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The Italian General Election of 13 May 2001: Democratic Alternation or False Step?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Sergio Fabbrini  and
Mark Gilbert
Sergio Fabbrini
Affiliation:
University of Trento, Italy
Mark Gilbert
Affiliation:
University of Bath
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Extract

On 13 May 2001, Italy Elected To Power A Centre-Right Coalition headed by the media magnate Silvio Berlusconi. Forza Italia, the political party founded by Berlusconi in 1994 when he first decided to enter politics, became the most widely supported political force in the country with almost 30 per cent of the popular vote. Forza Italia's success was partly a result of its ability to ‘cannibalize’ the votes of two of its smaller coalition partners, the Biancofiore, an electoral coalition between the Christian Democratic Centre (CCD) and the United Christian Democrats (CDU), and the Northern League (Lega Nord), both of whom saw their share of the vote fall sharply. The other party in Berlusconi's ‘House of Freedoms’ coalition, the National Alliance (AN), the formerly neo-fascist party that now sees itself as a pillar of the democratic right, held steady in electoral terms but remains very much a junior partner in the coalition.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , October 2001 , pp. 519 - 536
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2001

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References

1 The articles referred to in this paragraph are: ‘Silvio Berlusconi desvio´ miles de miliones desde Tele5 a empresas de su propriedad’, El Mundo, 30 April 2001; ‘Silvio Berlusconi: An Italian Story’, The Economist, 28 April 2001. See also the accompanying leading article ‘Fit to Run Italy?’, which is the source of the quotation. A compilation of the principal critiques published by the foreign press can be found at www.larepubblica.it/

2 Agnelli’s remark was widely quoted in the Italian press on 2 May 2001.

3 The Times, 7 February 2001.

4 Berselli, Edmondo and Cartocci, Roberto ‘Il bipolarismo realizzato’, Il Mulino, 50:3 (2001), pp. 449–60.Google Scholar

5 Fabbrini, Sergio and Gilbert, Mark ‘When Cartels Fail: The Role of the Political Class in the Italian Democratic Transition’, Government and Opposition, 35:1 (Winter 2000), pp. 27–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Fabbrini, Sergio ‘Has Italy Rejected the Referendum Path to Change? The Failed Referendum of May 2000’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 6:1 (2001), pp. 38–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 ITANES, Perché ha vinto il centro-destra, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2001. We would like to thank Piergiorgio Corbetta, the director of the Istituto Cattaneo in Bologna, for allowing us to have a copy of this book in advance of publication.

8 Perché ha vinto il centro-destra, p. 175.

9 Italia, Forza Silvio Berlusconi: Una storia italiana, Milan, Mondadori 2001.Google Scholar

10 See Gilbert, Mark, ‘In Search of Normality: The Political Strategy of Massimo D’Alema’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 3:3 (1998), pp. 307–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Sergio Fabbrini, Tra pressioni e veti. Il cambiamento politico in Italia, Rome and Bari, Laterza, 2001.

12 Xan Smiley, ‘Italy: What a Lovely Odd Place’, The Economist, country survey, 7 July 2001, p. 6.

13 For a source in English making this argument, see Stanton H. Burnett and Luca Mantovani, The Italian Guillotine: Operation Clean Hands and the Overthrow of Italy’s First Republic, Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.

14 For a detailed account of the Northern League, see Bull, Anna and Gilbert, Mark The Lega Nord and the Northern Question in Italian Politics, London, Palgrave, 2001.Google Scholar

15 ‘Contratto con gli Italiani’, www.forzaitalia.it

16 On this point, see Ferrera, M. and Gualmini, Salvati dall’Europa?, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1999;Google Scholar Palma, B. Di Fabbrini, S. E. and Freddi, G. (eds), Condannata al sucesso?, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2000.Google Scholar