Italian Politics

The Center-left In Power

Roberto D'alimonte, David Nelken

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367316419
• eBook ISBN: 9780429979187
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The year 1996 in Italian politics was a year rich in novelty. After the "stalled transition" of 1995, the political atmosphere had begun to change. Most obvious was the end of Dini's unelected government of technocrats, supported by a heterogeneous group in Parliament, and its replacement with Romano Prodi's government, a coalition of the parties that had won the general election on April 21, 1996. But an even more important change and one more likely to be remembered was a new climate of dialogue amongst the main political forces that emerged from this period of transition between two republics. In 1996, despite the general elections, cooperation again became part of the political game.

1
Introduction: A Year of Difficult Dialogue

Roberto D'Alimonte and David Nelken

Nine teen-ninety-six was a year rich in novelty. After the "stalled transition"¹ of 1995 many things began to change. The most obvious of these changes was the ending of Dini's unelected government of technocrats, supported by a heterogeneous group of supporters in Parliament and its replacement by Romano Prodi's government, a coalition of the parties which had won the general election of 21 April 1996. But what will probably be remembered as an even more important change was the new climate of dialogue amongst the main political forces which had emerged in this period of transition between the two Republics. From 1993 until the end of 1995, by contrast, there had been a frontal conflict between the two main forces of Center-Left and Center-Right, a conflict so sharp that it had split the Partito Popolare Italiano (Italian Popular Party, or PPI), when it was obliged to choose with which side to ally itself.

This conflict had blocked political progress because of the way each side delegitimated the other, with a rhetoric reminiscent of the cold war. And the new electoral laws, in the absence of any underlying agreement, made things worse. Approaching the political transition as a zero-sum game made it impossible to find that minimum common denominator on which to construct a new political system, and explains why no political reform apart from that of the electoral rules had emerged after the old system had entered into crisis.

In 1996, despite the general elections, cooperation again became part of the political game. The initiative of PDS Secretary Massimo D'Alema and Forza Italia leader Silvio Berlusconi to reach mutual agreement had begun already before the fall of Dini's government and was concretized in their efforts to form a government supported by both the main political alliances. Dialogue continued even after Antonio Maccanico gave up the attempt to realize this broad-based government. Even the elections, despite the aggressiveness of the campaign, were conducted in a different spirit from the preceding one. There was little resort, unlike in the previous election campaign, to the use of arguments or metaphors intended to question the legitimacy of one or other of the forces competing to govern the country.² But it can be said that the outcome of the elections certainly complicated the dialogue. This had begun behind a veil of uncertainty because the opinion polls provided no security about who was likely to win or lose an eventual contest, and the future roles of government or opposition had not yet been assigned. Without elections therefore the agreement over who should form the government and how the political institutions should be reformed could be considered the same question. The elections, by removing all these uncertainties, created the conditions for separating the issue of who should govern from the larger question of institutional reform.

But this had riot been an easy task. The Polo per le Libertà found it difficult to accept the separation of these issues; many of those who made up the Ulivo coalition, on the other hand, feared that any kind of collaboration with the Polo could delegitimate the actions taken by the government and lead to its fall. There was a fear of the country returning to its previous habits of seeking transversal collaboration behind a front of apparent competition. Given the background, it was a minor miracle that discussions continued and in the summer produced a limited and provisional agreement on the way to proceed to political reform, that is, through the creation of a joint two-chamber commission (the Bicamerale) rather than a constitutional assembly. The opposition of Fini and Mario Segni was not enough to block this accord.

The period of greatest difficulty came in the autumn. The 1997 budget had given the opposition the opportunity to gain popularity at the expense of the government. Both the size of the maneuver and the way it was so heavily biased towards increasing the amount of tax collected rather than cutting back on expenditure drew criticism from the Polo per le Libertà. This expressed itself in the large scale protest meeting at Rome and the subsequent decision to abandon Parliament so as not to take part in the vote on the budget. But the Left too bad its moments of hesitation and rethinking about the wisdom of dialogue, provoked in particular by the agreement over Berlusconi's private television channels and the decision to allow Mediaset to continue to benefit from its concessions until the sector was comprehensively reorganized. But, in reality it was the danger of combining institutional questions and other problems (such as the reform of the system of justice or television concessions) which created suspicions, both within and outside the Center-Left, that this dialogue could or would lead to improper compromises.

D'Alema chose to respond to these suspicions in an article in La Repubblica in the course of an exchange of opinions with Eugenio Scalfari, its then editor, over the alleged suicidal tendencies of the Left. The PDS leader repeated his view that the only strategy open to his party in this period of transition was to seek to overcome the crisis of Italian society by means of a patient and difficult reciprocal legitimization of both major political forces. Only in this way would it be possible to arrive at the common definition of a framework of rules capable of allowing Italy to function as a "normal" democracy.³ In this way, notwithstanding the various tensions, for example the way the Polo had walked out of Parliament over the budget, or the unease on the Left, the dialogue went ahead. In January 1997 by a large majority Parliament approved the law introducing the Bicamerale commission for political reform of which D'Alema became president.

The Elections: From Parties to Coalitions

The failure of Maccanico's attempt to form a broad-based government was quickly followed by the dissolution of Parliament and new elections. It is still not entirely clear why his efforts failed. Certainly there were many who actively wished for a general election to be held. Alleanza Nazionale's leader Fini, for example, feared the implications for his party of the increasing convergence between D'Alema and Berlusconi, and hoped to emerge from elections with Alleanza Nazionale as the largest party on the Center-Right, as the opinion polls were suggesting. Likewise the Partita Popolare Italiano was far from enthusiastic about the new climate of agreement, especially as regarded the plan to introduce a form of semi-presidentialism on the French model; they also insisted that Prodi had entered the political ring the previous year in order to make the elections possible rather than in order to postpone them. In the most clear-cut case, Fausto Bertinotti of Rifondazione Comunista had been aiming at elections ever since the fall of Berlusconi's government.

On the other hand; there were also those who did not want elections. Berlusconi and D'Alema above all, but also all of those inside or outside the parties who argued that going to elections without having first achieved a reform of the political system would not resolve the question of who should govern and how. And, after all, many were convinced that the elections would not produce an outright winner. The two most likely results were considered to be either a divided Parliament with the Senate going to the Center-Left, and the Chamber of Deputies to the Center-Right, or else a hung Parliament with Umberto Bossi's Lega Nord as the arbiter of any would-be majority coalition. If these outcomes had come about, all that would have happened is that Italy would have returned to the blocked political situation which Maccanico had been working to overcome. In any case those in favor of elections prevailed over those who wanted a broad agreement, and perhaps were right in thinking that the time was not yet ripe for an accord which would cover not only institutional reform but also the other troublesome issues which had arisen in the transition from the "First Republic", such as the reform of the courts, anti-trust legislation, and television and telecommunications holdings.

So the elections arrived and produced their unexpected results; in fact they yielded more than one surprise. The first was that the much despised new electoral system had managed to produce a winner, that is to say a majority which corresponded to one of the competing coalitions. The second surprise was that the same forces emerged as winners in both chambers of Parliament. In fact, the coalition formed by the Ulivo and Rifondazione Comunista obtained 50.8 percent of the total number of seats in the Chamber and 53.0 percent in the Senate. From this point of view the electoral system had even functioned better than in 1994, when the winning Center-Right coalition did not manage to obtain a majority. The third surprise was that the Center-Left won and thus, with the arrival of the Left in power, Italy was to have a real alternation between the forces competing to govern. But this Left would have to take its place within a larger coalition, and one more biased towards the Center than that proposed to the electorate in 1994.

Thus at first glance it might seem as if the 1996 elections had consolidated the transformation of the I Lillian party system into a well functioning bipolar pattern. In reality, however, this is not how things stand. True, the elections produced a majority, but it is equally true that, as in 1994, it was an imperfect majority. In 1994 the two "poles" organized under Berlusconi had obtained more than 50% of the votes only in the Chamber, failing to do so in the Senate. But above all the government then put together was the result of two alliances which had presented themselves to the electorate with competing programs. Similarly in 1996, if one looks more carefully, one will see that the majority in the two chambers was not the same. The parties which formed the Ulivo coalition and those most closely allied to it obtained a majority in the Senate, but in the Chamber of Deputies the support of Rifondazione Comunista was crucial to their majority. Thus, strictly speaking, even this time it would not be correct to say that the government corresponded to the popular will expressed in the elections. The parties of the Ulivo coalition and Rifondazione Comunista had not presented themselves to the electorate with a common program. They had formed merely a tactical electoral agreement based on abstention from competing in single member constituencies so as to avoid competition which would have been mutually damaging, especially for the Ulivo's hopes of obtaining an overall majority. But could it fairly be said that those who had voted for the Ulivo felt themselves to be voting for a government which would have to be sustained by Rifondazione Comunista? This doubt did not however prevent Prodi from putting together just such a government.

But the imperfections of Italian bipolarism do not end here. These elections confirmed two other aspects of the transition period which keep Italy from arriving at a well functioning bipolar system. The first of these is the role of the Lega Nord. It must be premature to speak of bipolarism when there remains a third pole capable of getting 8.2 percent of the majoritarian seats in the Chamber and 7.8 percent in the Senate. These figures show unmistakably that the Lega is much stronger than the third pole (Patto per Italia) was in 1994. It is true that the seats gained by the Lega do not count this time, because they did not help to form a parliamentary majority; certainly if the same thing happens in the next election we could speak of a bipolar system in practice. But can we be sure that it will happen again?

The question of why the Lega had the success it did is discussed in Diamanti's chapter in this volume. Here we will limit ourselves to observing that the Lega of 1996 was very different from that which presented itself to the electorate in 1994. Whereas the first was a party which, all things considered, located itself along the left-right political divide, the second removed itself from this axis and placed itself along another axis labeled "unified state vs. secession from the state". In this way Italian political space returned to being bi-dimensional. But the Lega is also a third pole which is located along a dimension which is inaccessible to the other parties. The more it emphasizes this strategy and has success with it, the more the hopes for bipolarism will depend on the contingency of election results. For now all we can note is the considerable extent in 1996 to which the Lega did stress the theme of succession, so defining itself a party different from all the others.

But the mam obstacle on the road towards bipolarism remains the fragmentation of the party system. Despite the essentially majoritarian electoral system, despite the cut-off limits for parties, and despite the disappearance of many former political groupings, today the number of parties is greater even than under the old proportional election system. The only real difference respect to then is that now we also have coalitions. The Progressisti and the Ulivo coalitions and the Center-Right "Poles" are the only real novelties in Italian politics over the past few years. Their importance is such that their success or failure determines whether elections are now won or lost. And in fact, it was in this way that the Ulivo coalition managed to deliver electoral victory even though the parties which formed it were supported by a minority of the population (see Chiaromonte's chapter in this volume⁴). Good coalitions are therefore more than the sum of the parties which form them, though it is not clear in the end whether this something more is merely added value in electoral attractiveness or whether it represents the nucleus of new political actors. The impression we have is that (unfortunately) coalitions are pushed to the front during election campaigns but become less important after the elections when the parties move back into the limelight. In sum, the coalitions have not substituted the role of the parties. And whether there are three or four or, instead, eight or nine parties makes a big difference as far as the functioning of a bipolar system is concerned.

It as an open question why there should still be such a high level of fragmentation in the party system. Is it a result of the persisting element of proportionality of the electoral system, or is it rather the fault of the parties who turned the majoritarian system into a proportional one in the way they divided the seats amongst themselves? Or is it caused by the fact that the voters have not yet internalized the rules of a majoritarian system and continue to vote for parties and candidates who are certain losers instead of voting strategically according to the logic of the "least worse" choice?⁵ Whatever is the explanation it is a fact, in the light of the events of 1996, that the Italian political transition is characterized by a high number of parties and sub-parties and that the relationship between parties and coalitions is a major unresolved problem. Nor will this problem be resolved just by simplifying the political situation if the parties continue to ignore the fact that, in order to work well, a majoritarian electoral system needs to rely on auxiliary mechanisms which are inspired by the same philosophy. This is certainly not true, for example, of the recent law on party financing, which was approved in December, by a large majority with record-breaking speed, according to which funds are allocated according to rigorously proportional criteria.⁶

In conclusion, the 1996 election gave the country a government but did not resolve the problem of how to build up a "normal" bipolar system. The election did not even interrupt the cross-party dialogue between PDS and Forza Italia. But they did change the context making a broad-based government less likely and forcing the two main political forces to find a new formula with which to continue their dialogue.

The Government: From Coalitions to Parties

At the moment of its installation the Prodi government found itself facing three challenges: (1) the transformation of an electoral coalition into a coalition capable of governing; (2) the relationship with the opposition; (3) participation in the project of creating a European Monetary Union (EMU).

Crucial for the first of these chal...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Chronology of Italian Political Events, 1996
• 1 Introduction: A Year of Difficult Dialogue
• 2 The General Elections of 21 April 1996
• 3 Forza Italia: Old Problems Linger On
• 4 The Lega Nord: From Federalism to Secession
• 5 The Italian Left After the 1996 Elections
• 6 Majoritarian and Proportional Electoral Systems: The Sicilian Case
• 7 The Government of the Ulivo
• 8 The Majoritarian System, Act II: Parliament and Parliamentarians in 1996
• 9 The Scalfaro Presidency in 1996: The Difficult Return to Normality
• 10 Politics and Consumption: The Four Revolutions of Spectator Football
• 11 Italian Intervention in Bosnia and the (Slow) Redefinition of Defense Policy
• 12 Statesman or Godfather? The Andreotti Trials
• 13 The Italian Presidency of the European Union
• Documentary Appendix
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Index