Leadership in Italy: The Changing Role of Leaders in Elections and in Government

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Acknowledgements

This article is a revised version of a paper presented to the Association for the Study of Modern Italy (ASMI) Conference on ‘The Second Italian Republic’, London, 26–27 November 2004. The authors are grateful to two anonymous referees for their useful comments on the first version.

Notes

¹ In the Fall of 2005 through a parliamentary blitz the casa delle Libertò reformed the electoral law. The new proportional system will definitely change some of the features we have described and analyzed in our article. A precise evaluation will be possible only following the results of the elections.

² The literature is quite extensive: see Gundle and Parker (1996), Bull and Rhodes (1997), Bufacchi and Burgess (2001) and Pasquino (2002a) and their respective bibliographies. See also the special section of the Journal of Modern Italian Studies (Allum & Newell, 2003), especially the article by Mark Donovan (2003) on Berlusconi.

³ Our definition of ‘communicators-in-chief’ has been inspired by that of ‘interpreter-in-chief’ employed by Stukey (1991) to describe the role of the American presidents in the era of the mass media.

⁴ Indeed, a highly controversial constitutional reform proposal will, if finally approved, oblige the president of the Republic to appoint as Prime Minister the leader of the winning coalition, whose name will appear on the ballot alongside the name of his coalition's parliamentary candidate in each of the single member constituencies.

⁵ A valiant attempt to make sense of a very fluid situation has been made by Newell (2000).

⁶ On this point, see also chapter VII of ITANES (2001).

⁷ On this point see also chapter XI of ITANES (2001).

⁸ A comparison of the two European elections (1999 and 2004) reveals that the combined total vote for FI, the AN, the LN and the Christian Democratic Centre/Christian Democratic Union (Centro Cristiano Democratico/Cristiani Democratici Uniti, CCD/CDU) was 13,205,524 in 1999 and 14,130,932 in 2004. In 1999, however, FI won 25.2%, while in 2004 it obtained just 21%, with a loss of about 1,000,000 votes (7,813,948 in 1999, 6,837,748 in 2004). Even larger was the difference with the result of the 2001 national election, when FI got 10,923,146 votes (29.5%). In contrast, the European election result seemed to have favoured the smaller components of the centre-right coalition: the LN and, above all, the Union of Christian Democrats and Centre Democrats (Unione dei Democratici Cristiani e Democratici di Centro, UDC), which obtained 1,391,595 votes in 1999 and 1,917,775 in 2004 (and 1,193,643 in 2001). All data are from the Ministero dell'Interno website.

⁹ On the confrontation between the DS and RC see Massari and Parker (1999).

¹⁰ Except for Pierferdinando Casini, former leader of the CCD, now a member of the UDC, who became president of the Chamber of Deputies following the 2001 election. The UDC was initially represented in the government by Rocco Buttiglione and is now represented by Marco Follini.

¹¹ From 1945 to 1953 De Gasperi was often, though not always, both secretary of the DC and Prime Minister. But whether or not he was party secretary, he was essentially in control of the party up to the end of his governmental tenure. Fanfani (1958–1959) and De Mita (1988–1989) too combined, but quickly lost, both offices.

¹² Of the post-election governments of the Second Republic the most rapidly formed was Prodi's government (27 days), followed by Berlusconi's second (29 days). In contrast, the formation of Berlusconi's first government took a greater time (44 days) (see Campus, 2002c).

¹³ In Prodi's government such figures included Giovanni Maria Flick as Minister of Justice and Carlo Azeglio Ciampi as Treasury Minister; in Berlusconi's second government Letizia Moratti as Minister of Education, Renato Ruggiero as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Girolamo Sirchia, as Minister of Health and, more recently, Domenico Siniscalco, as Minister for the Economy and Finance.

¹⁴ See on this point Przeworski et al. (1999). Lack of unity on the centre-left has led to a fundamental weakness: the inability to identify and empower a joint parliamentary spokesperson as opposition leader.

¹⁵ Prodi had, for a very short period, been Minister for Industry in Andreotti's 1978–1979 government. Though certainly sympathetic to the DC in general terms, he was never perceived as a party politician.