Introduction: The Christian Democratic Enigma

Abstract

The Italian Christian Democratic Party is the only party in the West that has been in power in an uninterrupted manner since the end of the Second World War. A Christian Democrat has been prime minister during thirty-eight of the last forty-three years, DC representatives have constituted the bulk of governmental ministers, and a number of governments have been made up of ministers drawn exclusively from the Christian Democratic Party. The first DC Party Secretary, Alcide De Gasperi, became prime minister on 10 December 1945 and remained in the office for eight years. His last government in 1953 was followed by thirty-one other governments led by Christian Democratic prime ministers. The DC monopoly on the office of prime minister was only broken in June 1981 when the head of the Republican Party (PRI), Giovanni Spadolini, assumed the office. After a brief interval from late 1982 to mid-1983 in which a DC-led government was in place, Spadolini was followed in August 1983 by Bettino Craxi, the Secretary of the Socialist Party, but since 1987 the Christian Democratic Party has again held the prime minister’s office.