ABSTRACT
In this final chapter I consider Italian democracy in the round in order to draw some conclusions about its overall health and the direction in which it may be headed, especially in the light of the landmark general election of 25 September 2022. I have entitled this chapter ‘The Italy of Berlusconi and his successors’ to reflect the fact that the advent of the entrepreneur marked the beginning of an almost completely new phase for Italian democracy. It was one in which polity, politics and policy were marked by radical and in all probability permanent changes compared with the preceding years. In this chapter, therefore, I attempt to draw the threads of my earlier discussion together by considering, first, the principal contrasts in the nature of Italian democracy before and after the 1990s. I then consider the impacts these have had in terms of political behaviour and political engagement in early twenty-first-century Italy. In the third section, I consider the outcome of the general election of September 2022, and in the fourth section I consider the possible implications for the future.
