ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the immediate causes and consequences of the outcome of the 1994 elections which put the final seal on the old party-system's collapse. It describes the precise ways in which the party system since the 1994 elections has differed from the one which characterized the first half-century of republican Italy’s existence. The chapter examines whether these changes, though still continuing, amount to a change in the essential nature of the Italian party system. The 1994 election was marked by strong continuities with the past, including while one of the objectives of the previous year’s electoral reform had been to improve voter choice by forcing parties together around competing programmes for government before polling occurred, it would be difficult to argue that the 1994 election comprehensively achieved this. Since the crisis of 1992–94, it has become clear that, though continuing in a state of fluidity, the party system has undergone a rapid and fundamental transformation.
