ABSTRACT
At the end of 1991 Christian Democrat and Socialist leaders were comfortably engaged in setting the pattern of Italian politics for the new decade. La Repubblica (17 November 1991) reported that Craxi and Andreotti had stored away an agreement on governing together for another five years. On the same day and from the columns of the same newspaper, Antonio Gava, former Minister of the Interior and Neapolitan city boss, proclaimed unwisely that ‘from now on we will get votes for who we are, and not simply for our anti-communism’. Nobody could have been more wrong, but at the time few if any commentators would have dared to predict a radically different scenario. The shortcomings of the Italian state and its political system had long been studied and denounced, but year after year the stability of the Italian electorate and the durability of its political elite were confirmed.
