ABSTRACT
The Italian Christian Democratic Party (DC), in power for nearly half a century, is in the midst of a deep political and electoral crisis. During the first half of the 1970s, dissatisfaction with the DC grew substantially among the Italian public. The mid-1970s marked the end of the DC's hegemony over the Italian political system. The case of DC candidate selection which received the greatest attention was the selection of the DC capolista, or head of the DC Chamber of Deputies list in a district, for the Milan-Pavia district. All of the parties and candidates in the 1992 campaign discussed the issues of Italian political institutional reform and the country's economic problems. The DC's major losses—larger than most experts expected—were one of the two most striking results of this election, along with the victory of the Northern League. In the North—both Northeast and Northwest—one party, the Northern League, took a substantial share of the DC losses.
