ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the Italian left is caught between the dynamics of the First Republic, shaped by the domestic Cold War, and the demands created by the pressures of globalization, as represented by the creation of the Euro. Political parties were able to penetrate both civil society and the state so that the First Republic was commonly called a 'partitocrazia'. The path that led to government was a stormy one, with electoral disappointments in 1992 and 1994. The major party of the Italian left, like its European counterparts, has accepted to govern on the basis of market principles but continues to use the rhetoric of social solidarity and collective responsibility. Unlike the privatization of the state-held banks a few years earlier, small investors, many of whom had previously put their money in treasury bills that had lost their shine because of improving public finances, were at the heart of the privatization of Telecom Italia.
