Italy

Italy Italy has been marked by a fundamental regional tension between the north and the south ever since unification in 1861. Northern Italy experienced industrialization from the 1890s onwards, which led it to be one of the wealthiest areas in Europe a century later. With its diverse industrial production, commercial activity, and financial transactions, its cities proved fertile ground for the socialist and Communist parties, though they also became strongholds of the early Fascist movement. By contrast, southern Italy has, until recently, been dominated by a sharecropping system that kept the majority of the population as landless labourers employed by a tiny number of large landowners. Consequently, the south has harboured anarcho-syndicalism and, given the continued importance of the Roman Catholic Church, political Catholicism after 1919. To assert central control over these entrenched social and economic hierarchies, the Italian government encouraged the spread of the Mafia, which had become the source of authority in the whole of Sicily by 1900, and which has since spread northwards. To the resentment of the north, central government sought to alleviate the lack of industry and commerce in the south through enlarging the administrative apparatus, making it costly and cumbersome, but providing employment particularly for southerners.

Another central element in Italian politics until the conclusion of the Lateran Treaties in 1929, and one which has surfaced periodically since, has been the relationship between the secular Italian state and the Roman Catholic Church. After the unification of Italy, in which the Pope lost all the territory which he governed, the Vatican forbade all Roman Catholics to participate in the new liberal, secular state. The Vatican's stance became increasingly challenged by the rise of anticlerical socialist candidates and in 1918 the Church abandoned its resistance to political participation by Roman Catholics, which led to the foundation of the Popular Party in 1919.

At the beginning of the twentieth century Italy was dominated by Giolitti, who tried to modernize the state and respond to the social problems of urbanization and industrialization by social and electoral reform on the one hand and nationalism (conquest of Libya in 1911–12) on the other. Against the inclinations of Giolitti, the Socialist Party, and a sizeable minority of public opinion, Italy entered World War I in 1915 on the side of the Allies with the irredentist aims of acquiring the Trentino and South Tirol (Alto Adige), as well as the Istrian Peninsula. In the Treaty of St Germain it achieved most of these aims, with the significant exception of the Istrian port of Fiume. After the war, the continued growth of the Socialist Party, the foundation of a Communist Party, the emergence of an anti-socialist Christian Popular Party, and the rise of a Fascist movement created great domestic instability which hindered the effective solution of postwar problems such as the need for economic change and demobilization. The fragmentation and mutual hostility of the parties furthermore prevented the formation of an anti-Fascist popular front and thus enabled Mussolini to come to power in his March on Rome in 1922.

Mussolini's rule of Fascist Italy can be divided into four periods.

1. In 1922–5 he ruled in cooperation with the old elites, in a government that included many non-Fascists. Many steps had already been taken, however, to secure the predominance of the Fascist movement in the state (2) It was only in the wake of the Matteotti Crisis of 1925, that Mussolini gave in to radical Fascist demands of men such as Farinacci to establish a totalitarian state in which the movement would control all areas of public life. In this second phase power was concentrated in Mussolini's hands, as all other parties were abolished, the judiciary infiltrated, and popular organizations such as the Balilla and the Dopolavoro were created at the expense of independent trade unions, clubs, and societies. 3. The decisive phase of Mussolini's regime began in 1935–6, when Mussolini, who had hitherto taken a relatively moderate and independent international stance, defied the international community through the Abyssinian War and embarked on a fateful rapprochement with Nazi Germany. Increasingly influenced by the apparent successes of Hitler, Mussolini came to emulate Nazism, most significantly through imitating the Nuremberg Laws by introducing his own (albeit much milder) anti-Semitic laws in 1938. Dazzled by Hitler's military successes in the first months of World War II, Mussolini joined on his side in 1940, though a series of military disasters (de facto defeat in Greece and North Africa 1940–1) showed that the Italian army was badly prepared and that Italy's economy was wholly dependent on imported raw materials. 4. The fourth phase of Mussolini's rule was inaugurated by a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council on 24–5 July 1943, which deposed Mussolini and called upon General Badoglio to form a new government. Following Badoglio's armistice on 3 September 1943 most of Italy passed into German occupation, while German parachuters liberated Mussolini from imprisonment and sent him to the north, where he headed a Fascist puppet state, the Republic of Salò. During the time of the occupation, the Italian population suffered greatly as a result of fierce fighting between the Germans and the Allies, widespread partisan resistance (up to 250,000 Italians were active in the resistance, organized mostly by the CLN), and German terror. Furthermore, out of a Jewish population of 40,000–50,000 in all of Italy, around 8,000 Jews were deported to German concentration camps.

Meanwhile, the foundations of postwar Italy were laid during the period of post-Fascist government 1943–5, largely through the establishment of a stable Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia Christiana, DC), the restraint of the Communist Party under Togliatti's leadership, and cooperation between the different parties, which gained Allied respect and confidence. The key to postwar Italy lay subsequently with the DC, which took part in every government until the party's dissolution in 1993, and whose leader and Prime Minister, De Gasperi (1945–53), established a regime which pursued relatively liberal economic policies while emphasizing social welfare. In foreign policy, Italy became firmly established in the Western sphere following the receipt of Marshall Aid, the pursuit of European integration, and participation in NATO.

The postwar development of Italy has been highly ambiguous. On the one hand, it became a modern, prosperous state which managed to overcome challenges such as that of widespread terrorism (especially by the Red Brigades) during the 1970s. At the same time, it appeared that regions within the country had become more integrated, for example through the abolition of sharecropping in the south, or the development of a popular Christian Democratic Party with relatively strong support throughout the country. On the other hand, many of these achievements were very fragile and bought at considerable cost. Italy's economy was stifled by Europe's highest strike rate 1970–90, with 1,042 working days lost per 1,000 workers each year. Furthermore, the need to develop social cohesion and the bridging of the north/south divide through social welfare payments have made Italy one of the world's most indebted economies. The victory over the Red Brigades hid the fact that the Mafia continued to spread unabated until the 1980s, and ultimately discredited the whole political system through a multitude of corruption scandals (Tangentopoli). Finally, the disparity within the factions of the Christian Democratic Party, as well as the other smaller parties, which resulted from and contributed to the lack of strong leadership, prevented many badly needed administrative and institutional reforms.

These deficiencies resulted in a fundamental crisis and a collapse of the political establishment in 1992–3. An alliance of newly formed right-wing movements, including the neo-Fascist National Alliance, led by Berlusconi, gained a majority in the 1994 national elections, with the Christian Democrat successor parties dwindling to a total of 10 per cent of the parliamentary seats, while the Socialist Party achieved barely 2 per cent of the vote. At the same time, doubts remained about the true ability of the system to reform itself. Despite his promises, Berlusconi failed to achieve drastic reform. Furthermore, the changes in the political system yielded neither far-reaching reforms of the state machinery nor greater stability in parliamentary government. With 26 parties represented in Parliament instead of eleven (1992), parliamentary representation was even more fragmented. The 1996 elections were won by the centre-left Olive Tree coalition under Romano Prodi. The stability of his government was achieved at the cost of an inability to introduce a crucial but divisive reform of the pension system. Prodi resigned in 1998, and was succeeded by Massimo D'Alema, who in turn handed over to Guiliano Amato in 2000. The coalition's disunity contrasted sharply with the slick, organized campaign by Berlusconi, who duly won the 2001 general elections. As Prime Minister, Berlusconi had three central policy concerns: (1) a more sceptical attitude towards the European Union with greater emphasis on Italy's rights against its partners; (2) a renewed attempt at an overhaul of the pension and social security system; (3) judicial reform which would effectively create an amnesty for defendants against prosecution in most cases involving corruption, and which significantly reduced police protection for prosecuting lawyers.