ABSTRACT
Never perhaps has the reality of modern parliamentary democracy been so accurately exposed as in Italy during the early 1990s: a reality of wallto-wall corruption. In less than two years, five ministers and four party leaders were forced to resign due to their alleged illegal activities, and the level of public anger and dissatisfaction was such that all political parties, including some with over a hundred years’ history, either split or changed their name and policies. But even that was not enough to placate public anger; in the March 1994 elections the centre parties which had ruled Italy for nearly fifty years all but disappeared.
