Post-Risorgimento liberalism

Liberalism, in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, was essentially a preindustrial and predemocratic phenomenon, one that even in the best of cases had to adapt itself painfully to new demands engendered by the process of modernization. Only during the final quarter of the nineteenth century did even the most-advanced European nations begin to assume a distinctively urban–industrial character, as well as extend the franchise to broad strata of the previously excluded population. Industrialization and democratization progressively altered the very nature of European politics: elitist and loosely organized bourgeois parties and parliamentary factions found themselves confronted by increasingly large and bureaucratic mass parties; individual employers found themselves confronted by disciplined trade unions, more often than not affiliated with the new mass parties; the state found itself compelled to permanently intervene in previously autonomous spheres of civil society to ensure social reproduction and maintain civil order. Liberalism, in a word, had to adapt itself to a new epoch of mass politics whose characteristic elements – modern political parties, syndical associations, state intervention – were anticipated by neither classical liberal theory nor practice.

That Italian liberalism failed to adapt itself adequately can be readily seen by looking backward over the past century and a half of Italy's history. Liberalism had been the guiding force behind the Risorgimento; from unification to the rise of Fascism, liberalism had been virtually synonymous with national politics.