ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief historical background and a description of major events in Italy. It also provides basic political, economic, and social data arranged in the following categories: polity, economy, population, purchasing power parities, life expectancy, ethnic groups, capital, political rights, civil liberties, and status. The chapter discusses the progress and decline of political rights and civil liberties in Italy. Modern Italian history dates from the nineteenth-century movement for national unification. Most of Italy had merged into one kingdom by 1870. Italy sided with Germany and Austria-Hungary at the outset of World War I, but switched to side with the Allied powers during the war. Italians can change their government democratically. Citizens are free to form political organizations, with the exception of the constitutionally forbidden pre-war Fascist Party. The post-war constitution, designed to prevent another Mussolini-style dictatorship, sharply restricts the powers of the executive in favour of the legislative and judicial branches of government.
