ABSTRACT
The politically strategic nature of G. Andreotti's delay in joining the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) appears clearly in almost all the declarations to the Chamber of Deputies. Therefore, the issue of the ERM was the battlefield where the struggle for political power among domestic actors took place, in a context in which political power was still exercised at the domestic level. Thus, for the Christian Democratic Party, Italy had only one choice to make: to join the ERM immediately. This was what punctually happened on 12 December, when Andreotti announced to the Chamber of Deputies the Italian government's decision to enter the new European monetary arrangements from the outset. It seems therefore appropriate to broaden the analysis and to insert the behaviour of the socioeconomic actors into the context of the structure of Italian capitalist economy and of the power relations between its components.
