ABSTRACT
During the early years after World War II, Western analysts tended to approach communism in Western Europe as fundamentally an extension of communism in the USSR. Bearing in mind that the opportunities confronting the Communist parties of Western Europe have grown out of a multiplicity of circumstances, this chapter describes the impact in regional terms of the most relevant of these. Despite the disparities in the underlying economic states of affairs in Northern and Mediterranean Europe both regions have experienced some common travails in the mid-1970s, and these have enhanced the potential for economic-based conflict throughout Western Europe generally. The formulation of a political strategy has required the Communist parties of Western Europe to address a host of specific questions, but these have clustered around two fundamental issues. The first is what road to power one should pursue. The second issue is with whom one should ally. The Italian Communist Party provides the most articulate statement of the opposite extreme.
