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Italy

Country in southern Europe, bounded north by Switzerland and Austria, east by Slovenia, Croatia, and the Adriatic Sea, south by the Ionian and Mediterranean seas, and west by the Tyrrhenian and Ligurian seas and France. It includes the Mediterranean islands of Sardinia and Sicily.

Government

The 1948 constitution provides for a two-chamber parliament consisting of a senate and a 630-member chamber of deputies. Both are elected for a five-year term by universal suffrage and have equal powers. Constitutional reforms adopted in 1993 amended the voting system – one of proportional representation – to allow for 75% of the chamber of deputies to be elected by simple majority voting. The revisions also allowed Italian expatriates to vote in national elections and required elected deputies to retire after 15 years. The senate's 315 elected members are regionally representative, and there are also seven life senators. The president is constitutional head of state and is elected for a seven-year term by an electoral college consisting of both houses of parliament and 58 regional representatives. The president appoints the prime minister and cabinet (council of ministers), and they are collectively responsible to parliament. Although Italy is not a federal state, each of its 20 regions enjoys a high degree of autonomy, with a regional council elected for a five-year term by universal suffrage.

History For the history of Italy prior to unification in 1870 see Italy: history to 1796 and Italy: history 1796–1870.

The consolidation of the politically unified Italy was slow and difficult, owing to the great social and economic differences between the wealthier industrialized north and the poor agrarian south. In 1878 King Victor Emmanuel II died and was succeeded by Umberto I, and in the same year Pope Pius IX was succeeded by Leo XIII.

The later 19th century

Umberto I's reign was characterized by electoral reform (1881) and foreign colonization. The formation of a colonial empire began in 1869 with the purchase of land on the Bay of Assab, on the Red Sea, from the local sultan. In the next 20 years the Italians occupied all of Eritrea, which was made a colony in 1889. Somaliland, along the northeast coast of Africa, was acquired between 1880 and 1890. Italy's claims upon Abyssinia (Ethiopia) led to war, which ended in an Italian defeat at Adowa (1896) and the restoration of all land to Abyssinia by the Treaty of Addis Ababa (1896).

In 1882 Italy joined Germany and Austria in the Triple Alliance, largely owing to its distrust of France. Alliance with Austria also implied a renunciation of Italy's claims on Austrian possessions in the north (the Trentino and the South Tirol) and along the Adriatic coast of the Balkans.

The years before World War I

In 1900 Umberto was assassinated and was succeeded by his only son, Victor Emmanuel III. At the beginning of the new century Italy entered upon more friendly relations with France, and in the disputes over Morocco in 1906–11 supported France against Germany, while France acquiesced in Italian colonial ambitions in Tripolitania (an area of modern Libya), then part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire.

In September 1911 war broke out between Italy and Turkey in connection with the rights and privileges of Italian subjects in Tripolitania. In November of the same year the Italian government formally proclaimed the annexation of Tripolitania and the neighbouring area of Cyrenaica. In 1912 Italy also acquired the Dodecanese Islands from Turkey.

Meanwhile, at home, the industrialization of Italy gave rise to acute problems of social reform, and led to the rise of left-wing political groups, centred in the north.

Italy in World War I

After the outbreak of war in 1914 between the Allies (including Britain, France, and Russia) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey), Italy was at first neutral. As the price of continued neutrality, Italy demanded territorial concessions from Austria in the Trentino, Istria, Dalmatia, and Albania. Austria rejected all but a small extension of the Italian frontier.

Giorgio Sonnino, the Italian foreign minister, then opened negotiations with the Allies, and finally, in April 1915, the secret Treaty of London was signed, by which fulfilment of Italy's territorial claims was promised together with an immediate loan of £50 million. In May 1915 Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary.

The Italian army was poorly equipped, and only some 400,000 men were available for the main offensive launched on the River Isonzo (see Isonzo, Battles of the) and for the operations in the Trentino (see Trentino Campaign). Not until 1916 did Italy become actively at war with Germany. As a result of Sonnino's foreign policy the unity and independence of Albania were proclaimed under the protection of Italy, while in April 1917 the Treaty of St Jean-de-Maurienne was concluded with France and Britain, defining Italy's share in the post-war partition of Asia Minor (Asiatic Turkey).

In October 1917 the Italians suffered a massive defeat at the hands of German-Austrian forces at Caporetto (see Caporetto, Battle of). This defeat stiffened Italian resistance, and in June and October 1918 the reorganized Italian army defeated the Austrians at the Second and Third Battles of the Piave, and in October Austria sued for an armistice. (See World War I for further details of the fighting on the Italian Front.)

Post-war territorial issues

At the end of World War I the resources of Italy were exhausted. Its losses in men amounted to half a million, and the country was bankrupt. The fact, however, that for Italy the war ended with a military victory encouraged a nationalist movement, which demanded the port of Fiume (Rijeka, now in Croatia) as well as the territorial gains promised in the Treaty of London. The Adriatic question was unsolved, and Italian dissatisfaction with the peace treaty caused the resignation of the prime minister, Vittorio Orlando in 1919. He was succeeded by the liberal FrancescoNitti.

Domestic unrest in Italy was heightened by the feeling aroused over the Allied intervention in Fiume, following the coup d'état of Gabriele D'Annunzio, who in September 1919 occupied the city with a band of Italian volunteers. The ‘Adriatic question’ was settled tentatively by the Treaty of Rapallo (1920), whereby Italy surrendered the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic to the new state of Yugoslavia, but secured sovereignty over Zara (Zadar, now in Croatia), while Fiume was made an independent state. It remained for Mussolini to reach a definite settlement, known as the Treaty of Rome, in January 1924, whereby Yugoslavia exercised control over Port Baroc and the Delta, and Italy over Fiume.

The advent of Mussolini and the Fascists

Benito Mussolini became prime minister in 1922, having been the leader of the Fasci di Combattimenti, first organized by him in 1919 (see fascism). Italian fascism was an eclectic phenomenon, drawing both on the violent rhetoric of extreme nationalism and syndicalism. By 1921 the Fascists increasingly projected themselves as a movement capable of overcoming the bitter conflicts between capital and labour, although the development of agrarian fascism in the Po Valley, which in the same year transformed a minority group into a mass movement, showed that, despite the movement's ambiguities, its crucial support came from the right.

In 1921 the Fascists reorganized into a political party and returned 30 members to parliament, allying themselves with the Nationalists. In 1922, taking advantage of the weak government leadership and the continuing social unrest throughout the country – which rallied much moderate opinion to their support – Mussolini organized the Fascist March on Rome. The black-shirted Fascist columns advanced on Rome in October, and two days later Mussolini arrived from Milan in response to a royal summons. He at once formed a cabinet in which he combined the premiership with the ministries of foreign affairs and the interior. At the elections held in April 1924 the Fascists, after modifying the electoral laws in their favour, gained an absolute majority.

Following the murder of the Socialist Giacomo Matteoti, Mussolini came under pressure from his followers to take a hard line against all opposition. This resulted in the suspension of democratic rights in January 1925, a ruthless campaign against real and suspected opponents, and the gradual establishment of Mussolini's dictatorship. By 1928 Mussolini was absolute dictator, and adopted the title of Duce (leader). Superficially at least, Italy took on the appearance of a corporative state.

The 1929 Lateran Treaties, establishing the pope's territorial sovereignty over the Vatican City State, and subsequent moderation by Mussolini on religious questions, gave him at least passive support from many devout Catholics who never became active Fascists.

Italian expansionism in the 1930s

In foreign affairs Italy successfully surmounted many difficulties with Yugoslavia over Fiume; with Greece over the murder of Gen Tollini of the Albanian Frontier Commission, followed by the Italian occupation of Corfu; with France over the treatment of Italian minorities in France and Tunisia; and with Turkey over Turkish fears of an Italian annexation of Anatolia. Italy was also a signatory to the Locarno treaties on European security (see Locarno, Pact of).

A rapid increase in population and a shortage of war materials, coupled with the bankruptcy of the regime's domestic policy and the need to create new support, led Italy along the road of imperialism. Notwithstanding the existence of various treaties and conventions guaranteeing the integrity of Ethiopia, Mussolini announced his intention of annexing the country and by May 1936 Italian forces were occupying the Ethiopian capital. Thus, in addition to the areas of Libya conquered in 1911, vast new regions were added in 1936; yet the number of Italians settled in the Italian possessions in northeast Africa scarcely ever exceeded 30,000.

The League of Nations considered collective action against Italy, but the idea was eventually abandoned. Mussolini, together with Hitler, also committed forces to the right-wing cause of Gen Franco in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). After the Munich Agreement (1938), Mussolini's prestige rose considerably as a result of his part in the settlement. This event further strengthened the ties between Italy and Germany (already strong since the formation of the Rome–Berlin Axis in October 1936), even though the German annexation of Austria earlier in 1938 had appeared to frustrate Mussolini's ambition of achieving a dominant position in southeast Europe.

Mussolini's aggressive intentions became increasingly obvious: Italian claims were launched for Djibouti, Tunisia, Corsica, and Nice. In April 1939 Italian troops invaded Albania. King Zog fled, the country was occupied, and Victor Emmanuel III became king of Albania. In May, Italy and Nazi Germany signed a treaty of alliance.

Increasing authoritarianism

At home, the Duce strengthened his autocratic position by the abolition of the Chamber of Deputies. In its place a Chamber of Fasci and Corporations was set up, having 800 members from the National Council of the Fascist Party and the National Council of Corporations, nominated by Mussolini. The government had the right to issue decrees with the force of law, which were then placed before the Chamber. The Chamber dealt with constitutional laws, budget estimates, and also any other matters that Mussolini authorized it to discuss.

The real ruling authority was the Gran Consiglio del Fascismo (Fascist Grand Council), which was composed of the quadrumviri of the March on Rome, appointed for an indefinite period, a certain number of members (ministers and other high dignitaries) appointed for as long as they held their offices, and an indeterminate number of members appointed for three years by the head of the government.

Early campaigns in World War II

On the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Italy was at first neutral, though obviously friendly to Germany. Nevertheless the following year, with the decline of Allied fortunes in Western Europe, Mussolini became convinced of an eventual Germany victory and on 10 June Italy declared war on France and Great Britain, and shortly afterwards launched an attack on Egypt from Libya. But, contrary to Mussolini's probable belief, the collapse of France did not bring the war to an end and Italy gained few territorial benefits. (For further details of the course of the war see also World War II.)

Economic conditions in Italy became increasingly bad. In October 1940 Italy launched an attack on Greece, but the stout resistance maintained by the Greeks caused the campaign to linger on through the winter with catastrophic results for the Italians. Moreover the Italian navy was severely crippled by the British air force attack on the naval base of Taranto (November 1940).

Military disasters continued: an Italian army was routed in Albania by the Greeks in March 1941, the province of Cyrenaica was lost to the Allies (see North Africa Campaign), and the Ethiopians launched a successful revolt, which, aided by British arms, resulted in the loss of Eritrea in March and the fall of Addis Ababa in April.

Germany, however, succeeded in retrieving Italian fortunes in both North Africa and the Balkans. The reflected prestige helped to maintain the Fascist regime in Italy, which fell more and more under the control of Germany.

Italy was associated with Germany in the defeat of Yugoslavia and gained some land on the Dalmatian coast. Italy also provided an occupying force for Greece, which had been defeated by the Germans. By June 1941 Italy was at war with the USSR (although Hitler had given no notice to Mussolini of his intention to invade the USSR), and by the end of the year with the USA. Italy's economic situation deteriorated still further and its industry was entirely tied to Germany's war machine. With German help, efforts were made to strengthen the hold of the Fascist Party. At the instigation of Germany, the Fascists also started to deport large number of Italian Jews to the Nazi death camps. At the end of 1941 Italy occupied Nice and Corsica at the same time as the Germans moved into southern France.

The fall of Mussolini

The year 1943 saw the fall of Mussolini and the surrender of Italy to the Allies. After the Allied invasion of Sicily, Mussolini made a last bid to prepare the mainland of Italy against invasion and to ensure the loyalty of the Fascist Party by excluding several leading members from the government. Dissension within the Fascist Party, however, broke into open revolt when Mussolini, after two meetings with Hitler in July, was unable to obtain a promise of adequate German support against the coming invasion.

By order of the king, Mussolini was arrested and Pietro Badoglio, another Fascist, was called upon to form a government. A secret armistice with the Allies was agreed while the Germans, in anticipation of some such move, tightened their grip in northern Italy and also occupied the Rome airfields. On 8 September, following the Allied landing at Salerno, the armistice was declared. Badoglio set up his government in British-occupied territory and on 11 October Italy declared war on Germany.

In the meantime, Mussolini, after a dramatic airborne rescue carried out by German paratroopers, set up a republican Fascist regime in the north, named the Republic of Salo. He avenged himself on those of his former supporters who had betrayed him but were now in his power. Among them were Count Galeazzo Ciano and Emilio De Bono who were tried and shot in January 1944.

Liberation

In June 1944 the Allied armies entered Rome and Victor Emmanuel retired in favour of his son, Prince Umberto. He did not, however, abdicate. Badoglio resigned and Ivanoe Bonomi, a veteran socialist statesman from the days before fascism, formed a new government. With an Italian government in Rome, most of the occupied areas of southern Italy were handed over to Italian control, and the government was recognized diplomatically by the United Nations.

On 28 April 1945 Mussolini, his mistress, and 12 members of his cabinet were shot by members of the largely left-wing partisan resistance movement, which had been fighting the Fascists and Germans in occupied Italy since 1943, and had also organized general strikes. On 2 May 1945 the German army in Italy surrendered, and the liberation of Italy was completed.

The establishment of the republic

Bonomi, who considered his interim task now at an end, resigned and a coalition government under Ferrucio Parri succeeded him. Parri resigned in November 1945, after a consultative assembly had been established and a new government comprising six parties was formed by the Christian Democrat Alcide De Gasperi. By this time the Allied military government had handed over to the Italian government the control of all territory except Venezia Giulia and the Udine province, while the economic situation was eased by supplies that reached Italy from foreign sources through the agency of the UN.

In May 1946 Victor Emmanuel formally abdicated and his son was proclaimed king as Umberto II. However, a referendum on the future of the monarchy held in June resulted in a majority in favour of a republic. Umberto abdicated in June, and subsequently went into exile in Portugal.

Elections were held for the Constituent Assembly under a new system of proportional representation, which resulted in a gain of 207 seats for the Christian Democratic Party, 115 for the Socialists, and 104 for the Communists out of a total of 556. The Constituent Assembly met in June and proclaimed a republic, electing de Nicola as provisional president. De Gasperi continued as premier of a reconstructed coalition government, the first for 25 years to consist of freely elected deputies.

The peace treaty

The first event that confronted the new government was the peace treaty with the Allies, signed on 10 February 1947. The terms of the treaty, whereby Istria, Fiume, and land east of the River Isonzo were ceded to Yugoslavia (with the exception of the newly created Free Territory of Trieste) were considered a sad blow to Italy, and neither did they satisfy Yugoslav ambitions. The treaty also stipulated the cession of the Tenda-Briga area in the Maritime Alps to France and the Dodecanese Islands to Greece, while Italy also lost its colonies in Africa and agreed to respect the independence of Ethiopia.

Italy also agreed to pay substantial reparations over seven years, and provisions were made for the demilitarization of frontiers and of islands in the Mediterranean and for the limitation of armed forces.

De Gaspari's governments 1947–53

De Gasperi, at the head of a new coalition government in January 1947, weathered the storm created by the peace treaty. Further unrest was being caused by shortages of raw materials and other economic difficulties. In May the Communists, who had supported the government since 1944, were expelled from the coalition, and De Gasperi formed a further government dependent mainly on the Christian Democrats. The new constitution became law on 1 January 1948. In May 1948 Luigi Einaudi was elected president of Italy for a seven-year term.

The general election of 1948 established the Christian Democrats as the major party of the right. The successive De Gasperi administrations (he headed eight between 1945 and 1953) always had to rely on support from other parties, latterly more and more right-wing Socialists and the Liberals; for, though the Christian Democrats were the largest single party in parliament, they never had an overwhelming majority over all other parties combined.

As time went by the left-wing parties in the coalitions became increasingly dissatisfied with the government's internal policy, which they regarded as insufficiently progressive. Various attempts at social reform were, however, carried out by De Gasperi and his successors, notably in the sphere of land reform, which especially affected southern Italy, but with little real success.

In 1949 De Gasperi's foreign policy brought Italy into NATO, and in the same year Italy became a founder member of the Council of Europe. His moderate influence soon reestablished Italy's status in West European politics, but his alliances with the West were bitterly opposed by the Communists.

The Christian Democrats lost ground in the general election in 1953 after an attempt to alter the electoral laws in their favour. In July De Gasperi formed his eighth and last ministry. Only his own party members joined it and it lasted only a few days. After 1953 various attempts were made to build a new coalition formula around the weakened Christian Democrat Party.

The later 1950s

The 12 years, 1950–62, saw the Italian ‘economic miracle’, during which its gross national product doubled, and it was able to sustain one of the highest growth rates in the world (6%) for an even longer period.

In October 1954 Italy and Yugoslavia finally reached agreement over the Trieste problem, thus settling a nine-year dispute. Under it, Italy obtained an area including Trieste city and Yugoslavia the area around it, where the population was mainly non-Italian. Trieste was to remain a free port. It was on the whole a solution more favourable than Italy could have envisaged at the end of the war. In 1955 Giovanni Gronchi succeeded Luigi Einaudi as president of the Republic.

The late 1950s were a period of considerable uncertainty. The Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 led to a regrouping of the left-wing parties, and a less intransigent position was adopted by Pietro Nenni's Socialist Party. At the level of local government a certain amount of cooperation between the Socialist and Centre parties became possible. These developments had as their background the rapid expansion of the country's economy, which was symbolized in 1957 by the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which gave Italy an important position in the new European Economic Community (EEC) and illustrated the degree of recovery achieved since the war.

The shift to the left in the 1960s

The 1960s ushered in a decade of political and economic difficulties. The organization of the EEC itself, together with the fiercer climate of international competition, began to reveal weaknesses in Italy's export-led economic boom. Higher rates of employment meant that the low-wage policies that had nurtured the boom had to be abandoned in the face of mounting discontent, and the parties of the left increasingly gained support.

During the brief premiership of Fernando Tambroni in 1960, an attempt was made to find a new right-wing coalition, drawing on monarchists and neo-fascists. The venture seemed to point the way to an experiment in presidential government, and the resulting outcry led not only to Tambroni's fall but also to a series of attempts to find an ‘opening to the left’, a coalition based on the Christian Democrats that would include the left rather than the traditional centre and right. new liberalism of the Vatican after the election of Pope John XXIII in 1958, which made cooperation between clerical politicians and the Socialists a practical possibility. The spectacular economic growth of the 1950s had also converted many previous disciples of laissez-faire among the Christian Democrats, who were now ready to accept some degree of state planning and intervention.

The Christian Democrat Amintore Fanfani guided the first move to the left in his coalition government of 1960–62, but in the attempt to find a programme acceptable to the Socialists he lost the support of sections of his own party. After heavy losses in the 1963 elections Fanfani stood down, but after a caretaker government the experiment was successfully resumed by Aldo Moro (Christian Democrat prime minister December 1963–June 1968), who was able to obtain the support of Nenni's Socialist Party. The alliance was strained by the government's deflationary policies, and also by the revelation of a supposed conspiracy in which the Secret Service (SIFAR) was heavily implicated. This led to a further split within the Socialist Party and the formation of a Party of Proletarian Unity by Nenni's discontented followers.

In 1964 the divided Christian Democrats had been unable to decide on a candidate, and the Social Democrat, Giuseppe Saragat, was elected president. Despite its early promise the Moldo coalition achieved little in the way of practical reforms, and the Socialists paid the price in the elections of 1968. A new centre–left coalition, including Republicans and various socialist groups, was formed by Mariano Rumor in December 1968, but it was unable to survive the violent outbursts of discontent amongst both students and industrial workers in the following year.

The South Tirol problem

A continuing problem has been the existence of non-Italian-speaking minorities, who number about 250,000. Some of these are the German-speaking people who live in the South Tirol, the area round Bolzano (Bozen) on the borders of Switzerland and Austria. After World War II many of these German-speakers demanded a severance of the ties with Italy; some hoped for an independent Tirolean state, others called for reunion with Austria. In an agreement to settle the issue in 1946, Austria acknowledged the existing Brenner frontier with Italy, and Italy in turn promised local self-government or autonomy within the framework of the Italian state for the province of Bolzano and the few mixed-language communes in the province of Trento to the south. After several years of tension in the province, including terrorist incidents in the early 1960s, the Italian and Austrian governments found a mutually acceptable policy that restored peace to the area.

The north–south divide

The plight of southern Italy (the Mezzogiorno) has presented one of the most permanent and intractable problems since the formation of the Italian state in 1870. Existing poverty and backwardness in the south was further aggravated by the industrialization of the north in the late 19th century, and the reforms introduced by Giovanni Giolitti (prime minister several times in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) had little success. The massive wave of overseas emigration in the decade before 1914 provides an index of the deteriorating conditions in the south.

Despite early promises, however, the area was again neglected by the Fascist regime. After liberation in 1944 the south once again became the scene of bitter peasant risings and attempts to occupy uncultivated estates. De Gasperi's government in 1950 introduced agrarian reforms and established a special bank, the Cassa del Mezzogiorno, to encourage investment in the south. The renewed massive emigration of the 1950s and 1960s indicated that such measures were inadequate.

Other government plans to create incentives for investment in the south, the Vanoni Plan (1954) and the Pieraccini Plan (1965) were never implemented, and the Alfa Romeo factory built near Naples rapidly proved to be a costly blunder. The funds of the Cassa have often been directed to political, rather than economic, ends, and although some improvements have occurred, the gap between the north and south has tended to increase since the end of the war.

The turbulent 1970s

Against a continuing background of unrest and violence, notably in the city of Reggio di Calabria, a new reforming ministry was formed by Emilio Colombo (July 1970–June 1971). The election of a new president, the Christian Democrat Giovanni Leone, in December 1971 was followed by a dissolution of parliament a year before the expiry of its term (for the first time in post-war Italy), and under the more conservative leadership of Giulio Andreotti the Christian Democrats held up well in the ensuing elections.

In addition to industrial disputes and economic problems, Italian politics were dominated by two other issues in the earlier 1970s. In July 1970 the law creating new regional assemblies came into force, and the first elections to the regional councils were held. In general, support was shown for parties of the government coalition, but in the local elections of 1975 Italian politics received one of their sharpest jolts since the war when the Communists made landslide gains.

The second major issue was that of the referendum on the Divorce Bill introduced in 1970. The referendum was delayed until 1974, but the favourable vote was seen as a further blow to the traditional clerical parties and an indication of the Roman Catholic Church's declining influence in Italian politics.

In January 1976 Moro's coalition government resigned after the withdrawal of support by the Socialists. He formed a minority Christian Democrat administration in February, but lacking adequate support was forced to resign in April. In the June elections, the Communists greatly increased their share of the vote (receiving over 34% as against 27% in 1972). The Christian Democrats maintained their 38% share by taking votes from the extreme right and the smaller centre parties.

In the wake of their electoral success the Communists pressed for what they called the ‘historic compromise’, a broad-based government with representatives from the Christian Democratic, Socialist, and Communist parties, which would, in effect, be an alliance between Communism and Roman Catholicism. The Christian Democrats rejected this. Apart from a brief period in 1977–78, the other parties excluded the Communists from power-sharing, forcing them to join the opposition.

At the end of July 1976 Giulio Andreotti formed a government of Christian Democrats, assured of the abstention of the Communist deputies, and the new government proceeded to introduce severe measures to cope with the continuing economic crisis. Andreotti continued as prime minister until 1979.

Political violence continued through this period. On the extreme left, the Red Brigade were responsible for a number of terrorist acts, including the kidnapping and shooting of former prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978. The Red Brigade were also initially thought to be responsible for the bombing of Bologna railway station in 1980, in which 82 people died, but this was later found to be the work of far-right elements.

Italy in the 1980s

In 1980 the Socialists returned to share power with the Christian Democrats and Republicans and participated in a number of subsequent coalitions. In 1983, the leader of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), Bettino Craxi, became the republic's first Socialist prime minister, leading a coalition of Christian Democrats, Socialists, Republicans, Social Democrats, and Liberals. In the same year Italy played an important part in the multinational peacekeeping force in Beirut.

Under Craxi's government, which lasted until 1987, the state of the economy improved, although the north–south divide in productivity and prosperity persisted, despite attempts to increase investment in the south. Various short-lived coalition governments followed; in 1989, the veteran Giulio Andreotti put together a new coalition of Christian Democrats, Socialists, and minor parties.

The early 1990s

In 1990 the Communist Party abandoned Marxism–Leninism and adopted the name Democratic Party of the Left (PDS). Its leader, Achille Occhetto, was elected secretary general of the renamed party. A referendum held in 1991 overwhelmingly approved reform of the voting procedure in an attempt to eliminate electoral corruption and to reduce the political influence of the Mafia. The 1992 general election resulted in the ruling coalition losing its majority and the need for the Christian Democrats to forge a new alliance.

President Cossiga carried out his threat to resign if a new coalition was not formed within a reasonable time. The election of Oscar Luigi Scalfaro as president in May 1992 was followed in June by the swearing in of Giuliano Amato, leader of the PSI, as premier. In September 1992, after unprecedented currency speculation, the government devalued the lira and suspended its membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the European Monetary System.

Corruption scandals

In February 1993, judges investigating Italy's corruption network accused PSI leader, Bettino Craxi, of involvement. He resigned the leadership and was succeeded by Giorgio Benvenutu. In March 1993 corruption investigations (Mani Puliti), instigated in 1992 by the crusading Milan magistrate Antonio di Pietro, revealed the extensive involvement of many of Italy's notable politicians, including seven-times prime minister, Giulio Andreotti, whose name was linked with Mafia leaders. In May 1993 parliament voted to retain former Socialist leader Bettino Craxi's immunity from prosecution on several charges of corruption, despite widespread criticism.

Constitutional reform

An April 1993 referendum showed 82.7% of the Italian people to be in favour of a new majority electoral system and a ‘cleaner’ democracy. Prime Minister Giuliano Amato announced his resignation, marking the start of a transition towards a Second Republic. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the Christian Democrat governor of the Bank of Italy, was asked to form a new government. In May, Giorgio Benvenutu was replaced as PSI leader by Ottaviano del Truro. Constitutional reform proposals were approved by parliament in August 1993.

Berlusconi's right-wing alliance, 1994

In January 1994 Ciampi resigned to make way for a general election. A number of new political parties subsequently formed, including the right-of-centre Forza Italia, transformed from a pressure group into a full-fledged political party under media magnate Silvio Berlusconi.

Despite fundamental differences in policy between the federalist Northern League (LN, or Lombardy League) and the neofascist National Alliance, the two parties joined forces with Berlusconi's Forza Italia to fight the March 1994 elections, winning a resounding victory. Berlusconi succeeded in forming a right-wing coalition government but, within months of assuming office, faced a crisis of confidence arising from alleged conflicts of interest between his business concerns and his national responsibilities. In December 1994, after his coalition lost its parliamentary majority, he resigned.

Dini's premiership, 1995–96

Lamberto Dini, a former banker and independent member of Berlusconi's administration, was chosen to form a new government in January 1995. He led a cabinet of nonelected technocrats and sought to reduce the budget deficit by reform of the state pension system, but was fiercely opposed by Berlusconi's Forza Italia and in October 1995 narrowly survived a no-confidence vote by agreeing to step down at the end of the year. Dini formally resigned in January 1996 but, after the failure of Antonio Maccanico to form a broad-based coalition on the instruction of President Scalfaro, continued as caretaker premier until the election in spring.

Prodi as prime minister

In the general election of April 1996, the centre-left ‘Olive Tree alliance’ emerged victorious with about 45% of the vote. Its leader, Romano Prodi, was appointed prime minister.

In the same month as the general election, former prime ministers Berlusconi, Craxi, and Andreotti, and former foreign minister Gianni de Michelis, former chief prosecutor Antonio di Pietro, together with fashion designers Giorgio Armani, Krizia, and Santo Versace were arraigned on corruption charges. Di Pietro was subsequently cleared of all allegations.

In September 1996, Northern League leader Umberto Bossi, blaming the southern states for Italy's economic decline, proposed an independent Republic of Padania to embrace the whole of northern Italy, including Milan, Florence, and Venice. In November 1996 the lira re-entered the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the European Monetary System. Di Pietro resigned from the Prodi government in November amid renewed allegations of corruption.

In January 1997 Berlusconi's brother, Paolo, was cleared of plotting against Antonio di Pietro. Prime Minister Prodi survived a no-confidence vote in parliament in April 1997, but resigned in October rather than suffer a ‘no confidence’ vote. There were immediate attempts to form a grand coalition, but later, with the promise of support from the Communists, Prodi agreed to continue. In December 1997 former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was sentenced to 16 months' imprisonment for false accounting, but the sentence was immediately quashed; in the same month Prodi was cleared of corruption charges. In February 1998 former prime minister Berlusconi went on trial for alleged tax fraud and in July was given a 33-months' prison sentence for bribing tax officials.

In October 1998, the Olive Tree Alliance coalition government of Romano Prodi collapsed after its hard-left allies, the Refounded Communists, withdrew support and it was defeated on a confidence vote. The Refounded Communists' leader Massimo d'Alema put together a new coalition government. The coalition included Communists, Greens and the ex-Christian Democrats of Francesco Cossiga. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi remained as treasury minister.

D'Alema as prime minister

In May 1999 Ciampi was elected president by MPs and regional representatives. He has never been affiliated to any party, and made it his mission to introduce the economic rigour and sacrifices required to meet the criteria for the single European currency.

Amid disputes with his coalition, Prime Minister Massimo d'Alema resigned in late December 1999, but two days later was asked to form another government, and presented a centre-left administration, excluding the three rebel parties that caused problems to his first government. When d'Alema's coalition was beaten in regional elections by a right-wing alliance led by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, Giuliano Amato was sworn in as prime minister of a centre-left coalition, Italy's 58th government since 1945.

Amato as prime minister

Seven referendums held in Italy in late May 2000, including one that proposed abolishing proportional representation in parliamentary elections, were all declared to be invalid as only 32% of the electorate voted, far below the minimum 50% required to give force to the verdict.

In September, Amato surprisingly conceded leadership of the centre-left coalition in the next general election to Franceso Rutelli, the popular mayor of Rome.

Berlusconi returns to power

In May 2001, the election was won by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, leading a centre-right coalition, who promised tax cuts to regenerate the economy. After a month of bitter wrangling with his allies, Berlusconi finally named his government in June. The National Alliance's Gianfranco Fini was named deputy prime minister, and Umberto Bossi, whose Northern League party until recently wanted an independent northern Italian state, was named Minister of Institutional Reform and Devolution. Giulio Tremonti, a former tax lawyer, took over as treasury minister, and Renato Ruggiero, a former head of the World Trade Organization (WTO), was put in charge of foreign affairs.

In a final report released in September 2001, an Italian parliamentary committee investigating allegations of brutality and disorganization by police during the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Genoa in July effectively absolved the police force.

In December, Berlusconi came under unprecedented pressure from the EU to accept proposals for a wide-ranging EU arrest warrant, which Italy alone was blocking on the grounds that fraud and corruption be removed from the list of crimes to which the warrant could be applied. The foreign minister, Renato Ruggiero, resigned on 5 January 2002 claiming his pro-European stance made him increasingly isolated within the government. Berlusconi took on the post himself two days later.

In March, Berlusconi urged trade unions to call off a planned general strike and to discuss controversial labour-law reforms. The plea followed the murder of Marco Biagi, the economic adviser to the government who had recommended the reforms which aimed to make it easier for employers to dismiss staff. The Brigate Rosse per la Costruzione del Partito Comunista Combattente (BR-PCC; Red Brigades for the Construction of the Fighting Communist Party) left-wing terrorist group claimed responsibility for Biagi's death. Despite the assassination and Berlusconi's plea, the trade-union confederation CGIL held a huge rally in Rome protesting against the proposals, and the country's three largest unions called a general strike just days later.

In December 2004, Berlusconi was finally cleared of corruption, at the end of trial that had been going on for four years.

Leadership changes

In the general elections of April 2006, Romani Prodi was returned to power; he was sworn in as prime minister in May.

Also in May, the former communist Giorgio Napolitano was elected president.

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