European Nations and Nationalism: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Nationalism & Patriotism, Political Ideologies
ISBN: 9781351938471
Google: 67hBDgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-03-02T08:57:24+00:00

The Italian Republic

The republican constitution created a political system in the form of a parliamentary democracy, placing the political parties at its centre. The parties were preoccupied with ensuring the survival of political minorities. The climate of suspicion created by ideological cleavages and various alliances among the main political parties gave rise to a rigidly proportional electoral system (for the Chamber of Deputies) and to the constant proliferation of small parties alongside the two great popular political forces: Democrazia Cristiana (DC) and Partite Comunista Italiano (PCI).

This encouraged the formation of centrist coalitions and progressive 'partitocratic' degeneration. Although the governments were highly unstable (generally lasting less that an year), the parties and people in the government had a continuity unmatched by any other Western democracy. Governments changed, but most of the people remained the same, moving from one ministry to another according to the new political equilibria established among the government parties and alliances. This nonalternation of the parties in power was the result of a 'blocked democracy' founded on a bipolar system where one party (the PCI) was prevented from occupying positions in the government by virtue of its ideological stance. More recently, even when the PCI split ideologically with the Eastern communist bloc and accepted democratic principles, the fear of a 'Soviet threat' still persisted among the majority of Italians. This resulted in a lack of variation in governments (since the only feasible alternative to the DC was the PCI) and the consequent sclerosis of the parties in power, certain as they were of receiving electoral support, even though this stemmed more from a lack of practicable alternatives than from endorsement of their policies. As Indro Montanelli (a leading anti-Communist journalist) enjoined his readers with reference to the DC Party: 'Hold your noses, but vote for them'. In no other Western democracy does one witness such almost uninterrupted permanence in governmental positions which often employ the same people for over 40 years.

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