Christian Democratic Party

Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia Cristiana, DC) (Italy) Founded in July 1943 from the remnants of various groups which had been outlawed in Fascist Italy, the Italian Popular Party, the Florentine group Catholic Action, the Lombardian Guelf movement, and the Italian Federation of Catholic Students. Under its first leader, De Gasperi, it acquired a heterogeneous mass base and quickly developed into Italy's main conservative party and a central pillar of the Italian political order. As such, it was the pivotal constituent of each of the 50 governments 1945–92, despite the gradual erosion of its popular support from around 48 per cent in 1948 to 29.7 per cent in 1992.

During the 1950s, official Roman Catholic influence within the party declined, even though clerical influence remained considerable throughout. In 1962, under the influence of Moro, the party moved to the political centre through expressing its willingness to cooperate with the socialist parties, which it subsequently did in coalition governments from 1963 until the early 1990s. Following the revelation that several leading members of the DC belonged to a secret masonic lodge, in 1981 the Republican leader Giovanni Spadolini became the first Prime Minister who was not a member of the party, unlike most of his ministers. The declining fortunes of the DC in general elections weakened its influence during the 1980s, when the party was only able to govern in coalition with three or even four other parties (except for the Fanfani caretaker government in 1987). Against the more forceful Craxi and Spadolini, its leaders were relatively weak and weakened by internal party divisions. Under Andreotti, the party failed to transform itself into a more vibrant political force, its own immobility reflecting that of the political system which it had always represented. Thus, when Andreotti and other DC leaders were implicated in the country's corruption scandals (Tangentopoli) from 1992, the DC, exhausted from 45 years in government, collapsed. It was dissolved and a new party, the Partito Popolare Italiano (Italian People's Party), formed on 22 January 1994, gaining 33 seats in the 1994 parliamentary elections. A second successor party, the Centro Cristiano Democratico (Christian-Democratic Centre), which was established on 23 January 1994, gained 32 seats as part of Berlusconi's right-wing bloc

http://www.ccd.it; http://www.popolari.it