ABSTRACT
This analysis of change in the Italian party system examines the ability of the three main parties to offer alternative, systemically defined, political/electoral strategies. The Christian Democrat strategy has lain in maintaining its predominance through the maintenance of a centrist coalition bloc and, hence, the tripolar (albeit grossly asymmetrical) structure of the system; 1 the strategy of the left, by contrast, has lain in establishing a classic bipolar party system and government alternation. The leadership of the latter strategy differed over the 40-plus years of the Republic's history. By the early 1980s the electorate saw both strategies as merely negative: aimed at preventing the exercise of power by the other party, not at providing good government. This change in perspective, involving a shift in concern from the fate of individual parties to the functioning of the system as a whole, changed the way the two strategies worked. Popular hostility to the entire political class peaked in the 1970s when the realisation of the left strategy under Communist leadership seemed imminent, fatally undermining the PCI's attempt to transform the system. In the 1980s, the parties were forced to seek electoral support not just to defeat the other strategy, but also in order to provide effective government.
