The End of Post-War Politics in Italy: The Landmark 1992 Elections (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS. WilliamF.Markey, editor Pasquino, Gianfranco and Patrick McCarthy, editors, The End of Post-War Politics in Italy: The Landmark 1992 Elections........................172 Castañeda, Jorge G., Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War............................................................174 Ion, A. Hamish, and E. J. Errington, editors, Great Powers and Little Wars: The Limits of Power......................................................176 McCarthy, Patrick, editor, France and Germany 1983-1993: The Struggle to Cooperate ............................................................................................1 78 Nardin, Terry, and David Mapel, editors, Traditions of international Ethics Brown, Chris, International Rehtions Theory: New Normative Approaches Goldstein, Judith, and Robert Keohane, editors, Ideas & Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change ...................................................................182 Wohlforth, William Curtis, The Elusive Balance: Power and Perceptions During the Cold War ...............................................................187 Fallows, James, Looking at the Sun: The Rise of the New East Asian Economic and Political System .................................188 Kux, Dennis, India and the United States: Estranged Democracies............................192 Luttwak, Edward N., The Endangered American Dream ...........................................195 171 172 SAIS Review SUMMER-FALL 1994 The End of Post-War Politics in Italy: The Landmark 1992 Elections. Gianfranco Pasquino and Patrick McCarthy, editors. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993. 187 pp. Hardback. Reviewed by Hans-Georg Bet?, PhD. Dr. Bet? is an Assistant Professor of European Studies at SAIS. The fall of the Berlin Wall, rhe collapse of socialism in rhe Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe, and rhe end of the Cold War have had a profound impact on socio-political developments in Western Europe. Nowhere has this been more evident than in Italy. After the historical elections of 1948, Italian politics followed a logic imposed by the particularities of the Italian situation. Its centerpiece was to keep the Italian communist party, the largest ofits kind in Western Europe, out of power. As a result Italy's second major political party after the Communists, rhe Christian Democrats, was assured a permanent hold on political power. The proportional electoral system guaranteed the survival ofsmaller centrist parties, which served as coalition partners for the Christian Democrats. The result was perhaps inevitable: an entrenched political elite, which was largely immune to the whims and wishes of the electorate, and which concentrated on creating an immense system of patronage and favoritism designed to cement its hold on power indefinitely. This system attained a new dimension with the rise of the Socialist party under Bettino Craxi in rhe 1980s, which ushered in a new era marked by rhe conspicuous display of material wealrh and extensive corruption. The "electoral earthquake" of April 1992 put an end to this system. As Gianfranco Pasquino, a recendy elected Italian senator and professor of European Studies at the University of Bologna, notes in his introduction to this collection of essays devoted exclusively to analysis of the 1992 elections, the outcome of the elections marked rhe end of a regime rhat had mied Italy for 45 years. At least three major features differentiated the 1992 elections from earlier contests. For the first time, the three well-established political parties all suffered simultaneous defeat At the same time, the smaller, moderate reformist parties failed to make significant gains. The greatwinners ofrhe elections were, instead, those parties which "fed on the mood of rage and of diffuse rebellion", led by Umberto Bossi's populist Northern League (Lega Nord) and Leoluca Orlando's left-libertarian Network (Le Rete). Seen from this perspective, the notion rhat the 1992 elections marked rhe end ofpost-War politics in Italy, is largely justified. However, as Patrick McCarthy, a professor of European Studies at the Johns Hopkins University SAIS Bologna Center, notes in the conclusion to this volume, the outcome of the elections marked the end of the old regime, but failed to indicate "what the new regime might be." Two years after the elections, and despite the dramatic developments rhat have taken place in the meantime, it is still not altogether clear what the new leadership will be like. BOOK REVIEWS 173 Therefore, it might be more appropriate to speculate about the reasons for the collapse ofthe post-War political system. One obvious reason was the end ofthe postWar setdement The collapse ofSoviet-type socialism "liberated" many voters who in the past had voted for the Communist party for ideological reasons...