ABSTRACT
Forza Italia (FI) was the great victor of the March 1994 parliamentary elections. In the strange entity of FI authors may distinguish five elements. The first and most important is its leader, Silvio Berlusconi, while the second, which has no official status, is his company Fininvest. The third, the presidential council, was officially the organ which governed the party but in practice it has been little more than a projection of its leader. More important is the parliamentary group which has gained a measure of influence over Berlusconi's decisions, despite or because of its divisions. Finally the clubs, which have been kept powerless, may nonetheless hold the key to FI's long term success or failure. Prime Minister Berlusconi's popularity had dropped as he failed to produce a convincing economic policy and instead concentrated on terminating the Clean Hands investigation with the botched July 13 decree, which aroused a wave of popular opposition.
