Italian Politics

The Year Of The Tycoon

Richard S Katz, Piero Ignazi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429979170
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book describes all the crucial issues that defined Italian political and social life during 1994 and interpreted by renowned scholars from Italy, the United States, and Britain, who provide an indispensable guide for understanding Italy's political transformation.

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Introduction

RichardS. Katz and Fiero Ignazi

Institutional Changes and New Political Actors

The political life of Italy in 1994 was dominated by two major themes. The first is institutional. 1994 saw the implementation of the new parliamentary electoral law; the collapse of the Christian Democratic Party; the formation and the rise to power of Forza Italia along with the transformation of the MSI (a permanently excluded anti-system party that was rarely mentioned without the prefix “neo-Fascist”) into the Alleanza Nazionale and its entry into government; and a Parliament and a government that are radically renewed in their composition. Altogether, these developments at least make it reasonable to ask whether 1993 was not, in fact, the final year of the First Republic, and 1994 the first year of the Second, or at least the first year of the period of transition leading to a new political system for Italy. On the other side, of course, it must be remembered that far-reaching though these changes may be, the Constitution of the Italian Republic was not amended, let alone replaced.

The second, and intimately intertwined, theme focuses on the meteoric rise, and perhaps ultimately the beginning of the equally meteoric decline, of Silvio Berlusconi as the dominating personality in Italian politics of the past year. Berlusconi was already an important personality in politics, based on his monopoly control of the commercial television networks and his friendship with Bettino Craxi. Nonetheless, his announcement, in November 1993, that the “categorical imperative” (“imperativo categorico”) of forming a center alliance to oppose the Left had led him to decide to enter politics was greeted with some skepticism. Although in recent polls 13 percent of interview respondents had answered the question “Do you have confidence in Silvio Berlusconi?” by saying, “Definitely yes”, and 43 percent answered “Probably yes,” Mario Segni described Berlusconi’s entry into politics as “an inopportune initiative,” while the Lega showed no enthusiasm. By mid-February, however, Berlusconi’s newly formed Forza Italia had concluded electoral pacts with both the MSI (which agreed to present itself as the Alleanza Nazionale) and the Lega Nord. By the time of the parliamentary elections in March, it was clear to all (except perhaps Lega leader Umberto Bossi) that Berlusconi was the prime ministerial candidate of the right alliance, and on April 28, President of the Republic Oscar Luigi Scalfaro asked the Cavaliere to form a government. With an apparently firm majority in the Chamber of Deputies, and nearly a majority in the Senate, early speculation concerned whether the Berlusconi government would last the full parliamentary term. But by Christmas, Berlusconi had resigned rather than face three motions of no confidence in Parliament, one of them tabled by his erstwhile ally, the Lega Nord.

All that has happened under the Berlusconi government suggests that the First Republic was not only reasserting itself even before the government fell, but that indeed it had never really disappeared. On the other hand, regime transitions inevitably take time; a regime transition is a process, not a single event. It is also possible as parties and politicians adapt to the realities of the new electoral institutions (perhaps making further reforms) and to changes in the international system and in public opinion, that 1994, and the Berlusconi government, will be seen as the first steps in the evolution to a fundamentally altered political system. Similarly, it is possible that the fall of Berlusconi’s government will allow the long discussed reforms of the Mammi law, potentially destroying the Fininvest broadcasting empire, the collapse of Forza Italia, and the disappearance of Berlusconi himself from the political scene; indeed, short of all this, Berlusconi may simply decide that politics is not as much fun as he hoped and withdraw. But it is also possible that the Dini government will be no more than a brief interregnum, after which Berlusconi will emerge triumphant from a new election, more securely in power than ever before. Perhaps indeed the Second Republic will prove to be a “Second Kingdom,” even if an elective one.

A Second Italian Republic?

The passage of the reformed parliamentary electoral law in August 1993 was widely hailed as marking the inauguration of the Second Republic, and allusions to the Second Republic were common in political reporting throughout 1993 and into 1994. Indeed, the English edition of the last volume of this yearbook was subtitled “Ending the First Republic,” and the concluding section of its introductory chapter was “The Transition to the Second Republic.”^[1] Much of what happened in 1994 only can be under stood in the light of the expectations raised or reflected by the use of that phrase.

The Second Republic was short hand for changes in institutions and in behavior, not all of which were realized, and whose permanence has yet to be seen. In a fundamental sense, the term was a hyperbole. In contrast to the French or German use of adjectives to identify republics (e.g., the Fifth Republic or the Weimar Republic) the Second Italian republic was not taken to involve any fundamental institutional rupture or constitutional discontinuity. The changes made in the parliamentary electoral system were initiated by the ordinary process of referendum used many times before under the First Republic, and were completed by ordinary legislation. Although they qualify as “major” changes, they still were less far reaching than the French substitution of proportional representation for the two-ballot majority system in 1985 (or the change back in 1986) yet no one identified 1986 as the beginning of the Sixth French Republic.

If the Italian reforms were, on the surface, less drastic than the French, the expectations they raised were more far reaching. In the French case, the reformers (i.e., the Socialists in power) merely hoped to limit the short term consequences of their unpopularity; it was widely expected that the conservatives would restore the status quo ante if (when) they won the parliamentary election. In the Italian case, however, reform was forced on the ruling coalition against its will, and with the intention of bringing about permanent change to the working of the political system. Implementation of the electoral reform raised hopes that the old system of government by “center” coalitions which, while individually short lived, were always dominated by the same parties and generally by the same politicians, would be replaced by a system of governments which were more stable, more effective, and based on electoral choice rather than inter- and intraparty negotiations. This was seen to require a simpler party system, in which a single party or coalition of the Left would compete with a single party or coalition of the Right. The result would be transparency, alternanza and governabilità.

One of the hallmarks of the Second Republic was to be popular choice of the Prime Minister. Although proposals to implement this directly in a way analogous to that in which mayors were elected in 1993 were not enacted for the national level, it was assumed that the predominance of single-member seats in the new parliamentary electoral system would force the formation of electoral alliances, the leaders of which would be their prime ministerial candidates. Thus, the people would choose not only a government formula, but also a head of government, who by virtue of his (or, perhaps at some time in the future, her) personal mandate would have the authority to impose discipline within the coalition. In the view of many, the expected substitution of bi-polarity for center dominated fragmentation, of alternation for permanent government by the DC and PSI, of effective electoral choice for a situation in which nothing the electorate could do would produce substantial change, would so fundamentally alter the political system as to be worthy of the title Second Republic, even if the legal/constitutional order were unchanged.

Although the movement for electoral reform, with its objectives of increased popular control over both individual representatives and governments, reducing the fragmentation of the Italian party system, and reining in corruption predated the tangentopoli scandals, the overwhelming success of the April 1993 referendum on electoral law, supported by Mario Segni, was aided by public revulsion (and astonishment) over the scope of political corruption and the arrogance of the ruling parties in the face of its revelation. A tidal wave of indignation focused iconoclastic and punitive fury against the old parties and the old politicians. If there were a wholesale renewal of the political class, and especially if the members of the new political élite were to be fundamentally different in their origins and orientations rather than merely being new faces in old suits, this would be another justification for talk of a Second Republic.

The anticipated changes of institutional logic and of personnel were also expected to produce changes in behavior and political activity. One change would be an end to the political colonization of the public administration and of semi-state agencies, and of the system of lottizzazione, whereby positions were allotted to the governing parties and their factions (and, indeed, to the PCI and then the PDS as well), in proportion to their political strength. Presumably, the result would be a politically neutral and more efficient public service, in which not all interactions between citizens or businesses and the state would require the intermediation of political parties.

A second change would be increased fiscal responsibility in the government. On one side, it was hoped that once a clearly identifiable group of parties and politicians were both clearly in charge and liable to be ejected from office if they failed to behave responsibly, the government would no longer overstep its institutional bounds and would impose restraints on itself. In particular, it was hoped that if the government were made up of parties and politicians that did not owe their power to the distribution of political largess, the size of the bureaucracy would be reduced and less would be spent on projects and programs that were simply political payoffs. On the other side, it was also hoped that once government was perceived to be more efficient, the widespread evasion of taxes also would be reduced.

While these would be major changes in the character of Italian government and politics, they require changes not only in the government, but also in civil society. Tangentopoli was built not only by politicians demanding payments, but also by businesses generously offering them. If favors were offered in exchange for political support, it is also true that political support was given in exchange for favors. As Mershon and Pasquino observed last year,

all the major social and political actors, willingly or not, to a greater or lesser degree (and the differences are crucial) have been involved in the degeneration of the preceding system and of the First Republic. In other words, the distinction between politics and civil society, which is so often drawn, had vanished in Italy. Politics had penetrated deep into society, and society had carved comfortable niches in politics, often simply for survival, at times to acquire political privileges.^[2]

The slogan “Second Republic” also refers to the expectation that the separation of politics and civil society will reopen.

How much progress was made towards the realization of these aspirations? On the surface, the goal of installing a government whose composition and leadership were the direct consequence of electoral choice was realized in the victory of the Poli and the installation of Silvio Berlusconi as Presidente del Consiglio. In a deeper sense, however, the change was less clear cut. First, the Poli was not one alliance, but two: in the north Berlusconi’s Forza Italia was allied with the Lega in the Polo della Libertà, which was opposed by the Alleanza Nazionale, but in the south and center, the Berlusconi coalition was the Polo del Buon Governo formed in alliance with the Alleanza Nazionale; in neither region could voters unambiguously vote either for or against the full coalition that ultimately formed the government. On many points, the allies were not in agreement; on March 6, it was reported that Lega leader Umberto Bossi had ordered his party not to support Forza Italia candidates in the 30 percent of northern constituencies allotted to them. Moreover, although Berlusconi was generally accepted as the leader and prime ministerial candidate of the Poli in both of its manifestations, once the election had made the Lega the largest single party in Parliament, Bossi did not immediately accept as unproblematic Berlusconi’s claim of the right to be Prime Minister.

Second, the idea of a clear electoral choice requires an equally credible alternative that could have been chosen instead, but this clearly was lacking. The Progressisti had no clear leader; as Martin Bull observes in his chapter^[3], although Achille Occhetto was leader of the predominant party in the alliance, out-going Prime Minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi was the preferred choice of Progressisti supporters even though he was not himself a Progressista at all. The alliance was sufficiently fissiparous that it could not present common lists of candidates for the PR seats in the Chamber of Deputies; not only did this cost them roughly 10 seats when only the PDS and Rifondazione Comunista managed to clear the 4 percent threshold for sharing in the distribution of PR seats, but it also reinforced the perception that the Progressisti were merely an electoral alliance of convenience, and not a potential government.

Third, there were not two alliances, but three: the Pact for Italy, composed of Mario Segni’s pattisti and Martinazzoli’s popolari (with the support of some who are not from the laid, like former Socialist Prime Minister Giuliano Amato and former Liberal Secretary Valerio Zanone) received almost 16 percent of the vote. Given the unlikelihood of a coalition including such disparate parties as the PPI and Rifondazione, one could well see the choice confronting the electorate as the Poli or chaos— in many ways the equivalent of the non-choice confronting voters under the First Republic.

The similarity with the First Republic continued through the life of the Berlusconi government. The Alliance between Berlusconi and the Lega was never comfortable. In particular, Bossi was highly, and publicly, critical of Berlusconi’s continued control of his Fininvest empire and of his (failed) attempt to abolish pretrial detention in cases of corruption and bribery. The Lega and Forza Italia generally opposed one another in the various subnational and European elections held during 1994. And, of course, the government ultimately resigned in the face of a no confidence motion tabled by Bossi himself after having served only seven months—significantly less than the average for the First Republic.

Greatest progress was made toward replacement of the political class, at least as indicated by parliamentary turnover. More than one third of the members of the Chamber of Deputies elected in 1992 had then served three or more terms in the Parliament, and the overall turnover rate was about 44 percent; the corresponding figures for the Parliament elected in 1994 were 12 percent with three or more previous terms and over 71 percent having no parliamentary experience. Indeed, upwards of one third of the members of the new Parliament report no previous experience in party or electoral politics at all. Naturally, the proportion of members lacking in parliamentary experience is highest for thos...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Chronology of Italian Political Events, 1994
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Forza Italia: The Overwhelming Success and the Consequent Problems of a Virtual Party
• 3 From the Ghetto to Palazzo Chigi: The Ascent of the National Alliance
• 4 The Failure of the Progressive Alliance
• 5 The 1994 Elections
• 6 The New Members of Parliament
• 7 The First Majoritarian Parliament
• 8 Mani Pulite, Year III
• 9 The New Foreign Policy
• 10 The Uncertain Path of Privatization
• 11 Politics and Karaoke
• 12 RAI and Fininvest in the Year of Berlusconi
• Documentary Appendix
• Index
• About the Editors and Contributors
• About the Book