic policies (and some errors by American diplomacy) have tended to identify the U.S...

...For instance, they have played a key role in making and keeping Italy a loyal partner of NATO...

...On the domestic front, public order was upheld and basic freedoms were protected...

...leadership...

...The revived governmental alliance with the Socialist party, whose young leadership is committed to a reform-minded and pro-Western course, provides the Christian Democrats with another opportunity to promote a more balanced economic growth and to translate its benefits into adequate social and civic progress and thus at last to put Italian democratic institutions on a wider and more solid foundation of popular support...

...Within the center coalition governments, furthermore, Christian Democratic conservatives tended to outflank the Liberals on the right, while progressive-minded Christian Democrats often outflanked the Social Democrats and the Republicans on the left...

...The ruling center coalitions, however, continued to be immobilized by the veto power wielded by their conservative wing...

...Following Mussolini's downfall, many of the former "Popolari" leaders re-emerged as organizers of the Christian Democratic party, and this time they had the full support of the church and the help of the brightest youngsters trained by the Catholic university groups under the guidance of Monsignor Montini, the future Paul VI...

...The Christian Democrats retained the support of 38 percent, even though quite a few voters, no longer haunted by the nightmare of an impending Communist victory, switched back to the smaller democratic parties...

...Thanks to this polarization, the Christian Democrats polled 48.5 percent of the votes in the 1948 general elections, almost ten percentage points more than their average on subsequent occasions...

...But it was late in the game: in the 1979 general elections, the PCI suffered its first major defeat as its share of the popular vote dropped back to just over 30 percent...

...For instance, the jelly-like consistency of the party, while frustrating the efforts to give it an effective organization or to prod it into timely decisions and choices, has enabled the Christian Democrats to cling to, and mirror for so long so many facets of the diversified Italian society as well as to prove impervious to significant splits...

...Recent events have proved that the Communist drive for national power is not irresistible and that the Christian Democrats are not caught in an irreversible crisis...

...The Communists' demands for Cabinet posts were rejected and their pressure for more influence in national affairs was contained...

...The Christian Democrats, together with the minor center parties, barely managed to retain control of the national government...

...dailies and magazines, notably the Washington Postand most recently the Philadelphia Bulletin...

...LEO J. WOLLEMBORG (Leo J. Wollemborg, a previous contributor, has covered Italian affairs since the late 1940s for several U.S...

...On the other hand, some of the Christian Democrats' negative features have revealed more than a silver lining...

...Italy joined the Atlantic alliance and supported European integration...

...To be sure, far left radicals branded the PCI itself as part of the establishment...

...Most of all, their mismanagement of national affairs and resources has bolstered the Communists' main claim: "Without us, let alone against us, Italy cannot be governed honestly and efficiently...

...The latter's resentful refusal to participate in a governmental coalition forced the Christian Democrats to deal with the PCI, but they were able to do so from a position of relative strength...

...Those observers badly underestimated the Christian Democrats' resiliency as well as the strongly negative reactions that the prospect of a Communist hegemony still arouses in many Italians...

...The record shows only too clearly that the Christian Democrats are fairly good at avoiding the worst but pretty bad when it comes to preparing the better...

...August 1980: 423...

...Riding a tide of disappointment and protest, the Communist party (PCI), the Socialists and other opposition groups scored major gains in the 1953 general elections...

...Under the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that Italy should get more than her share of the labor and student unrest, of the social and political tensions, of the revolt against "the system," of the wave of "permissiveness" and of the outbreaks of political and criminal violence, which have characterized the last decade in so many Western countries...

...But how many more such opportunities can the Christian Democrats (and the country) afford to waste—especially when Italy's position and role in the Mediterranean and toward the Balkans and the Middle East are taking on additional significance within an international framework featured by a shift of the balance of power to the benefit of the Soviet Union and by a declining confidence in the U.S...

...In the 1976 general elections, polarization was again at work and the Christian Democrats widened further their lead over the PCI as their share of the popular vote rose again over 38 percent mostly at the expense of the minor center parties...

...but a Communist party, which remained strong and disciplined while apparently willing to shed or tone down its dogmatic approach to domestic and foreign affairs, could appeal even to moderate voters yearning for "law and order" and for less graft and more efficiency in the public administration...

...Yet, over the last thirty years or so the Christian Democrats have suffered a major loss of image and some electoral erosion (at least in the major urban areas of Northern and Central Italy), while the PCI has increased significantly its votes and its influence...

...Within the Christian Democratic camp, the balance of power has now swung again in favor of the factions which rule out any deal with the Communists and seek closer relations with the party's traditional allies...

...As the split between East and West precipitated a similar cleavage in the Italian political alignment, moreover, millions of voters, who otherwise would have supported the smaller "lay" parties to the right and to the left of center, backed the Christian Democrats as the only effective alternative to the Communist-led "People's Bloc...

...When most Christian Democrats agreed at last to form a center-left government with the Socialists, the boom had sapped its own strength leaving the national economy exposed to wild swings of the business cycle...

...A governmental role for the PCI was strongly promoted, moreover, by influential sectors of the media which had been carefully cultivated and ' 'colonized'' by the Communists and Commonweal: 422 only too often taken for granted or snubbed by the Christian Democrats...

...In the local elections of June 197S, the Christian Democrats lost heavily, retaining only a two percent margin over the surging PCI which got more than 33 percent of the votes...

...In short, it was the Communists' turn to experience the effects of the Christian Democrats' favorite tactics—rubber-walling...

...By early 1979 the PCI leaders, increasingly frustrated by being cast in a role which involved most of the burdens and very few of the benefits of sharing in a governmental coalition, took their party back into the opposition...

...Political stability turned into stagnation...

...Substantial reforms could have been carried out without biting too deeply into vested interests and privileges...