The Republic, Shifting Alignments

From June 1979 to June 1981 the Christian Democrats led the government, as they had for more than three decades. In 1981, however, Giovanni Spadolini, a leader of the small Republican Party, became the first post-World War II prime minister who was not a Christian Democrat. Another series of cabinet crises in August 1983 led to the formation of a government under Bettino Craxi, Italy’s first Socialist prime minister since the war. He served until March 1987, the longest tenure of any postwar leader. During his term, in 1984, Roman Catholicism lost its status as Italy’s state religion, as the government signed a new concordat with the Vatican to replace the Lateran Treaty of 1929.

Craxi’s term was followed by several short-lived governments in the late 1980s. In July 1987 Christian Democrat Giovanni Goria became prime minister; his five-party coalition broke up in March 1988, and Ciriaco De Mita, leader of the Christian Democrats’ left wing, came to power. A year later De Mita was ousted as party secretary, and in May 1989 he resigned as prime minister. Then in July Andreotti returned for his sixth time as prime minister. Divisions among Christian Democrats and the five-party coalition led to his resignation in March 1991, but when no one else was able to form a government, Andreotti did so again in April, remaining in office for another year.

The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe precipitated changes in Italy as well. In 1991 the Italian Communists renamed themselves the Democratic Party of the Left, downplaying their former atheism and emphasis on class conflict in favor of issues such as the environment, feminism, and the economic disparity between the country’s industrial north and the poverty-ridden south. The Socialist Party, still led by Craxi, tried to unify the left and renamed itself the Party of Socialist Unity. Meanwhile, the separatist Northern League gained popularity by criticizing central government waste and advocating a federal system that would grant more regional autonomy.

Voters showed their lack of confidence in all established parties in elections held in April 1992. The once-dominant Christian Democrats received 29.7 percent of the vote, an all-time low. The renamed Communists, in second place, drew 16.1 percent, down from 26.6 percent in 1987; the Socialists were third, with 13.6 percent.

The voter backlash resulted from a combination of factors, including a poor economy, high unemployment, and the public revelation of widespread political corruption and Mafia influence at high levels of the government. In the years that followed, thousands of individuals, including hundreds of politicians as well as judicial and business leaders, were investigated or arrested on charges that included taking bribes and granting political and economic favors. As a result of the scandal, Craxi was forced to resign his position as head of the Socialist Party in early 1993. In July 1994, facing arrest for accepting bribes, he fled to Tunisia, where he remained in self-imposed exile until his death in 2000.

In April 1993 Italian voters approved eight governmental reform referendums, which revised the country’s electoral system and ended state funding of political parties. Soon after the elections Prime Minister Giuliano Amato resigned and was replaced by the head of the Bank of Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

In March 1994 a newly formed right-wing coalition called the Freedom Alliance was voted into power, winning 58 percent of the vote; the left-wing coalition received 34 percent of the vote, and the once-dominant centrist parties drew only 7 percent. The Freedom Alliance was composed of the new Forza Italia party, a creation of media magnate Silvio Berlusconi; the far-right National Alliance; and the Northern League. With 25 percent of the vote, Forza Italia was the election leader, and Berlusconi was named prime minister, with the Freedom Alliance holding a majority in the Chamber of Deputies and forming the strongest force in the Senate. But Berlusconi’s coalition collapsed in December 1994 when the Northern League withdrew from the alliance. Berlusconi, who was also facing investigation on bribery charges, resigned as prime minister.

In January 1995 Lamberto Dini, Berlusconi’s treasury minister, was appointed prime minister by President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro to lead a politically neutral, transitional government. Dini’s government passed an austerity budget to deal with Italy’s worsening economy, which included a crippling national deficit and a devalued lira. It also oversaw efforts to reform the regional electoral system and state pension system and to enact rules governing political access to television. Dini resigned in January 1996, but continued in office until elections were held in April.