ABSTRACT
As for the two established parties, Italian liberal Party (PLI) and Italian Republican Party (PRI), with rare exceptions these are government parties, meaning that they are indispensable in forming government coalitions. The Republican form of government, characterized by anti-clericalism, cooperation between capital and labor, and emphasis on duties as well as on rights, has distinguished the political-ideal profile of the PRI since its foundation in 1895 up to the post-war period. At the general elections of 1992 the PRI gained 1,721,658 votes, 4.4 percent, one of the best results in its history. Until the beginning of the 1950s the PLI could be defined as a party with closer links to the agricultural interests of the South than to the industrial interests of the North. The Greens appeared on the Italian political scene at the local elections of 1985. The Green slates were the result of environmentalist initiatives that began to appear at the end of the 1970s.
