Recent developments, especially the outcome of the 2008 election, appear to point to the definitive sidelining of centrism in Italian politics. In reality, it remains significant – not least because of the opportunities for influence all bipolar systems give to parties not of the left or right, and because of the possible consequences of reassessments of centrism's historical significance. The term itself has been used to denote a kind of political outlook or ideology and, consequently, a kind of political strategy. A number of party and elite-level strategies called centrist are identified; one of these – transformism – has roots that stretch back at least to the nineteenth century and is not specifically Italian. Transformism has been variously interpreted. Against this background, the articles in this special issue together evaluate the historical importance of centrism and its current significance for Italian politics. As a governing strategy, centrism is practiced differently now than in the past, but it continues to be practiced.

According to a strong and lasting prejudice, which has recently been expressed with renewed vigour, the optimum form of democracy is bipolar. The bipolar pattern, however, is not the only one possible. If the relevant conditions are in place, other patterns are possible, such as the formation of government majorities through a convergence of ‘centrist’ and intermediate parties. This pattern is not free from problems, and one of the main issues of debate in the Italian case, with its long tradition of centrist governments, is over the apparent poor functionality of the party system. The functioning of a party system, however, depends on its circumstances, and a centrist party system can function just as well as its bipolar counterpart. Indeed, it is questionable whether Italy has gained from its new bipolar structure and whether the new structure will endure.

It is widely accepted, among political scientists at least, that Italy's so-called ‘First Republic’ (c.1946–1994) had a tripolar party system while the ‘Second Republic’ has had, at least until 2008, a fragmented bipolar one. A superior conceptualisation of the party system of the ‘First Republic’ was provided by Paolo Farneti, and it remains relevant both for a better understanding of the current party system and for exploring party system dynamics, particularly the relationship between structure and agency in such dynamics. Farneti synthesised Sartori's 1976 analysis of tripolar mechanics with Galli's equally famous analysis of the party system (as one of ‘imperfect bipartism’) in terms of the coexistence of a subordinate bipolar dynamic and a dominant tripolar one. This article argues that the dynamics of the party system in the ‘Second Republic’, or at least the transition to it, can be conceptualised in terms of a dominant bipolar dynamic and a subordinate, tripolar one. This latter dynamic is significant, both empirically and theoretically, despite being subordinate.

This article analyses the competition strategies adopted by the Christian Democratic (DC) and post-Christian Democratic (post-DC) parties after the electoral reforms of 1993 and 2005. Four main aspects are considered: the significance of cultural (ideological and cognitive) factors in the DC's exit from the political stage; the need to adapt post-DC strategy to bipolarism and the nostalgia for an autonomous centre; the nature and geography of the post-DC vote; and the attitudes of the middle-level elites of the three principal post-DC parties (the DL, the UDEUR and the UDC) vis-à-vis the competitive and strategic decisions they had to make. The article reaches the following conclusions: the post-DC parties share the same cultural orientations and have similar politico-electoral characteristics (a confessional background, the relevance of patronage networks and personalistic vote mobilisation); all three parties adapted, in different ways and with different degrees of success, to the new structure of coalitional bipolarism in the decade 1996–2006; and both research data on the main post-DC parties’ national congress delegates and the evolution of their electoral strategies on the eve of the 2008 elections show that the post-Christian Democrats felt more at home in the centre-left alignment, together with the post-communist PDS-DS, than in the centre-right alignment led by Berlusconi.

In the last decade, in spite of a large number of parties taking part in elections, the Italian party system has shown an increasing simplification in the programmatic supply, with two large coalitions showing a process of convergence of their policy platforms. This article shows that on the crucial themes characterising the confrontation between neo-liberalism versus regulated capitalism, the distance between the two coalitions has progressively reduced. The theory of the cartel party has predicted convergence in the policy positions of parties. Thus, the article will attempt to test the validity of this theory and of the predicted consequences on the Italian case. For this purpose, a longitudinal analysis will be presented grounded on party manifestos for the Italian general elections.

The general question underlying this article is how much have parties changed in Italy in the transition from the First to the Second Republic? The disintegration of the Christian Democrats (DC) in the early 1990s created a large opening on the centre-right of the political spectrum, which was promptly occupied by Forza Italia (FI). A totally new party organisationally speaking, FI, with its centralisation, its personalisation and its charismatic leadership, marked a clear break with all that the DC had represented in terms of its unrestricted pluralism based on strong factions. However, the franchise model adopted by Berlusconi's party, characterised by the co-existence of unity of command at the top, and differentiated and quasi-autonomous bodies locally, may facilitate the convergence of the parties representing the various interests and outlooks on the centre-right in the new rassemblement party that is the PdL. Through the latter, and given the new systemic conditions, Italy may achieve a transformation in the nature of the centre from Christian Democratic to conservative, enabling it to integrate most of the political right as well.

Italians and politics, edited by Marco Maraffi

Bologna, Il Mulino, 2007

332 pp., €26.00 (paperback), ISBN-978-88-15-11491-4

Where is the victory? Voting in 2006, described by Italians, edited by ITANES

Bologna, Il Mulino, 2006

241 pp., €13.00 (paperback), ISBN-88-15-11486-6

Left and right: Psychological roots of political differences, edited by ITANES

Bologna, Il Mulino, 2006

182 pp., €12.00 (paperback), ISBN-88-15-10911-0

‘Incomplete’ is the adjective usually used to qualify the Italian political transition that started in the early 1990s. Fifteen years is a long time in politics: as has been noted (Calise 2006, 3), political episodes that have left an indelible mark on history, such as the Nazi regime or the Napoleonic campaigns, had a similar duration. The political elections held in Spring 2006, however, showed that Italy was still not out of the woods, with a centre-left coalition prevailing over the centre-right by less than 30,000 votes in the Chamber of Deputies, while the centre-right won the larger number of Senate votes, but gained fewer seats because of the bizarre electoral system, which was forcibly introduced three months before the election. The division of seats faithfully echoed the division of the electorate into two equal parts – a division that had existed since 2001, but had been obscured by the electoral system and the mechanics of coalition formation (D'Alimonte and Vassallo 2006, p. 28). The election gave rise to two broad coalitions, both very diverse internally, and a government paralysed by the narrowness of its majority in the Senate. If it is true that Italy can now consider itself a solidly bipolar system – in fact more so than the United Kingdom, which is frequently quoted as an ideal model – it is also true that the best description of our party system is that of “fragmented bipolarism” (D'Alimonte & Vassallo 2006, 19). This is eloquently illustrated by the fall of the Prodi Government in January 2008 and the resulting record brevity of the XVth legislature, which lasted less than two years. Some 15 years on from restructuring the party system, Italian politics has not moved from the starting line, condemned to highly fragmented politics and party systems that result in instability, ungovernability and inability to reach decisions.