The Republic, Recent Events

In October 1998 Prodi lost a parliamentary confidence motion by only one vote. Massimo D’Alema, a former Communist and head of the Democratic Party of the Left, put together a broad center-left coalition that took power in the Italian parliament. D’Alema replaced Prodi as prime minister, becoming the first ex-Communist to serve in that position. The new prime minister hoped to stabilize the Italian government with proposals for electoral reform, but a national referendum on the issue was narrowly defeated in April 1999 when it failed to receive the required percentage of voter turnout to validate the election.

In May 1999 former prime minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi was elected president. In December of that year, in the face of widening cracks in his ruling coalition, D’Alema resigned as prime minister. After negotiations between the opposition parties failed to produce a government, D’Alema returned to office at the head of a slightly smaller center-left coalition. This new government, however, was equally short-lived, and after his coalition sustained heavy losses in regional elections in April 2000, D’Alema resigned for good. He was replaced by former prime minister Giuliano Amato, who had served as treasury minister in D’Alema’s cabinet.

The center-left’s control of government came to an end in national elections in May 2001, when a conservative alliance led by Berlusconi captured a majority of seats in the upper and lower houses of parliament. Berlusconi’s winning alliance included his own Forza Italia party, which emerged from the elections as the nation’s largest single party; the National Alliance; and four smaller conservative groups. As Italy’s new prime minister, Berlusconi pledged to lower taxes, streamline the state bureaucracy, and modernize Italy’s sluggish economy.