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Update 1 for Bale European Pols 2nd ed:
Relevant to Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (April 2008):

The Italian Election of April 2008 

On 13 and 14 April 2008 Italians went to the polls in an early election precipitated by the centre-left coalition’s inability to win support in the upper house of the Italian parliament, the Senate. In most European countries with a bicameral legislature, lack of support in what is normally the lesser of the two chambers would be awkward but not fatal. However, in Italy, where the Senate is just as important as the Chamber of Deputies, a government really must have a majority in both in order to function. Romano Prodi’s administration, a loose alliance that ran all the way from centrist Christian Democrats on one flank to traditional Communists on the other, had no problems in the Chamber because the electoral system used in 2006 awarded a ‘winner’s bonus’ to the electoral alliance with the biggest vote share – extra seats on top of what it was due according to its vote share so as to ensure it had a majority. But no such provision existed for the Senate. So the very close result in 2006 produced what looked on the surface like a win for the centre-left but was in fact a poisoned chalice. A government that aimed to make major reforms in order to liberalise Italy’s ailing economy – sometimes against the wishes of its own supporters – was always going to have problems. It struggled on for nearly two years but was finally forced to pull the plug when it was clear some of its own members were reluctant to support it in the Senate.

The 2008 election was fought, once again, by electoral alliances joining together parties of supposedly like-mind. However, there were significant differences. On the right, Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Gianfranco Fini’s Alleanza Nazionale agreed to form a joint list called Popolo della Libertà (PdL), possibly as a prelude to the formation of a wholly new political party. This formation then formed an electoral alliance with the regionalist and radical right-wing populist party, Lega Nord, with Berlusconi – who still controls the majority of the Italian broadcast media and whose political career has often been dedicated to extricating himself from various criminal prosecutions – as its candidate for prime minister. There had also been developments on the left. On the centre-left, the socialist Democrats of the Left and liberal Christian Democrats turned themselves into the Partito Democratico, led by the former Mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni. On the radical left, however, the two main Communist parties and the Greens fought the election as a separate, common list called Sinistra Arcobaleno.

The main issue of the election was how to kick start the economy, with both main electoral alliances offering both improvements in public services and tax cuts. The Lega Nord, as is its wont, made clear its continued support for ‘fiscal federalism’ (more autonomy for Italy’s richer northern provinces, which would be allowed to prevent so much of their tax take going to subsidize the poorer South), as well as for measures to cut immigration. One of its election posters (‘They suffered immigration: Now they live in reserves’) gives a flavour of their rhetoric.

The big battle, though, was between the 71-year old Berlusconi (freshly fitted with a pacemaker) and his younger rival Veltroni, with the former relying on his roguish, telegenic charm and the latter relying on an old-fashioned nationwide tour and a soundbite allegedly borrowed from Barack Obama – ‘Si puo fare’ (‘It can be done’). Interestingly, though, Berlusconi refused a head-to-head television debate with Veltroni, who is also a talented, if very different, communicator. Berlusconi finaly agreed to appear, however, on a show where each man was interviewed separately one after the other – and, as the closing credits were about to roll, jumped up and, talking over the helpless presenter, told voters not to waste their votes on his rivals.

Whatever Berlusconi did, it seems to have worked. His new party and the centre-right electoral alliance it headed won a clear victory, as the diagrams (provided by the BBC’s website http://news.bbc.co.uk) show. Just as importantly, it gained a majority in both houses of parliament, which gives Berlusconi the chance to push through the reforms Italy badly needs. Some of these are economic but others are political. Whether, though, there will be as much pressure now to reform the electoral system to prevent smaller, extreme parties getting into parliament and holding their bigger counterparts to ransom is a moot point: in the 2008 contest the far left parties that caused the Prodi government so much trouble lost all their seats.

What was also interesting was that voter turnout in Italy remained high, at just over 80 per cent. This was in spite of a steep spike in anti-politics feeling in the country, reflected in, and possibly exacerbated by, the publication of a book The Caste: How Italian Politicians Have Become Untouchable by Gian Antonio Stella and Sergio Rizzo and the efforts of a satirist, Beppe Grillo, whose blog-backed campaignwww.beppegrillo.it/english.php brought hundreds of thousands of Italians out on to the streets in September 2007 to protest against the political class.

After his victory, Berlusconi warned Italians that they faced ‘difficult months ahead’ and made a symbolically determined start by holding his first Cabinet meeting in Naples – the city where political and economic problems had left garbage uncollected for weeks. He also promised to put at least four women into his Cabinet – no mean feat in a culture in which politics is still very much a man’s game. Before the election, only 17 per cent of members of the Chamber of Deputies were female. After it, they were still seriously unrepresented – a situation which can’t just be blamed on a Mediterranean macho culture, given the fact that Italy’s near neighbour, Spain, has made massive progress on this front in recent years www.independent.co.uk/news/ Nor is it just a political problem: Italian women are much less likely to be employed than men news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/, as well as less likely to vote.

Whether Berlusconi, not renowned for his progressive attitudes towards women, will do much to help their situation in Italy remains to be seen. Indeed his will and capacity to make a whole host of reforms that Italy arguably needs is an open question. The answer may depend in part not just on him but on whether his new political formation, the PdL, can turn itself into a fully-functioning party rather than an electoral flag of convenience.

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