The new Italian politics
Barkan, Joanne
From the mid-1960s to 1980, the piazzas belonged to the left in Italy. So did the bookstores, since dominant culture—criticism, political science, philosophy, the arts—leaned heavily to the...
...From the mid-1960s to 1980, the piazzas belonged to the left in Italy...
...Millions of Italians didn't see him as corrupt...
...How will workers, unions, and poor people fare...
...The situation was primed for a Reaganoid knight promising to smash government shackles and liberate the millionaire in each individual...
...Achille Occhetto remarked to a thousand Italians who gathered in the pouring reporter that the resistance "allowed there to be rain in Milan's Piazza del Duomo on April 25 a right, a center, and a left, which is what to commemorate the liberation from Fascism Fascism didn't allow...
...In recent years, however, some Italians came to associate the now former Communists (they regrouped as the Democratic Party of the Left in 1991) with the corrupt national regime...
...The reasons were many, albeit sometimes vague or unjustified: the leftists had been around for so long, they compromised with the national government in order to get reforms passed, they didn't produce new charismatic leaders, a small number were implicated (but not proven guilty) in corruption scandals, they advocated continuing the old government's economic policies...
...The eight members of the progressive alliance didn't do as well...
...L'Espresso magazine (March 11, 1994) reported the following: from February 2 to February 25, which was the period immediately preceding the official campaign, the evening news programs on Berlusconi's television stations quoted then Prime Minister Carlo Ciampi 27 times...
...Berlusconi used the system, but he never got caught...
...The League fashioned its call for renewal around the powerful theme of regional separatism and anti-Southern sentiment and had great success in the North...
...Eight weeks after the election, everyone knows what to worry about: Will Berlusconi separate his business interests from his government responsibilities...
...If it collapses, will a government crisis put intolerable pressure on democratic institutions...
...and the centrists only 46...
...Will the right govern honestly, or will it reinvent organized corruption...
...he seemed so enterprising, so bold, so successful, so rich, so . . . let's admit it . . . American...
...The workers' movement declined, the left (dominated by the huge Communist party) fragmented further, Yuppie culture prospered, and the bookstores no longer stockpiled radical texts...
...Better to think of the two hundred and Nazism...
...Berlusconi had the resources to set up twelve thousand Forza Italia clubs along the lines of the soccer clubs that support his champion team...
...Italy's integration into the European Union provides some 310 • DISSENT Politics Abroad guarantees...
...They bickered over nominations and made some major gaffes (Achille Occhetto of the Democratic Party of the Left traveled to Brussels to calm the NATO brass...
...The state still controlled about 40 percent of Italy's economy and ran it badly...
...Why the neo-Fascists, who are offspring of an even older and literally murderous system...
...The politicians in charge of it all—Christian Democrats and Socialists at the top of the list—made their operating principles patronage and bribery...
...But his most potent asset was his monopoly of commercial television (he owns all three private stations in Italy, which capture 50 percent of all viewing audiences...
...No matter that the three parties disagreed on key issues—federalism, privatization, taxes, and the welfare state...
...At present, it sounds alarmist to dwell on the old conundrum, What happens when a majority votes freely to limit democracy...
...Will the right-wing coalition hold together...
...So did the bookstores, since dominant culture—criticism, political science, philosophy, the arts—leaned heavily to the left...
...Italians adored Berlusconi long before they had a chance to vote for him...
...Berlusconi didn't have a solid program, but he managed to sell miracles ("a million new jobs and lower taxes...
...Today Italy stands out again— the first West European country since the Second World War to accept neo-Fascists as government ministers, the first to award the position of prime minister to a business tycoon (Silvio Berlusconi) who has never before held public office, and the first to condone the triumph of what Italians call telecrazia the — domination (or creation) of politics by television...
...But "normalcy" turned out to be a slippery phenomenon...
...The legitimation of the neo-Fascists required a longer, more subtle process...
...The rare comrade caught with fingers in the cookie jar was summarily expelled...
...The right alliance won 366 of 630 seats in the Chamber of Deputies...
...Saturating the peninsula with ads, interviews, and what was supposed to pass as reportage, Berlusconi built a mighty political machine in a matter of weeks...
...they quoted Berlusconi 408 times...
...Among voters under twenty-five, only 26.6 percent opted for the progressives while 50.7 percent chose the right...
...Everyone thought the 1980s answered this question...
...But why Berlusconi...
...Did the election demonstrate popular sentiment for a more authoritarian government...
...Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia fit the bill...
...The center was consistently low...
...they waltzed around their differences...
...SUMMER • 1994 • 311...
...Moreover, the resistance and militant anti-Fascism have always been more closely associated with the left in Italy —and young Italians aren't leaning left...
...For most voters in their twenties, the Fascist period has become grandparents' history...
...the progressives won 213...
...For most of the postwar period, these watchwords belonged to the Italian Communists, who were excluded from national power but ran successful, often innovative, local and regional governments...
...A creature of the old system, he built an empire on bent laws and protected markets and is now between $2.3 and $4 billion in debt...
...Then the ancien regime imploded...
...After almost fifty years, the rhetoric of the armed resistance against Fascism and the songs of liberation bring tears to the eyes of a smaller proportion of the population...
...Berlusconi understood that the new election law favored large alliances, and he found the perfect campaign partners: the League in the North and the neo-Fascists in the South...
...In the Senate, the right fell just two seats short of an absolute majority...
...All this helps to explain why Italians in March 1994 looked to the right for honesty, SUMMER • 1994 • 309 Politics Abroad efficiency, and something new...
...The publicsector bureaucracy produced a third-rate welfare system...
...The League ended up paving the way for its own competition, for a smoother right-wing force with immense resources and nationwide appeal...
...But southerners and those who preferred their right-wing politics without tinges of racism needed a different vehicle...
...Perhaps there's one more "first," which subsumes the others: Italians are the first citizens of a postwar European democracy to vote into office a coalition of parties with questionable links to liberal democratic institutions...
...meanwhile, his ally, the secretary of Communist Refounding, called for Italy to withdraw from NATO...
...Equally important, Italians—unlike the Americans, British, and others—had not yet experimented with a Thatcherite free market...
...Conservatives despaired: Oh, when would Italy become a normal West European nation, more satisfied with capitalism and less overrun by would-be revolutionaries...
...In March, 34.4 percent of all voters selected the progressive alliance, and 42.9 percent chose the rightist alliance...
...Any effort to understand how this happened should begin with this point: the right managed to snatch the banners of honesty, efficiency, and radical change away from the left...
...So be it...
...The first right-wing group to win big by attacking the regime for corruption was actually the Northern League...
...The ensuing crisis followed a twentieth-century rule of thumb: when a state is rocked to its core, when a ruling elite falls apart, when politics becomes polarized, right-wing populism exerts the strongest pull...
...An everexpanding series of kickback investigations, begun in 1992, implicated some six thousand businesspeople and politicians, including onethird of Parliament...
Vol. 41 • July 1994 • No. 3
