Introduction

The charismatic and controversial leadership of Silvio Berlusconi and the pasts and presents of his government coalition partners have placed the Italian political system, particularly following Berlusconi’s electoral successes in 2001 and 2008, in the international spotlight. The centre-right government over which Berlusconi presided between 2001 and 2006 could lay claim to the considerable achievement (in Italian terms) of managing to remain in office for a full parliamentary term, and indeed in the meantime, setting a record for longevity in office for a post-war Italian government. It also did considerably better than the short-lived government led by Berlusconi in 1994, which lasted eight months. Although the centre right was defeated by the narrowest of margins in the 2006 general election, the collapse of the centre-left government in early 2008 paved the way for Berlusconi’s third general election victory and return as prime minister in April. The success of the centre-right coalition over this period was all the more

remarkable when one considers the history and nature of the political forces that constituted it. In 2008, Berlusconi headed the Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Freedom) electoral list, which brought together his own Forza Italia (FI) party, the post-fascist National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale, AN) and other disparate centre-right and right-wing groupings. FI was a party founded from scratch by Berlusconi in the early 1990s, when he was better known as a successful entrepreneur who owned Italy’s three main private TV stations as well as its leading football club, AC Milan. It was a party whose leadership and policy direction was dominated by Berlusconi and viewed by many as his personal vehicle. The AN emerged out of the MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano, Italian Social Movement), which presented itself until the early 1990s as the unashamed guardian of Italy’s fascist legacy. In 2008, the PdL list was allied with the Northern League (Lega Nord, LN), a regionalist populist party that has at times advocated the break-up of Italy and is often categorised as part of the family of new xenophobic radical right-wing populist parties (RRP) or extreme right populists in Europe. The PdL-LN alliance in essence reproduced the House of Freedoms (CdL, Casa delle Libertà) coalition, through which the AN, the LN and FI together fought the 2001 and 2006 elections. The difference in 2008 was that the fourth party of the CdL

coalition, the centrist Christian Democrat UDC, this time ran separately, having refused to join the PdL list. This accentuated the right-wing character of the coalition which, in contrast to 2001-6, would not contain this prominent moderating centrist element. Although the PdL also included some smaller Christian Democrat groupings, it also included a group of unreconstructed fascists led by Alessandra Mussolini (grand-daughter of Italy’s fascist dictator) who had previously quit the AN in protest at its leader Gianfranco Fini’s disavowal of aspects of the fascist regime. The nature of this coalition and its success over a number of Italian elections

raises a number of broader questions for observers of party change, party systems and representative democracy. The degree to which Berlusconi, his party and coalition partners have benefited from his ownership and control of a swathe of the Italian mass media raises general questions regarding the relationship between the media and politics and the potential conflict of interests that can arise in this regard. In addition, the political style of Berlusconi lends itself to interpretations based on the importance of communications and personal image in politics. More broadly, the three main parties of the coalition provide excellent examples of the role of leadership in politics, the increasing personalisation of politics and the tendency towards leadership centralisation in parties, both in Italy and more globally. Moreover, the LN and FI, in particular, provide interesting examples of the global phenomenon of populism and rare European examples of how new populist movements behave in government and reconcile their anti-establishment and anti-political discourse with the trappings of office. Furthermore, AN provides a remarkable case of how a political force that was until recently associatedwith Europe’s old neo-fascist right has been able to re-invent itself as a legitimate political actor, viewed across the political spectrum in Italy as a democratic force, albeit one with authoritarian conservative tendencies. These phenomena need to be understood in the wider context of party

system change, in relation to which Italy also presents itself as an extreme case, at least in the western European context. Between 1992 and 1994, the major governing parties in Italy imploded, notably the Christian Democrat (DC), which had been present in government as the largest party continuously since 1947, and its main coalition partner, the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). This collapse was precipitated by the mani pulite (clean hands) investigations, which implicated a large number of parliamentarians and sections of the leadership of both parties in a complicated web of corruption: the so-called tangentopoli (kickback city) scandal. Some of the minor parties, such as the PSDI (Social Democrats) and PLI (Liberal party), that had frequently been present in the DC-led coalitions were also brought down by the scandal. A new centre-left coalition led by the reformed former communist Democratic Left party (PDS) – previously excluded from government because of its association with Soviet communism – appeared likely to profit from the political vacuum created by the collapse of the DC and its allies, and win government office in 1994. This was until the decision by Silvio Berlusconi to enter the

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