The 2010 Regional Elections in Italy: Another Referendum on Berlusconi

Abstract

This article analyses the 2010 regional elections in Italy, in which the centre-right, led by Silvio Berlusconi, was successful. This followed on from its victory in the 2008 general election and the 2009 European elections. The article analyses the extremely conflictual political climate in which the elections took place. The analysis of the election results concentrates on four points: the large increase in abstentionism, the contest in the northern regions between the Lega Nord and the Popolo della libertà, the failure of the centre political formations to realise their ambitions, and the success of far-left ‘anti-political’ groups.

Keywords:

• Italy
• Regional Elections
• Berlusconi
• Political Parties
• Abstentionism
• New Left

The March 2010 regional elections in Italy took place in 13 out of 20 regions. There were no elections in the five regions with a ‘special status’ (characterised by greater autonomy) and in two other regions (Abruzzo and Molise), which for various reasons voted on a different date.1 Forty-one million voters were eligible to vote, representing 83 per cent of the total national electorate. So, from a quantitative point of view, it was effectively a consultation of national significance. But the electoral test was also qualitatively of national importance. In Italy, ‘second-order elections’—whether to a supranational parliament like the European one or to subnational parliaments like those in the regions—have always had a bearing on the national political debate. (Indeed, in the 2009 European elections the question of Europe never came up in the campaign, which was dominated by national issues.) It should be added that today in Italy the regions—set up in 1970—are very important because they have a lot of power and are likely to have even more in the future as a process is underway to extend their authority.

The electoral system for regional elections is rather complex, with a double vote: (a) one vote for a regional president, which under a majoritarian system translates into 20 per cent of the seats; (b) one vote for a party, which assigns the remaining 80 per cent of the seats with a proportional mechanism. It is therefore a mixed system (majoritarian–proportional) but mainly proportional (Di Virgilio 2005).2 Every candidate for regional president is linked to supporting parties or lists. In every region, two main coalitions were formed: the centre-right coalesced into the Popolo della Libertà (People of Freedom, PDL) and the centre-left into the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, PD).3 In summary, the principal alliances were:

•	the centre-right coalition formed by the PDL and the Lega Nord (Northern League, LN);
•	the centre-left alliance, formed by the PD and Italia dei Valori (Italy of Values, IDV), which ran in every region with the exception of Calabria;
•	the centrist party Unione di Centro (Union of the Centre, UDC), allied with the PD in Piemonte, Liguria, Marche and Basilicata, with the PDL in Lazio, Campania and Calabria, and ran alone in the other regions;
•	the Radicali Italiani (Italian Radicals) formed the Lista Bonino-Pannella (Bonino-Pannella List), which allied with the centre-left in four regions, ran with the IDV in Calabria and stood alone in Tuscany;
•	the Partito Socialista Italiano (Italian Socialist Party, PSI) allied with the centre-left;
•	the Federazione della Sinistra (Left Federation, FS, one of the two radical-left formations that came from the 2008 Sinistra Arcobaleno, Rainbow Left) stood mainly as part of the centre-left, but ran alone in Lombardy and in Campania, and with the SEL (see below) in Marche;
•	Sinistra, Ecologia, Libertà (Left, Ecology, Freedom SEL, the other list that came from the Sinistra Arcobaleno) stood with the centre-left throughout Italy, but allied with FS in Marche;
•	the new Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Star Movement) stood in Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Piedmont, Veneto and Lombardy and did not form part of any coalition.

As the reader can see, the picture might seem confusing. But it is only apparently so. The regional differences outlined above are small and negligible and in reality the political contest in every region was between the centre-left and centre-right coalitions formed around the PDL and PD. But, above all, it was a national referendum regarding Berlusconi himself.

A Referendum for or against Berlusconi

The so-called ‘second republic’ was born in Italy in 1993, when the new electoral law—moving from a proportional to a mainly majoritarian system—swept away the old parties and initiated a bipolar system. The transition from a multi-party system to the present one was complex and not without contradictions (Newell 2000). It should be noted that at present the Italian political system is not a two-party one, but a multi-party system with two main parties, the PD on the left and the PDL on the right, and other smaller parties gravitating around one or the other of these.

For half a century Italian politics had been dominated by a classical centre party (Christian Democrats) in various coalitions, excluding from government a numerically small right wing (the inheritors of the Monarchist Party and the Fascists) and a left that was much larger and more rooted in the country but dominated by the Communist Party, which was still tied to Moscow and greatly feared by the economic powers in Italy, Europe and above all the US.

The transformation of the Italian political system in a bipolar direction has had two main consequences: (a) it has allowed the left to govern after being excluded for 50 years; (b) it has given rise to a centre-right political pole (not right-wing but centre-right, it should be noted), something completely new in post-war Italian politics. It should be added that in the 1994 general election the centre-right did not just come into being but also found a leader: Silvio Berlusconi. He has shown extraordinary resilience in his position as leader. Between 1994 and 2010 the centre-left has had seven leaders in succession (Occhetto, Prodi, D'Alema, Rutelli, Veltroni, Franceschini, Bersani), while Berlusconi has never left his command post on the centre-right.

He is above all a leader with the charisma typical of populist leaders,4 that is the ability to arouse opposing emotions: love and hate, with nothing in between. There are those, including the author of this article, who believe that if the Italian system is bipolar today it is due to Berlusconi's ability to create only friends or enemies. As far as his attractiveness is concerned, his popularity ratings have been consistently high and his leadership abilities have enabled him to fuse together politically diverse centre-right souls (Catholic, Liberal and post-Fascist). With regards to his ability to repel, he has given rise to a widespread anti-Berlusconi feeling which is often the only glue binding together the confused and contradictory centre-left, which is united only when it can attack the bogeyman of Italian politics or when it is attacked by him.

In the period 1994–2010, 13 elections took place in Italy at a national level: almost one a year, which means that there has been a permanent election campaign for 16 years and daily politics has been a continual aggressive and argumentative polemic. Each election became a referendum for or against Berlusconi. Excluding the elections that are about to be analysed here, Berlusconi won seven of these hard battles and lost five (see Table 1). So, this poses the question: did Berlusconi also win the referendum of the 2010 regional election?

Table 1 Elections of national importance which took place from 1994 to 2010, and their winners

	1994	1994	1995	1996	1999	2000	2001	2004	2005	2006	2008	2009	2010
General	CR			CL			CR			CL	CR
Regional			CL			CR			CL				CR
European		CR			CR			CL				CR
CR = centre-right. CL = centre-left.

The Electoral Campaign

According to two of Italy's most renowned political journalists—the presenter of a state television talk show and an opinion writer in the daily newspaper La Stampa—this electoral campaign was ‘the ugliest, the most unseemly and even the most violent ever’ (Vespa 2010) and ‘the worst in the history of the Republic’ (Sorgi 2010). It is difficult to disagree with this opinion. And this assessment is not limited to the brief period of the electoral campaign.

In fact, the nine months between the European elections of 6–7 June 2009 and the regional elections of 27–28 March 2010 were a continuous election campaign, concentrated on the figure of Berlusconi. Already at the end of 2009, a few weeks before the European election, Berlusconi's wife, Veronica Lario, sent a letter to the main Italian press agency in which—faced with the possibility that Berlusconi was running various soubrettes as candidates on his party list for the European election—spoke about ‘shameless rubbish … for the amusement of the emperor’. A few days later she asked for a divorce, following news in the papers about an ambiguous relationship that her husband was having with an underage girl (Noemi Letizia), news that had already appeared in the press some time previously. In the middle of June the newspapers, still focusing on the Prime Minister's family morals, published audiotapes of a meeting between Silvio Berlusconi and the escort Patrizia D'Addario. From this a turbid scenario emerged of parties organised in Berlusconi's villa in Sardinia with prostitutes offered by businessmen who, in exchange, were interested in obtaining public contracts for their companies. This affair, together with a constant repetition of further news and spicy details, dragged on for months. On 10 September, at a press conference at the Italian–Spanish summit, Berlusconi felt the need to publically declare in front of a European audience that he had ‘never paid for sex’, and on 1 October Patrizia D'Addario was a guest on the popular television programme Annozero, where she stated that ‘Berlusconi knew I was an escort’ (Gundle 2010).

In addition to this Boccaccio-like affair, Berlusconi continually had to face legal problems. On 4 October 2009, the Civil Court in Milan established that Fininvest, Berlusconi's company, had to pay €750 million to the Cir company (an important holding, also involved in the media) as compensation for an event dating back to the early 1990s (regarding a controversial judgement about control of the country's main publishing house, which also owns influential daily and weekly newspapers), when a judge was bribed to rule in favour of Berlusconi. The Prime Minister himself was not tried because of the statute of limitations, but his lawyer was found guilty, and the sentence passed in October 2009 implicitly confirmed that the company owned by Berlusconi was involved in corrupt practices with the aim of possessing important media assets. On 7 October the Consitutional Court rejected the so-called Lodo Alfano (named after Berlusconi's minister who had proposed this law in Parliament), which had been approved in June 2008 following a ferocious parliamentary battle, with the aim of shielding those holding the three highest political positions (and therefore also Berlusconi) from being brought to court for as long as they held office. Berlusconi really wanted this law because it was explicitly aimed at protecting him personally from legal investigations, and obviously its rejection by the Constitutional Court represented a big defeat for him, as he faces trials on several fronts, with the possibility of being found guilty in some of them. This could seriously jeopardise his institutional role (no democratic country would tolerate a prime minister convicted by the courts). So Berlusconi's lawyers and the ministers closest to him—beginning with the Justice Minister (Angelino Alfano)—embarked on frenetic activity to put in place a law (legge ad personam) aimed at protecting Berlusconi from the trials already underway. Of particular concern was an impending trial which Berlusconi faced. This was connected to the British lawyer, David Mills who had already been sentenced to four years and six months for giving false testimony in court. It was alleged that Berlusconi had paid him to do so in order that Berlusconi and his company could be immune from prosecution for charges brought against them in a previous trial.

Berlusconi's lawyers drew up three draft laws to protect their beneficiary. These were the law of legittimo impedimento (the prime minister can refuse to face trial if he or she is engaged in government activity), the processo breve (the limit for the statute of limitations is cut considerably and comes into effect two years after the original request to send the case to court, meaning that all Berlusconi's trials would be timed out, together with 50 per cent of proceedings pending in the country, according to the National Association of Magistrates), and another version of the Lodo Alfano. This gave rise to ferocious controversy. Berlusconi repeatedly attacked the magistrates with statements of a kind that are not easily acceptable in a democracy (‘There is a climate of civil war, the public prosecutors want to bring me down’, 26 November; ‘Parliament's sovereignty has been passed to the judges’, 10 December; ‘The judges are the Taliban’, 26 February; ‘The Public Prosecutor’ Party has come on to the field, distorting the election campaign', 23 March).5

But Berlusconi was under attack on other fronts. The Prime Minister managed the aftermath of the Aquila earthquake—which happened on 6 April 2009—by heavily involving himself personally and using the media, in order to show Italians how his government (and he himself) was different from all the other governments and prime ministers who had gone before (and who had often been accused of inefficiency in similar emergency situations). Guido Bertolaso was the man who became the symbol of this mass media campaign (and also had the job of restoring the popularity of Berlusconi, under attack for the mentioned affairs concerning his family and female escorts). Bertolaso was the head of Civil Protection, omnipresent on TV—the archetypal ‘actions not words’, ‘we act while you talk’ person. But on 10 February, Bertolaso was investigated for corruption related to contracts that he had assigned for ‘big events’. A vast network of corruption with many ramifications emerged, and public opinion became aware that doing away with the bureaucracy linked to contracts, something that Berlusconi wanted as part of his much extolled ‘can-do government’, had consequently led to a lack of controls and therefore to corruption.

Other factors soured Berlusconi's relationship with centre-left public opinion. Two weeks before the elections, Berlusconi was investigated by magistrates for having put pressure on the Communications Agency (a body independent from the government) to gag the political talk show Annozero, which Berlusconi opposed because it strongly criticised him. On this subject it should be mentioned that at the beginning of March the executive committee of the body responsible for state radio and television (which in Italy has three of the most important television channels, while the other three are owned by Berlusconi) decided to suspend political talk shows. These are very popular in Italy, and many are critical of Berlusconi. The left accused the government of ‘gagging’ freedom of political expression, and the controversy in this case also continued until election day.

Finally, in the last two weeks before the vote, the electoral campaign was further embittered by events closely linked to the elections themselves. First of all, magistrates in the province of Rome and then in Milan ruled that the electoral lists of Berlusconi's PDL were not eligible because of irregularities in the way that they were presented. In Milan this decision was overturned, but not in Rome. There the affair, involving judgements, appeals and counter-judgements, dragged on almost until election day; in the end the PDL's list was not accepted in the province of Rome, and even here Berlusconi did not miss an opportunity to blame the magistrates (declaring that his party was a victim of bureaucracy).

In this climate it is not surprising that these elections were once again presented as a referendum for or against Berlusconi. But it was Berlusconi himself who was pushing in this direction, appealing—in typical populist style—to public opinion in opposition to ‘bureaucratic institutional fetters’, and presenting himself as the ‘only one directly elected by the people’.

Abstentionism

For the reasons just mentioned, the elections took place in a climate that was greatly scrutinised by the mass media; and they seemed to be alarmed when, with voting still underway, the Minister for Home Affairs released the usual initial figures on the elections, which revealed a low turnout. On Monday 29 March, when the polling stations were already open, the three most important daily newspapers had the headlines, ‘Turnout down 9 per cent. Big fall in the whole of Italy’ (Corriere della Sera), ‘Turnout collapses in the regional elections’ (La Repubblica and La Stampa had the same headline).

This alarm was justified. In fact, the turnout in these elections, at 63.5 per cent, was the lowest in the history of the Italian Republic. In the previous regional elections in 2000 and 2005, the turnout was 73.0 per cent and 71.4 per cent, respectively, and in 2010 the figure was six percentage points below that of the European elections just nine months before. More than a third of Italians did not go out to vote in 2010. These figures mean little to the non-Italian observer, considering that in the four most important European nations (Germany, France, Britain and Spain) average turnout in recent general elections has been 69 per cent and has been even lower in local elections. Regional elections took place in France just 15 days before those in Italy, with half of the French people not turning out to vote. But this is a misleading comparison because in France the turnout is always much lower than in Italy, and goes up and down dramatically. In Italy, on the other hand, turnout has always been very high6 (going to vote was part of both the Socialist/Communist and Christian Democrat political culture) and has been declining for many years. As we can see from Figure 1, in the 1970s a very high percentage of Italians voted, well above 90 per cent. Since then, this percentage has constantly fallen, speeding up particularly in the middle of the 1990s when the old parties disappeared and the proportional electoral system was replaced with a mainly majoritarian one. But this is not only a problem of turnout. All of the indicators concerning the relationship between citizens and politics point to a growing disaffection amongst the electorate with political parties and politicians, which has spread to political institutions, to parliament and to local councils, and affects all forms of political participation.

Figure 1 Turnout in Italy since 1970 for three different kinds of elections (for the 13 regions in which voting took place in 2010).Source: Ministry of Interior, official data.

This is a tendency that is general throughout the Western world but appears particularly accentuated in Italy. In Italian society, something is happening to the relationship between citizens and democracy and these elections could represent the beginning of a collapse rather than an anomalous wave that will recede. There are many reasons for concern: the confusion of an election campaign with its toing and froing regarding the presentation of lists (to such a point that in Rome people still did not know which lists would be on the ballot paper five days before the elections); the squabbling between political opponents trying to discredit each other rather than put forward a programme for government; the scandals involving the highest ranks of the political class, including the opposition; the left's lack of leadership and clear political line; and above all the presence of a leader (Berlusconi) who in the purest populist style undermines political institutions and appeals directly to the ‘people’. All this reveals a democratic body that is ailing, abstentionism being the thermometer that's measuring its high temperature.

Who Won and Who Lost

Table 2 presents the electoral results for the proportional part of the vote: that is, the vote for parties and party lists. However, the first analysis of the vote should concern the winning coalition in each region, the one that was able to win the presidency and therefore the regional government, rather than the national vote of single parties. Before the elections, the centre-left governed in 11 regions and the centre-right in two. After the elections, seven regions became controlled by the centre-left and six by the centre-right. Therefore, the centre-right gained four regions (see Figure 2). We should also consider the fact that the six regions governed by the centre-right are more populous (and economically more important) than the seven governed by the centre-left (the population of the six centre-right regions is twice that of the seven centre-left regions). In this respect, the centre-right was clearly successful. In order to complete the national picture, it should be added that of the seven regions that did not vote in 2010, five are governed by the centre-right and just one by the centre-left (the remaining region is not controlled by either coalition; see note 1). Thus, the 2010 contests confirmed the centre-right's dominant position in the regions.

Table 2 Regional election of 2010: results of the vote to the party lists

	Per cent
Partito Democratico—Democratic Party—PD	26.1
Italia dei Valori—Italy of Values—IDV	7.3
Sinistra Ecologia e Libertà—Left Ecology Freedom—SEL	3.0
Federazione della Sinistra—Leftist Federation—FS	2.7
Partito Socialista Italiano—Italia Socialist Party—PSI	1.9
Verdi—Greens	0.7
Lista Bonino-Pannella—Radicals	0.5
Alleanza per l'Italia—Alliance for Italy	0.6
Personal lists of centre-left governors	1.9
Total centre left	44.7
Popolo della libertà—People of Freedom—PDL	26.8
Lega Nord—Northern League—LN	12.3
La destra—The Right	0.7
Personal Lists of centre-right governors	7.8
Total centre right	47.6
Unione di Centro—Union of the Centre—UDC	5.6
Movimento a 5 Stelle—Five Star Movement	1.8
Others	0.3
Total	100.0
Source: www.Repubblica.it

Figure 2 Regions governed by the centre-left and the centre-right before and after the 2010 elections. (a) Italian regional elections 2005. (b) Italian regional elections 2010.Legend: white = regions with no elections in 2010; gray = regions with a centre-left majority; black = regions with a centre-right majority.

However, comparing the outcome of the recent elections with those of five years ago is not very useful for understanding the shifts that are taking place. Too many political and electoral events happened in Italy between 2005 and 2010. We passed from a favourable situation for the centre-left in 2005 to a situation of stalemate between the two political camps in the general election the following year, followed by two clear victories for the centre-right in the 2008 general election and the European elections in 2009. Therefore, it would seem reasonable to compare these regional elections with the elections for the European Parliament in 2009. It is true that these are different kinds of elections, but they are a better comparison if we want to analyse the changes that are taking place in the country today. Before the elections, the left's expectations were not entirely negative. As has already been mentioned, the centre-left held 11 regions against two for the centre-right, but it was known that this situation could not be repeated and that Campania and Calabria would undoubtedly be added to the two already in the hands of the centre-right (Lombardy and the Veneto). So, a result of nine to four was possible, and this would have been interpreted as a success for the left, a kind of about-turn in the tendency underway following their burning defeat in 2008–9. However, two very important regions were in the balance: Piedmont and Lazio. It was clear to everyone that the result in these two regions would symbolise the elections politically: whoever took them would legitimately have been able to crown themselves the winners. Hearts were beating fast at the election counts. The result remained in the balance up until the last seat: but in the end both were won by the centre-right.7

Other factors should also be taken into consideration. In 2009, Berlusconi was in the middle of his honeymoon with the electorate (after having become prime minister again when he won the general election in 2008). The European election of 2009 took place after a successful year when he had removed the rubbish from Naples and acted as ‘rescuer’ in the aftermath of the Aquila earthquake. But in the nine months between the 2009 and 2010 elections, his image had been greatly damaged by personal scandals, and major tensions had emerged inside his party, the PDL. In addition, the government was grappling with the most serious post-war world economic crisis. Finally, these were mid-term elections, which normally favour the opposition: a few days before, in the regional elections in nearby France, Nicholas Sarkozy lost every region, except Alsace, to the opposition.

There were, therefore, many reasons why the opposition party could expect a good result. It was not to be. In the end, the PD's percentage of valid votes was substantially the same as in 2009 (26.1 per cent, up 0.6 percentage points). But it should be remembered that 2009 was electorally a particularly negative year for the PD, which in the European elections received one of the lowest percentages in its electoral history (Figure 3).8 The party did not slip further but there was no sign of a revival. For this reason, for the PD the result can only be described as disappointing.

Figure 3 Votes for the two main parties (or for the parties that formed them) from 1996 to 2010 (for the 13 regions in which voting took place in 2010).Note: See Table 1 for the kind of election.Source: Ministry of Interior, official data.

We cannot say that Belusconi's party, the PDL, did well electorally. From Figure 3 we can see that it fell almost six percentage points compared with 2009, going from 35.3 per cent in 2009 to 29.6 per cent, historically the lowest level ever for this party or for the two parties that had formed the PDL in 2008 (Forza Italia and Alleanza Nazionale). Frankly, it was a defeat. But this defeat was greatly compensated politically by the success of its ally, the LN. This is the only major party whose percentage of the vote increased, going from 11.3 per cent to 12.3 per cent between 2009 and 2010, thus securing its third consecutive electoral advance and obtaining its highest vote since 1994.

The centre-right coalition's success (even if it was thanks to the LN) and the consequent winning of four new regions (above all the two that were uncertain until the last minute) were the distinguishing characteristics of these elections. As the chief editor of the daily newspaper La Repubblica wrote, ‘The symbolic effect of Lazio and Piedmont, which changed political hands, swings the electoral balance towards Berlusconi, who went into these elections weakened and came out strengthened: everything else is just idle talk’ (Mauro 2010). Thus, Berlusconi won these elections, not as leader of the PDL but as head of the governing coalition. The day after the elections the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera correctly had the headline, ‘Berlusconi and the Northern League win’.

The ‘Northern Derby’

These elections were also a contest within the centre-right, between the LN and the PDL in the richest parts of the country—the three regions in the north.9 In 2005 the centre-right had won in Veneto and Lombardy (the only two regions that it won in that year): in Veneto the PDL came slightly above the LN while in Lombardy the margin of victory for the PDL was larger. The question mark was not over who would win (there was no doubt that the centre-right would). The issue was whether the LN would overtake the PDL in Veneto and how close behind them it would come in Lombardy. Even though they are closely allied, the PDL and the LN openly challenge each other in the north of Italy, and at stake was political hegemony in the most modern, most European, most industrialised and richest parts of the country. In Piedmont (the third region in the sub-Alpine north), on the other hand, the contest between centre-right and centre-left was completely open: the outgoing governor was from the centre-left and the centre-right had entrusted a supporter of the LN with the job of challenging her. There is no doubt that a victory for the LN candidate would have strengthened the party in the whole of the north.

The results favoured the LN in all three situations mentioned. In Veneto it outclassed the PDL, becoming by a long way the biggest party with 35 per cent of the votes compared with 25 per cent for the PDL (while in the previous regional elections of 2005 the LN got only 16 per cent of the vote in this region). In Lombardy, the LN did not overtake the PDL, but halved the gap between them (which was 11.2 points in 2005, falling to 5.6 in 2010). And in Piedmont the centre-right candidate from the LN, Roberto Cota, won the difficult contest for the governorship, taking the region from the centre-left who had governed there for the previous five years. We should also add that in the other big region of the Po valley, Emilia-Romagna, traditionally a stronghold of the Communist Party and later of the centre-left (one of the ‘red’ regions), the LN went from 4.8 per cent in the 2005 regional elections to 13.3 per cent, almost tripling its electoral support in five years.

The clear consequence of all of this—together with the above mentioned considerable fall in support for the PDL—is a rebalancing (in favour of the Lega Nord) between the two main parties of the coalition. From Figure 4 we can see that in 2005, 16 out of 100 votes for the centre-right were votes for the LN while in 2010 the LN's electoral weight within the coalition doubled (to more than 31 per cent).

Figure 4 Distribution between the PDL and the LN of 100 votes for the centre-right coalition from 2005 to 2010 (for the 13 regions in which voting took place in 2010).Source: Ministry of Interior, official data.

This redefining of the balance between the PDL and the LN has another consequence: the ‘southernisation’ of the PDL. If the PDL loses votes to the LN in the north, the ‘northern’ part of the party is weakened.

The Ambitions of the Centre

In the elections, an important match was also being played in the political centre. In Italy the debate over which electoral system to adopt is still open. From 1948 to 1993 the electoral system was based on a strictly proportional law which greatly helped the Christian Democrats, a typically centrist party, to hold power in a stable way. In 1993, following a referendum, the system was almost completely overturned when a mainly majoritarian electoral law was passed, upsetting the political landscape (with its main consequence the disappearance of the Christian Democrats). Then in 2005 the Berlusconi government reintroduced the proportional system but with a majority bonus, with the aim of forcing the parties to form coalitions (the formation of a bipolar rather than biparty system, with a centre-left and a centre-right pole).

Emerging from this bipolar system in 2008, when the two big parties—PDL and PD—were formed, was the centrist party UDC, which did not want to be imprisoned in a PDL led by Berlusconi. The UDC, previously a loyal ally of Berlusconi, began to go it alone in elections, hoping to become a catalyst in the centre, should the electoral system once more move towards a proportional one. The advantages for a centre formation under a proportional system are clear: it would be in a position to influence the composition of the governing coalition. Furthermore, in Italy other political forces in addition to the UDC are in favour of moving towards a proportional electoral system (the model in this case is the German one), and this is an issue of bitter conflict inside the PD.

Against this background there was a clear interest in measuring the success of the UDC's new strategy. In 2010, the party made its flexibility as a centrist party clear for the first time, allying with the centre-left in four regions, with the centre-right in three and standing alone in the remaining six. Tired of conflict between pro- and anti- Berlusconi supporters, the party's plan was clearly one of attracting votes from a moderate electorate in the centre. Therefore, it was an interesting test, not only for the fate of the UDC itself, but also for understanding how far the bipolar system was consolidated in Italian culture and how much space there was for a centrist formation.

The result was clear: the UDC, which in the 2009 European elections obtained 6.2 per cent of the vote, now had 5.6 per cent (as always, the data refer to the 13 regions where voting took place in 2010). So, the improvement that its leaders expected did not take place. It should be added that compared with 2009 the party lost whether it ran alone or in alliance with the centre-left, while its vote remained unchanged (with a slight increase) where it was allied with the centre-right: this would signal that the heart of the UCD electorate beats more on the right than on the left. However, as has already been said, the point of this test was to understand whether the centrist strategy could pay off electorally, and the reply in the ballot boxes was negative. The party's oscillation between the two political poles brings with it the risk of losing its identity, and in the current political situation in Italy there appears to be little space between the centre-left and the centre-right.

The Unknown Area to the Left of the Democratic Party

The history of the Italian ‘radical left’ (or ‘alternative left’) is rather complicated. It was born at the end of the 1960s to the left of the communist and socialist parties and has been through 30 extremely difficult years of unity and splits. In the last few years it has been made up of two components. The first of these—let's call it ‘radical left’—takes its inspiration from Marxism and is a direct descendant of the student movements of 1968. In 2006, it was still getting ten per cent of the vote, but in the 2008 elections (when it stood on the Sinistra Arcobaleno) it did not succeed in reaching the minimum four per cent threshold to enable it to enter parliament. This was almost a mortal defeat and was due to the fact that its electorate had not forgiven it for making life difficult for the Prodi government (the centre-left government from 2006 to 2008), and accused it of bringing about that government's fall, opening the way for Berlusconi's landslide victory in the 2008 elections.

In addition to this, there is the second component, the IDV, which was founded by Antonio di Pietro, a magistrate who played the role of principal prosecutor of Berlusconi in many of his trials, and who in 1998 abandoned the magistracy to go into politics. This party got by in the 2001–6 elections and managed with difficulty to enter Parliament in 2008 (4.4 per cent nationally), and subsequently had a big success in the 2009 European elections, doubling its vote (eight per cent nationally). This success was due to the disappearance of the radical left and its handing over of the anti-Berlusconi flag, which Di Pietro has waved at every opportunity. The question in the regional elections was how well an anti-Berlusconi would stance pay off. In other words, how much electoral support would a policy of full-frontal opposition to Berlusconi, including personal attacks, have?

In the 2010 regional elections the IDV did not do well compared with the European elections of 2009, falling back slightly. In the 13 regions where voting took place, the party had 7.8 per cent and now has seven per cent. Nor did the radical left—which stood as two separate groupings, the Left Federation and Freedom and Ecology Left—do well. Adding together their vote in the 13 regions under consideration, they got 7.3 per cent in 2009 and went down to 6.3 per cent in 2010.

But one other thing should be added, because one of the surprises of these elections was Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement, a completely new political formation, founded by a showman. Beppe Grillo is a comic actor and, for some time now, a political activist, whose internet blog is one of the most visited in Italy and is in seventh place in the 2009 Forbes world ranking. He is a promoter of a discussion forum with thousands of members commonly known as ‘Grillini’ or ‘friends of Beppe Grillo’, has inspired numerous civic lists that carry his name and in October 2009 was behind the creation of a real national political movement, the Five Star Movement.

Ignored by the traditional media and with few economic resources, Beppe Grillo and his movement relied on the internet to spread their political programme, to mobilise voters and to recruit candidates (mainly 20- and 30-year-old social networkers). The result was that 60,000 people signed up. In the 2010 regional elections the movement only stood in five regions but had a completely unexpected success: an average vote of 3.7 per cent, with a highest vote of seven per cent in Emilia-Romagna (and 9.3 per cent in the city of Bologna). In addition, it won four regional council seats, two in Piedmont and two in Emilia-Romagna.

Beppe Grillo does not fit into any of the traditional political schemas, attacking the PDL and the PD equally violently and declaring that he is ‘neither right nor left, but forward’. He has two main political proposals, one anarchic and one ecological. Above all, he has made his own the theme of popular distrust of traditional politics, its rites, its privileges and its protagonists discredited by scandals and corruption, among both the governing majority and the opposition. Discontent in Italy has reached extremely high levels. In this sense, Beppe Grillo's movement represents a last refuge for the disillusioned, offering electors (above all, young voters) the opportunity to cast a protest vote. Without this option, many of those who voted for the Five Star Movement probably would not have turned out. Secondly, Beppe Grillo has been able to pick up the ecological banner that had been left on the ground for some time by all of the other parties. He appeals to Italians who cycle, who want greener and cleaner air, who are concerned about the greenhouse effect, who buy fair-trade products, who want to recycle rubbish, who do not want their cities to be concrete jungles and who want environmentally clean transport. It is not a coincidence that in the Val di Susa in Piedmont, where for some time a struggle has been carried out against the building of a high speed train network, his movement won around 30 per cent of votes. However, at the moment it is not clear whether this political movement will be able to consolidate itself and become a stable presence on the Italian political scene.

Conclusion

Berlusconi has been the inspiration behind the Italian bipolar system for over 15 years. In every election, political coalitions have been formed around him and each electoral contest has been turned into a referendum on him personally. Berlusconi himself has personalised every election, even turning local elections with little national relevance into a test of himself, as, for example, in the regional elections in Abruzzo in 2008 and in Sardinia in 2009. And every time Berlusconi has championed an aggressive and bitter electoral campaign, completely centred on the charismatic relationship between the leader and the masses and intolerant of the mediating institutions that are the life blood of a democracy. Thus, he has all the classic features of a populist leader.

Berlusconi entered the 2010 regional elections in obvious difficulty. He seemed weakened personally by sexual scandals; weakened as prime minister because the government's Civil Protection Department—in charge of assistance in case of disasters—which should be the archetype of a can-do government, was immersed in corruption; weakened as party leader by the mess that the PDL made of the provincial lists in Rome (which led to the PDL list being excluded), and by the internal conflict that was behind that. Above all, these elections were a golden opportunity for the opposition because they were mid-term and, moreover, local (normally, the left in Italy does better in local elections than in national ones, thanks to its tradition of good local administration).

Despite all of this, the centre-right managed to conquer four regions and the PD achieved the same disastrous result it had in the European elections nine months before. So, did Berlusconi also win these elections? We can answer this question with a ‘yes’, while adding, however, that he won them as head of a government and head of a coalition but not as a party leader. As a well-known political commentator wrote in Corriere della Sera on the day after the elections, ‘Berlusconi the Prime Minister has many more reasons to smile than Berlusconi leader of the PDL’ (Panebianco 2010).

The PDL is a party in difficulty and the success of the LN accentuates this. It is in crisis for three reasons. First of all, the fusion between the two organisations that formed the party in 2008, Forza Italia and Alleanza Nazionale, appears not to have succeeded, and the continuing conflict between Berlusconi and Fini (previously leader of Alleanza Nazionale and now president of the lower chamber) bears witness to this. Secondly, the party's electoral support has greatly weakened. As we saw in Figure 3, between the elections of 2006/2008/2009 and those of 2010, the PDL lost between five and six percentage points. The crisis in its relationship with its electorate seems even more serious if we look at absolute votes, taking abstentions into account: between 2005 and 2010, the PDL lost over one million votes, and this figure reaches four million if we compare 2010 with 2008. Finally, the PDL is in crisis because in Northern Italy—the richest part of the country—it is losing out to the LN. We only have to consider the fact that two of the sub-Alpine regions—Piedmont and the Veneto—are now governed by the LN and in Italy you cannot run the country if you do not control the north.

The future of Italian politics seems unclear. Italy is at the highest point in the bipolar contest, but at the same time at the lowest point regarding confidence in institutions, and the collapse in electoral turnout is a symptom of this. The future of the PDL is completely uncertain. The party is still a ‘plastic party’, with few structures, and is held together only by Berlusconi's leadership.10 Nobody can tell what will happen when Berlusconi inevitably leaves politics (we should not forget that in 2010 he is 74 years old).

The future of the LN is also very uncertain. Like other right-wing populist parties in Europe, it was born as a populist, xenophobic, anti-European and anti-modern movement. Will it be transformed as a consequence of its electoral support and the responsibility of government? And, if so, how will this happen?

Another question concerns where the PD is going. Today it is like a dazed fighter who is cornered in the ring, waiting for his opponent's blows and only capable of defending himself. Two years after its foundation, and following two changes of general secretary, this is, to say the least, an uncomfortable situation. Will it manage to find a leadership capable of giving it an identity and a programme, and of taking the situation inside the party in hand and silencing internal disputes? These are three big question marks and nobody knows the answers at the moment due to the instability of the Italian political scene.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Gianluca Passarelli for the help given in the data analysis and all the researchers of the Istituto Cattaneo for the stimulating discussions in the aftermath of the vote.

Notes

 [1] The other seven regions held elections on different dates between 2005 and 2010. The centre-right won in Abruzzo, Molise, Sicily, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Sardinia; the local autonomists supported by the centre-left won in Trentino-Alto Adige, and in Valle d'Aosta victory went to the Union Valdotaine, which is not connected to any of the main national coalitions.

 [2] It should be added that since 1999 every region has been able to draw up its own statutes and its own electoral law. However, at the time of the 2010 elections, only seven regions had passed their own electoral law (Baldi & Tronconi 2010) and, in any case, these regional laws have not substantially modified the points made in (a) and (b) above, which are the key features of the electoral system.

 [3] It should be remembered that both these parties were formed just before the 2008 general election: the PDL as the result of a fusion between Forza Italia (Berlusconi's party) and Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance, which came from the neo-fascist MSI); the PD from a fusion between the Democratici di Sinistra (Left Democrats [DS], formerly the Communist Party) with the Margherita (Daisy, from the left wing of the Christian Democrats) (Corbetta 2009).

 [4] For a more in-depth look at the ‘Berlusconi phenomenon’, see, among others, Ginsborg (2006) and Stille (2006). For an analysis of Berlusconi's entry into politics and his first electoral success, see Katz and Ignazi (1996).

 [5] To update the reader, we would add that at the moment of writing (July 2010) none of the three proposals has yet completed its passage through parliament.

 [6] In Italy, the high turnout in elections for the whole post-war period up until the end of the 1970s was due to the big contrast between the Partito Comunista and Democrazia Cristiana, which drew politics to the attention of many Italians, and the social roots these parties had, widely spread out through local party branches, which could mobilise electors when elections took place. (On Italian political culture in the 1950s and 1960s see Galli and Prandi [1970].)

 [7] The victory of the centre-right in Piedmont was very narrow (47.3 per cent for the centre-right and 46.9 per cent for the centre-left, the difference being the equivalent of just 9,000 votes); in Lazio, the difference was slightly bigger: 51.1 per cent for the centre-right and 48.3 per cent for the centre-left.

 [8] As already stated, both the PD and the PDL were formed just before the 2008 elections. In Figure 3, the percentages before 2008 refer to the parties that fused to make the PD and PDL.

 [9] For a recent analysis of the LN and its local roots, see Cento Bull (2009).

[10] On Berlusconi and his party, see Maraffi (1995) for the genesis of Forza Italia and Raniolo (2006) for the more recent years.