The Formation Of the Fourth Berlusconi Government

Abstract

In the period between 1946 and 1993, that is, before the reform of the electoral law along majoritarian lines and the transformation of the Italian party system, the processes of government formation in Italy were long and complicated, and never easy to understand or explain. Nevertheless, as Verzichelli and Cotta (2000) have accurately and intelligently shown, the rules applying to them can be identified, even though they are somewhat Byzantine. Therefore, the suggestion of Schofield and Sened – that ‘understanding Italian politics in terms of coalition theory has proved very difficult’ (2007: 101) – is only partially correct and would apply only to those coalition theorists who focus exclusively on the office-seeking perspective. Some not totally bizarre and unpredictable criteria were always at work (as imaginatively reconstructed by Mershon, 2002). The paramount rule was that decisions regarding which governing coalition would be formed, among which partners and with what allocation of portfolios to the different parties, could be taken only after the results of the election were fully known. Since alternation among totally different coalitions was impossible – both because it lacked sufficient votes and because of Italy’s membership of the Western camp, the Communist Party could not enter any governmental coalition – Italian voters knew in advance at least which party was in any case going to be excluded from the governmental arena. That said, before the elections Italian voters could not know precisely the kind of coalition that would follow and even less were they informed beforehand of the name of the prospective Prime Minister. Though the variations were limited and the surprises quite rare, the entire process of government formation remained firmly in the hands of the parties and, in some cases, of faction leaders, especially of powerful Christian Democratic faction leaders.