Silvio Berlusconi: A study in failure 9781526133946

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Silvio Berlusconi: A study in failure seeks to contribute to a broader debate of recent years concerning the significance of leaders in post-Cold War democratic politics and will appeal to anyone with an interest in Berlusconi the man, in Italian politics or in the growing significance of populist leaders.

Cover: Political graffiti in via Carducci, Milan, against Silvio Berlusconi and his involvement in the economic crisis. CC-BY-SA-2.5

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A STUDY IN FAILURE

James L. Newell is a former Professor of Politics and author of Corruption in contemporary politics: A new travel guide (Manchester University Press, 2018)

NEWELL

Since 2013, Berlusconi’s career has entered a new and final phase, one in which he is occupied less frequently in setting the political agenda than in reacting to agendas set by others. This study considers his legacy and how and why he has changed, or failed to change, Italian politics in the period since his emergence. Would Italian political history of the past twenty-five years have looked substantially different had Berlusconi not had the high-profile role that he did? Having considered Berlusconi’s legacy in the areas of political culture, voting and party politics, public policy and the quality of Italian democracy, the book concludes by considering the international significance of the Berlusconi phenomenon in relation to the recent election of Donald Trump, with whom Berlusconi is often compared.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

This book analyses one of the most remarkable and controversial European politicians of recent decades, the four-time prime minister and media mogul, Silvio Berlusconi, and his contribution to the dramatic changes that have overtaken Italian politics since the early 1990s.

JAMES L. NEWELL

SILVIO BERLUSCONI A S T U D Y I N FA I L U R E

Silvio Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi A study in failure

James L. Newell

Manchester University Press

Copyright © James L. Newell 2019 The right of James L. Newell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 71907597 1 hardback First published 2019 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any ­external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Servis Filmsetting, Stockport, Cheshire

Contents

List of figures

List of tables Preface Abbreviations Introduction: a remarkable politician?

page vii viii ix xiii 1

Part I: Emergence 1 From childhood, through business career to political debut, 1936–93

17

2 Berlusconi’s political message

38

Part II: Berlusconi the politician 3 Forza Italia and national politics, 1994–2001

55

4 Berlusconi the party leader

74

Part III: Berlusconi the prime minister 5 Berlusconi in office, 2001–11 6 Berlusconi’s relations with the political class

93 112

Part IV: Berlusconi’s legacy 7 Berlusconi and cultural change in Italy

131

8 Berlusconi’s electoral impact

147

9 Berlusconi as head of government

163

Contents

vi

10 Berlusconi’s legacy for the quality of Italian democracy Conclusion: the Berlusconi story and Donald Trump

181 198

References

213

Index

227

Figures

  8.1 Centre right’s electoral performance, 1994–2013 10.1 Perceptions of corruption in Italy: CPI scores, 1995–2015

149 189

Tables

  8.1 Leaders of the two main coalitions, 2001–13 149   8.2 Vote shares won by parties of the centre right and the centre left, 1994–2013158   8.3 Vote shares won by parties of the centre right and the centre left, 1948–92 158   8.4 Electoral flows, 1992–94 160   8.5 Electoral flows, 1996–2001 (Chamber plurality arena) and 2001–06 161 10.1 Attitudes relevant to quality of democracy: Italy, France, UK and Germany, 2012 187

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Preface

Some words about the context, personal and political, in which this book came to be written will help to make clear how it came to fruition, as well as the assumptions underlying and driving the material it contains. I wanted to write a biography of Berlusconi because he had attracted a volume of foreign media attention and comment unprecedented for an Italian political leader – even the uninitiated among non-Italians I came across seemed to know who Berlusconi was and had a view on him, his notoriety seemingly surpassed only by that of Benito Mussolini himself – and because his role in Italian politics seemed to lie at the heart of the extraordinary political upheavals that took place in Italy following, and directly connected with, the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. These upheavals were unprecedented, political scientists routinely noting that the political transition they set in motion had only one analogue in post-war democratic Europe, namely, the transition in France from the Fourth to the Fifth Republic under the leadership of Charles de Gaulle. It therefore struck me that a political biography of Berlusconi could potentially make a significant contribution to understanding the trajectory taken by Italian politics since the early 1990s, especially given that the upheavals and transition had brought with them important changes in the meaning, the scope and the role of political leadership. As others had pointed out, party and coalition leaders had acquired crucial – and unprecedented – electoral, political and institutional roles. Election campaigns, which until the 1980s had been entirely party-centred, were now dominated by coalition leaders, their personal characteristics and communication styles. Politically, the choice of leader played a crucial role in enhancing or diminishing the degree of cohesion of the coalition that she or he led. Institutionally, coalition leaders were now prime ministerial candidates playing a much more significant role in shaping their governments than was true of ‘First Republic’ prime ministers who were entirely dependent on post-election balances of power within and between the governing parties. If, then, the roles played by coalition leaders had been of unusually large significance, it was a reasonable conjecture that the processes of change in the political system might have been considerably different had the identity and the characteristics of the individuals occupying the leadership positions been different. The coalition leader who had had the highest profile was Silvio Berlusconi, who had dominated Italian politics in several ways. As the founder and leader of Forza

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Italia, the largest party on the centre right, he had been the true promoter – the collant – of his coalition. If he had in this way made a remarkable contribution to the establishment of bipolar competition in Italy, it remained an open question what would happen to the coalition if, and when, he left the political stage. As republican Italy’s longest-serving prime minister and as owner of Italy’s three largest private television stations, he occupied a combination of positions widely held to entail a significant conflict of interests, and this issue had rarely been far from the centre of substantive political debate – either in Italy or in Europe more generally. He had introduced, or at least fuelled, a new style of populist politics in Italy and this, it had been suggested, reflected a wider phenomenon, going well beyond the country’s borders. Though the project was conceived some years ago, the bulk of the book was not written until 2017; and yet now, at the beginning of January 2018, I am struck by the thought that, as it turned out, 2017 has been a good year in which to write the book, given that I had set myself the task of considering Berlusconi’s legacy: any earlier attempt to do so would have been premature given the extraordinary capacity he has shown to survive misfortunes and to stage comebacks thought by many to be impossible. He may yet do so again. In 2017 he celebrated his 81st birthday, and though he was still a party leader with a high profile on the Italian political stage, he no longer set the agenda to the extent he had done in the past even in opposition, his role seemingly confined more or less to reacting to initiatives taken by others. But during the second half of the year there were signs of a revival of his political fortunes. Local elections in June saw his party make significant gains in alliance with the Northern League and the right-wing Brothers of Italy; and the Sicilian regional elections on 5 November saw the centre-right coalition of which he was a part emerge victorious, seeing off a significant challenge from the Five-star Movement (M5S) in the process. It seemed unlikely that he would be able once again to become prime minister following the general election due to be held on 4 March 2018; his 2013 conviction for tax fraud had resulted in him being banned from holding public office for six years in accordance with anti-corruption legislation passed in 2012, and although he had challenged the legislation before the European Court of Human Rights in November 2017, most informed commentators did not expect a verdict for at least six months. But despite this, in voting intentions polls his party had regained its pre-eminence on the centre right, having for several months been overtaken by the Northern League, and the polls suggested a growing advantage over the other contenders for the centreright parties generally. At the end of 2017, then, some of the assumptions that had been made at the time that most of these chapters were drafted seemed slightly less secure; for, if Berlusconi’s definitive eclipse was less completely certain, then so too was the solidity of the party-political changes of which he had been a leading protagonist. That is, if the future had seemed set to be one of bipolar competition spearheaded by two main prime ministerial contenders, each competing for overall majorities, then at the end of 2017 this was very unclear. The assumption had already been

Preface

xi

placed in doubt by the explosion in support for the M5S at the general election of 2013; but it remained to be seen whether that party could manage, and survive, the competing pressures of government on the one hand and its role as a protest party on the other. 2016 had seen it take over the reins of government in a number of important municipalities, and notwithstanding periodic accusations of poor judgement on the part of some of its representatives and occasional allegations of improbity on the part of others, it became clear as 2017 progressed that the party was not going to disappear any time soon. As a formation whose appeal is based precisely on popular perceptions of incompetence and dishonesty on the part of mainstream politicians, and on the claim to offer a radical alternative, it might have expected to be especially vulnerable to the charges levelled against it; but people vote for the M5S simply because it represents something different from a political class in whom vast swathes have virtually no confidence. By the end of 2017, then, it was clear that the following year’s election was going to be at least a three-horse race, with no certainty about whether there would be an overall majority for any of them – or any certainty, if that were the case, about what the composition of the resulting government would be. 2017 was, of course, also the year of Donald Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States, and commentators have noted several significant parallels between the cases of Berlusconi and Trump. They are both populists on the right of the political spectrum; they were both elected to office as political outsiders; they are both very wealthy; both have been at the centre of allegations of wrongdoing that have led their opponents to question their fitness for office; they are both flamboyant, larger-than-life characters with a love of flouting established conventions: they have both understood that the race for elected office in the early twenty-first century is a game of marketing – of grabbing media attention by creating a character with whom political consumers (voters) can identify, with their capacity to do this being the greater the more the sense of anger and resentment against conventional politicians can be activated by acts of irreverence – whether through the medium of Twitter or by telling bawdy jokes – designed to convey the message that politicians are, after all, no better than those they claim to represent. Other anti-establishment politicians to have understood this are, of course, Umberto Bossi, Beppe Grillo and Nigel Farage. Not surprisingly, then, during the final stages of preparation of the manuscript, it was put to me that, in light of the extraordinary rise of Trump, the book would benefit from the addition of some material considering the international, comparative significance of the Berlusconi phenomenon, and especially from a comparison with the US president. I have done this in the concluding chapter. Doing so has reminded me of the final reason for my interest in Berlusconi’s career, and that is a feeling of mild indignation at the way he is often portrayed in the international media and by academics unsympathetic to him. Let me be clear. I am not sympathetic to him either, though I have tried as best I can to put aside my preconceptions in the writing of this book. The reason for my indignation lies less in the substance of the portrayals – as a man without scruples, willing to abuse the premiership for private gain, as a misogynist unfit for public office

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etc. – than in what the portrayals – or rather, their unremitting quality – imply, namely, that their purveyors can afford to take the moral high ground and so place beyond scrutiny the manifestations in their own societies of the pathology Berlusconi represents (ultimately, the unchallenged pursuit of wealth and power at other people’s expense). Too often, it seems to me, the accusations levelled at Berlusconi are that he does what he does ‘in the wrong way’ – by confusing public and private – the implication being that the substance of what he and other members of his class do is just fine. Which I would question. So I wanted to produce an analysis of the Berlusconi phenomenon which, besides focusing on its impact on, and legacy for, Italian politics, would also seek to understand it in its own terms, problematising the criticisms and the grounds for them. Obviously, it will be up to the reader to judge how successful I have been.

Abbreviations

AD AN Cdl CLNAI

Alleanza Democratica, Democratic Alliance Alleanza Nazionale, National Alliance Casa delle Libertà Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale Alta Italia, Committee of National Liberation in Northern Italy DC Democrazia Cristiana, Christian Democrats DS Democratici di Sinistra, Left Democrats FI Forza Italia IdV Italia dei Valori, Italy of Values LN Lega Nord, Northern League M5S Movimento 5 Stelle, Five-star Movement MSI Movimento Sociale Italiano, Italian Social Movement NCD Nuovo Centro Destra, New Centre Right PCI Partito Comunista Italiano, Italian Communist Party PCM Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, Prime Minister’s Office PD Partito Democratico, Democratic Party Pdl Popolo della libertà, People of Freedom PDS Democratic Party of the Left PLI Partito Liberale Italiano, Liberal Party PPI Partito Popolare Italiano, Italian People’s Party PRI Partito Repubblicano Italiano, Republican Party PSI Partito Socialista Italiano, Italian Socialist Party RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana RC Communist Refoundation UDC Union of Christian Democrats and Centre Democrats UDEUR Unione Democratica per l’Europa, Union of Democrats for Europe

Introduction: a remarkable politician?

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. (Marx, 1869 [1852])

Love him or loathe him, Silvio Berlusconi is often thought of as one of Europe’s most remarkable politicians of recent decades. With an estimated wealth of $7.8 billion, he occupied 118th place in Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people when he left office in 2011, and third place among the richest in Italy. He has been his country’s longest-serving post-war prime minister and one of the longestserving leaders of a major party in Europe: while Margaret Thatcher led the British Conservative Party for just short of sixteen years, for example, Berlusconi has led his party for well over twenty-two. Now 81, he has survived sexual and financial scandals that would have swept other politicians off the political stage long ago. Early in 1994 he created a seemingly entirely novel kind of political party and then went on, within the space of a few weeks, to win the first of three general elections which, for almost the next two decades, confirmed his role as the fulcrum around which everything of any importance in Italian party politics essentially revolved. On the one hand, he and his party were the pivot around which the centre right was built and whose unity depended almost entirely on his continued popularity. On the other hand, opposition to Berlusconi was the only common denominator of the parties on the centre left – and thus the source of their weakness and division as they each struggled to find a way to oppose him without leaving themselves exposed to the electoral incursions of their allies. In short, it was for long the case that ‘to be on the centre right [meant] to support Berlusconi, to be on the centre left … to oppose him’ (Urbani, 2009). It is widely understood, then, that in terms of profile, almost all of the period since the early 1990s in Italian politics has been dominated by one man: Silvio Berlusconi. It was only with the outcome of the general election of 2013 that he seemed to lose decisive influence over the trajectory of change in Italian politics, influence which passed to other actors, but even then he seemed not entirely to have become a spent force. Such was his profile during the years of his dominance that the chances were that even non-Italians who knew nothing of the politics of the peninsula were familiar with his name.

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Thanks to this, there is a rich Berlusconi literature. There have been several biographies of Berlusconi and a number of accounts of him as a campaigner and of the nature and style of his communications. There have been accounts of his leadership style (e.g. Campus, 2016) and of his use and abuse of power, and debates about how ‘the Berlusconi phenomenon’ should be conceptualised and theorised (e.g. Orsina, 2013). But so far there has not, to my knowledge, been any sustained attempt to address the fundamental question of the extent to which Berlusconi actually made a difference. Simply put, the basic question underlying this study is: from the vantage point of 2017, would Italian political history of the past twenty-five years look substantially different had Berlusconi not had the high-profile and enduring role in it that he did? Of course, ultimately, we can never conclusively answer such a question; but asking it makes it possible, as we shall see, to contribute to a broader debate in recent years concerning the significance of leaders in post-Cold War democratic politics. Returning, for the time being, to Italian politics, we know that Berlusconi made a significant contribution to the emergence of bipolar party competition in the early 1990s, with all the hopes for a ‘new beginning’ that attended it. But what is not clear is whether his role was that of the ‘eventful man’ or the ‘eventmaking man’ (Hook, 1945) – in other words, whether, thanks to qualities ‘of a fairly common distribution’, Berlusconi’s actions were decisive only because he happened to be in the right place at the right time, or whether, thanks to unusual qualities, he was able to influence or shape the circumstances themselves. In the former case, the outcome would in all probability have been somewhat similar, even if another had occupied Berlusconi’s place; in the latter case they would have been significantly different. We know, too, that the period since the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent emergence of the so-called Second Republic has been one in which many of the hopes and expectations that attended the Second Republic’s emergence have been bitterly disappointed. In particular, the two main coalitions – whose alternation in government was supposed to bring greater political accountability and thus significant improvements to the quality of democracy – found it difficult, in the years from 1994 on, to accord each other legitimacy as potential governing actors. They remained highly fragmented, not at all cohesive entities, with the result that though the duration of governments’ tenure of office was on average somewhat longer than the tenure of the governments of the First Republic, executives were hardly more able to dominate Parliament in the interests of decisive policy making than they had been before the 1990s. And the perceived failure of the 1990s upheavals to live up to their promise seemed also to be reflected in a lack of decisive change in a number of areas of substantive policy making or in ­policy-making outcomes such as economic growth and political corruption. Given Berlusconi’s dominance of Italian politics and his occupation of the premiership for much of the time, a large share of the responsibility for such disappointing outcomes must, presumably, be laid at his door. But again, were they outcomes which in all probability would have been realised anyway, or would they have been significantly different with someone other than Berlusconi in his place?



Introduction3

So whether he was an eventful or an event-making man, a consideration of Berlusconi’s contribution is necessary, and it is all the more necessary now, for reasons of timing; for, since the 2013 general election, his career seems to have entered a new and possibly final phase, one in which he is occupied less frequently in setting the political agenda than in reacting to agendas set by others. Consequently, the time is now right, to an extent that was less true when he was by far and away the most high-profile figure in Italian politics, to consider his legacy, to consider how and why he has changed, or failed to change, Italian politics in the period since his emergence. This task is essential for two reasons that go beyond the fact that he is a colourful personality who has had a high-profile role. First, it is impossible satisfactorily to explain political change anywhere without giving at least as much weight to the decisions and actions of specific, significantly placed individuals as to groups of people and to processes. True, the so-called ‘great man theory’ of history – according to which our present is to be explained not by structural forces but by the actions of specific ‘great men’ (and women) – is untenable. From this perspective, all other factors in recent Italian political developments save personalities such as Berlusconi, their actions and characteristics, must be deemed inconsequential. It would be readily conceded that to make possible such hugely significant events as – for example – Berlusconi’s success in uniting in coalition the seemingly incompatible parties that won the elections of 1994 and subsequent years, various enabling conditions were necessary. But it would be argued that these enabling conditions must be explained as the work of other outstanding individuals. Now while they will certainly have been the work of individuals, it is by no means certain and perhaps unlikely that they will have been the work of specific individuals, in the sense that without them as opposed to other individuals like them the conditions would never have been realised. So, a priori attempts to make the actions of specific individuals bear the entire weight of historical explanation fail. But so too do attempts at explanation informed by the opposite position, that is, the position occupied by social determinists for whom the choices of individuals are inconsequential because their actions are determined entirely by social forces – cultural, political, economic etc. – of various kinds. For social determinists, individual choices and actions merely reflect or give expression to these forces which, consequently, are all that need to be referred to in explanations of historical change. This implies that humans’ actions and their consequences are not the product of their reasons and intentions but rather are predetermined – with the difficulty, from the point of view of explanation, that this precludes understanding. In a world in which everything is predetermined and intentions have no effects, attempts to explain a circumstance or event fall victim to the problem of infinite regress – from which a reference to reasons or intentions, divine or otherwise, provides the only possible escape; only they can offer understanding, in the sense of rendering action intelligible, that is, enabling us to imagine ourselves acting similarly were we in the position of the people whose actions we seek to explain. Thus only they can quieten the demand for an answer to the

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question ‘Why?’ So ultimately, social determinism’s attempt entirely to eliminate human agency is a failure. It too is untenable. Second, more specifically, an assessment of the Berlusconi legacy is essential thanks to changes in the meaning, the scope and the role of political leadership. These have rendered processes of change in the Italian political system  – ­dominated, from the end of the war until the 1980s, entirely by the parties – much more amenable to the decisions and actions of the individuals occupying leadership positions than they had been previously; cross-national developments ­combined with the party-system transformation of the early 1990s have given party and coalition leaders unprecedented electoral, political and institutional roles (Pasquino and Campus, 2006). Cross-nationally, a number of interrelated developments in politics and the media have brought a growing personalisation of politics: a growing focus on, and significance for, individual candidates and their characteristics in determining election outcomes. On the one hand, the decline set in train – some would say, accelerated – by the end of the Cold War of once deep-seated ideological conflicts between left and right has made ideology and policy differences between mainstream parties everywhere harder to identify than in the past. Parties have been obliged increasingly to mark out their distinctiveness by having greater recourse to ‘valence’ issues – and thus increasingly to compete on the basis of being more competent than their rivals – which has in turn concentrated their listeners’ attention on the personal qualities of their candidates. On the other hand, media developments have rendered the lives of the individuals who walk on the public stage ‘much more visible than they ever were in the past’ (Thompson, 2000: 6), giving an added boost to the shift from ‘party-’ to ‘candidate-centred’ campaigning that had taken place thanks to the development of opinion polling (which had given political actors unmediated access to information about voters) and television (which allowed candidates to appeal directly to voters, thus diminishing the requirement for good party organisation and the attention to party itself in campaigns). Against this background, the emergence, in the 1990s, of partysystem bipolarity in Italy gave leaders such as Berlusconi unprecedented power and significance. Election campaigns became dominated by coalition leaders, whose personal characteristics and political styles played the most central role, this thanks to the fact that the leaders were now prime ministerial candidates. If this served to heighten the impact of voters’ assessments of them on their electoral choices, then such heightened impact fed back to communication strategies, raising the profile and the significance of leaders in elections still further. On a wide range of measures, the 1994 and subsequent campaigns have been the most ‘leader-centred’ since the founding of the Republic. Politically, it has become clear that the choice of leader plays a crucial role in enhancing or diminishing the degree of cohesion of the coalition that she or he leads. For example, one of the most important reasons why, as a general rule, the centre left was less cohesive than the centre right from the start is that centre-left leaders, without a party able to act as a ‘coalition maker’, remained exposed to



Introduction5

the pressures of their coalition’s constituent parties – in radical contrast, until recently, to the position of Berlusconi on the centre right. Institutionally, winning candidates have played a much more crucial role in shaping and managing the tensions within their governments than was ever true of ‘First Republic’ prime ministers, who were entirely dependent for their positions on post-election balances of power within and between parties able to form a governing majority. That is, since prime ministers’ positions, at least until the indecisive 2013 outcome, have tended to be legitimised directly, by the nature of election outcomes themselves, their power and authority vis-à-vis their cabinet colleagues and parliamentary followers have been much enhanced. From having been mediators in the days when they and their cabinet colleagues all owed their positions to party agreements about executive composition only once the distribution of votes was known, they have been closer to being authoritative leaders (even though they have not acquired the capacity to hire and fire and to direct policy that their Westminster counterparts enjoy – at least when they are backed by healthy Commons majorities). And it is likely that the enhanced role of the Italian prime ministers has been self-reinforcing: the more they have been able to provide authoritative leadership, the more this has been expected of them; and the more this has been expected of them, the greater has been their capacity actually to provide it (Hine and Finocchi, 1991). In short, Italy has fully reflected the situation of democracies in general in recent years in having been subject to a process of ‘presidentialisation’ (Poguntke and Webb, 2005) whereby the growing leader-centredness of elections has, by giving leaders increasingly direct, personal mandates, also given them increasing authority in their parties and – when in office – within executives. If, then, we want to understand the nature of Italian politics, and how and why it has changed in the period since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a consideration of the part played by Berlusconi is indispensable. Exploring this issue will help to throw light on the extent to which Berlusconi’s reputation as one of Europe’s most remarkable politicians of recent decades is actually deserved. He has been remarkably successful in winning elections, in mobilising support and in hanging on to office against often seemingly incredible odds. But from this it does not necessarily follow that as a political actor he was a novelty or an innovator, as opposed to a mere interpreter of already-present tendencies. Nor does it follow that his political successes had much to do with him personally or that they have had any specific consequences for the political life of Italy. These are questions whose answers cannot be deduced from the evident power and popularity he has enjoyed to varying degrees over the years. And they are important ones to ask for the following reasons. Some years ago, Richard Rose wrote a book, entitled Do Parties Make a Difference? (1980), asking about the extent and the nature of the impact of parties on the substance of public policy. The matter is one that has spawned a considerable volume of research together with two broad perspectives (Mansergh, 1999: 2): one claiming the prevalence of socio-economic factors in the determination of public policy, the other the prevalence of political factors. But what about

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i­ndividual party leaders? It is noticeable that despite the near consensus surrounding the personalisation, mediatisation and presidentialisation of politics, which would see the power of individual leaders as having been considerably enhanced in recent decades, there is very little discussion and evidence available concerning the extent to which these leaders actually make a difference in the sense that public policy and other political matters are different from what they would have been had it not been for the part played by the leader and his or her actions. This paucity of interest is surprising given the amount of trust citizens in the advanced democracies apparently place in individual political leaders in the early twenty-first century – growing political disenchantment notwithstanding. Indeed, as the growth of populism suggests, it may be precisely because of growing political disenchantment that people come to place growing trust – or at least hope – in (the claims of) leaders. Of course, there is nothing new about this: charismatic leaders, who by definition engender great trust, are as old as politics itself, as is our fascination with them – though after the tragic consequences of fascination with the Nazi and Fascist leaders responsible for the Second World War, mass publics for many decades oriented themselves to political life using frames and categories from which individual leaders and their qualities were for the most part absent. True, they were certainly not absent in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes with their periodic ‘personality cults’; and they were not entirely absent from liberal democracies or even from the most collectivist of parties – as, for example, the reverence of Italian communists for a leader such as Palmiro Togliatti readily attests. And of course the examples could be multiplied. But generally speaking, people approached politics using categories such as class and religious affiliations, and ones relating to policy and ideology. Then, from around about the mid-1970s, in a number of European democracies it became apparent that there was growing dissatisfaction with the policy and governing performances of mainstream parties and that, concomitantly, traditional social attachments, to class and to church, were declining in strength. Among citizens, now more critical and better educated thanks to the post-war boom, there were, as boom turned to bust, increasingly widespread expressions of mistrust of politicians and periodic waves of support for new, populist parties with their claims to be, precisely, opposed to established politicians. These, according to the populist credo, had betrayed the interests of ordinary people, with whom populist leaders claimed an especial affiliation. These leaders, so populist thinking went, could meet the needs of ordinary people where the mainstream parties had failed, if they could establish a direct relationship with c­ itizens – thereby mobilising the power of popular support – through an ­attitude of intolerance towards constitutional constraints and checks and balances that limited the power of the leader to carry out their mission on behalf of the common good. And by implying that election of the party leader was to be equated with the welfare and destiny of the entire nation (Diamond and Gunther, 2001: 28), the populist party generated huge popular expectations of what leaders could potentially achieve.



Introduction7

But it was not just new parties that were raising the profile of individual leaders in political life: the phenomenon was general, as the mediatisation of politics brought more candidate- and leader-centred campaigning on the part of more or less all parties. This resulted in a de facto concentration of political power in the hands of individual leaders as electorates responded to the new campaign styles by apparently giving greater weight to leader profiles in their voting choices, thus making leaders with significant ‘personal’ followings especially powerful vis-à-vis their parties. Berlusconi was the archetype of such a leader. General cultural changes – including consolidation of the neoliberal consensus, the growth of celebrity culture and identity politics – also played a role in the growing public focus on individual leaders. Since 9/11 and the abrupt end to the initial post-Cold War optimism, financial crisis, growing geopolitical instability, climate change, refugee crises, population ageing, the implications of the information revolution, and widening inequality between classes and generations have all arguably brought growing feelings of powerlessness and pessimism about the future – and a growing temptation to cut through the complexities by pinning one’s hopes on a powerful leader. There are two broad perspectives on the impact of leaders in politics. One, which can be referred to as the ‘complex politics’ thesis, implies that they have little role, simply because public problems generally are increasingly beyond the control of policy makers, within individual states, to resolve. The other, suggesting an increasingly important role, derives from the ‘presidentialisation’ thesis, which is in turn directly related to, is a variant of, the ‘great man theory’ of history. The relationship is this: clearly leaders make a difference – there is no reason to doubt that leadership is a key feature of government and that power can be exercised in a distinctly individual way. But do they make the difference? This is the question that the ‘great man theory’ claims to answer; and it answers it in the affirmative. The Italian media magnate offers a particularly good test case for assessing the proposition that leaders can make a difference, and this for two specific reasons. First, his career offers an opportunity to carry out a ‘most favourable’ case study: a research design that involves seeking to test a theory in the crucial circumstances where it is most likely to hold up (Hague, Harrop and Breslin, 1998: 278). Berlusconi, as we know, is in certain respects very powerful. Indeed it was probable that at his height, his power ‘easily [exceeded] the power that a single individual has ever had in a liberal or democratic regime’: Silvio Berlusconi has personal wealth that no democratic political leader has ever even remotely dreamed of possessing; he controls a political party that he himself founded, staffed by people faithful not to an ideal but to him; he manages a system of mass communications that no leader of government has ever had available to him. (Viroli, 2010: 18, my translation)

So if we find that even in the case of Berlusconi, leaders appear not to make a difference, then it is unlikely that they will make a difference is less favourable circumstances, i.e. where they are less powerful.

8

Silvio Berlusconi

Second, then, a focus on the case of Berlusconi makes it possible to test the proposition that support for populist leaders is a manifestation of what Charles Mackay (1956 [1841]) referred to as an ‘extraordinary popular delusion’. Such support seems, as far as we can tell from survey research, to reflect acceptance, hopes or expectations concerning claims about the leader’s potential, and potential accomplishments, and therefore some degree of belief in their power. Such a belief is, I would suggest, another ‘popular delusion’ in that leaders are actually far less powerful than ordinary citizens by all accounts believe (and perhaps if citizens could be educated to understand better the limits on politicians’ power then part of the answer to growing political disengagement and dissatisfaction might be found). Exaggerated ideas about what leaders can – and more particularly should – do for us are perhaps encouraged by the growing hold of the culture of individual rights in which the place of the citizen is taken by the consumer of public services. They would appear to be highly likely to be disappointed thanks to a twofold ­delusion – one arising from the temptation of democratic politicians to overpromise (thereby creating unrealistic expectations) as means of maximising their chances of winning public office; the other arising from the misconception that being in office means being in power. Political scientists routinely accept that the distribution of power and the distribution of formal authority may coincide a great deal, somewhat, or not at all – and yet the tendency, inherited from childhood, to look upon leaders as parental figures, expecting them to act as role models for us, seems to retain a certain hold. And since a parental figure is one who protects and cares for us, so we place similarly high expectations on our leaders. The problem is that expectations are unrealistic to the extent that they ignore all the constraints, dilemmas and trade-offs that leaders face. And when expectations are not met, the inevitable consequence is disappointment. A good example of this is given by some recent electoral performances of populist parties in various parts of Europe. When such a party is elected to office, and assuming, as is usually the case, that it finds itself in coalition with other parties, it always faces a dilemma: does it moderate its demands in the interests of government stability and thereby hope to reach out to potential supporters who are moderates? Or does it take a tough negotiating stand? – which helps it keep its core supporters on board while potentially closing the door on support from the more moderate, especially if it threatens government stability. Populists seemingly find the dilemma extremely difficult to deal with, to say the least. In Norway, the Progress Party has failed to average, in opinion polls, the 16.3 per cent of the vote it took in the parliamentary election of September 2013 and its current ratings stand at 13 per cent.1 The party performed poorly (taking 9.5 per cent) in municipal elections held in September 2015 since it could no longer complain about salient issues such as road tolls (as it controlled the transport ministry) or taxation (as it controlled the finance ministry) and it was damaged by its response to the refugee crisis as its anti-immigrant stance flew in the face of a temporary wave of public sympathy for the refugees’ plight (Berglund, 2015). In Latvia, the National Alliance has seen a steady decline in its poll ratings, down to 9.1 per cent from the



Introduction9

16.6 per cent it won at the parliamentary elections of 2014.2 In Finland, in October 2015, support for the True Finns had already fallen to 10.7 per cent from the 17.7 per cent it had won in the elections in April, with some supporters, ‘including the party’s vice-chairman … calling for the True Finns to leave the [governing] coalition over what they [saw] as the centre-right government’s soft immigration policies’ (Milne, 2015). And so one could go on. Erkka Railo’s conclusion, from the Finnish experience, that inviting a populist party into government can be used to tame it (Milne, 2015) has long been borne out by experience. It can, indeed, be used to destroy a party. In Italy, in 2006, Communist Refoundation (RC) became an essential part of a coalition with eight other parties that were almost completely unsympathetic to its core policy ambitions, and then faced a tsunami of media criticism whenever it sought to reassure supporters by digging its heels in on this or that issue that it was guilty of behaving irresponsibly. Screaming accusations of blackmail every time the fragile government’s survival seemed at risk overlooked the point that the party was, by the same token, being blackmailed by its larger partners, and in the end it was they who won; at the subsequent election in 2008, RC was completely wiped out, failing to achieve any parliamentary representation at all. However, we have to be alive to the fact that though a party or leader may lack power in one area, they may have much more of it, and thus be much better placed to make a difference, in another. Berlusconi clearly falls into this category: as a media entrepreneur and party leader, he is extraordinarily powerful – but he has been much less so as a prime minister, as we shall see. So assessing whether he has made a difference overall requires us to explore the part he has played in several arenas, economic, social and political. In turn, understanding and explaining the part he has played requires attempting ‘to get inside of [Berlusconi’s own] defining process’ (Blumer, 1969: 16) with the aim of viewing the world as he himself would view it. That is, we have to interpret his actions. If we subscribe to the arguments of people such as Peter Winch (1958), we are likely to conclude that accounts of social life and historical developments cannot but be interpretive in this sense. But however that might be, it is clear that authentic attempts at interpretation, at understanding how individuals make sense of the world around them, demand that analysts should bracket out preconceptions concerning their grasp of that world (Bryman, 2001: 14). Such an injunction seems especially important when considering so controversial a figure as Silvio Berlusconi. For example, when he says, ‘I am not the Italian anomaly. The anomaly are the communist judges and prosecutors, the 109 judges that have looked into me, that from the time Berlusconi went into politics have decided to attack him through innumerable proceedings’ (la Repubblica, 2009), one way of interpreting his words would be to view them as a monumental act of bad faith, or perhaps as driven by political expediency without any element of sincerity behind them. After all, although some public prosecutors may have political views that place them in opposition to Berlusconi, his encounters with them began in 1979, a long time before he entered politics (Emmott, 2012); and it is stretching credibility too far to think that in an advanced democracy, judicial

10

Silvio Berlusconi

arrangements would actually allow prosecutors to use their positions to persecute someone to the degree that Berlusconi claims has happened. But to interpret Berlusconi’s pronouncements as simple acts of insincerity would arguably run counter to what we know of other aspects of the entrepreneur’s personality. As Alexander Stille has pointed out: One of his most notable characteristics is the ability to convey an idea of total conviction and sincerity even when he is saying things that seem to be totally unrelated to objective reality. Berlusconi’s psychology is characterised by … an immense ability to convince himself that what he is saying is the truth. Not only the truth but the absolute truth, so that he is unable to understand why someone else is unable to grasp it. (2010: 25, my translation)

Under these circumstances, we seem better advised to look for an interpretation that brackets out preconceptions by taking full account of the context in which Berlusconi’s pronouncements about judges are made: by thus seeing how the pronouncements relate to the reality on the ground, we can understand why they might be made with such apparent conviction. His pronouncements may, for example, reflect a cultural norm that sees law and its enforcement – the work of government historically perceived as arbitrary and capricious – as something negotiable that may in many circumstances be legitimately ‘worked around’ (LaPalombara, 1987). Cultural norms provide answers to questions of fairness, morality and justice – one, present in all cultures, being a norm of reciprocity. Therefore, where behaviour that is formally illegal is not perceived as morally reprehensible, the intervention, in a given instance, by agents of law enforcement breaks norms of reciprocity, for it prompts the question on the part of those targeted: since everyone engages in illegal activities or is prepared to do so if necessary, why target me rather than someone else? (Varese, 2000: 12). So in denouncing investigations into allegations against him as the work of communist sympathisers who have been using the judicial system ‘to eliminate political adversaries … by means of contrived allegations … and monstrous sentences’ (quoted by della Porta and Vannucci, 1999: 56), Berlusconi finds a certain popular echo deriving from widespread popular perceptions that justice not infrequently is delivered in ways that fall short of ensuring equality before the law. Under these circumstances, centre-left complaints that Berlusconi sought, as prime minister after 2001, to use legislative means to resolve the legal problems he faced as a private citizen could themselves be presented as evidence of the leftwing, anti-Berlusconi bias of the judiciary that made the measures necessary in the first place. The effort, then to search for an understanding of the world as Berlusconi is likely to have seen it at each of the critical junctures at which his action seems to have been decisive in recent years should help us to throw light on events and processes some of which are, frankly, puzzling. For example, despite Berlusconi’s power, despite his evident desire to be admired, despite his belief that he has an unusual capacity to ‘get things done’, despite his supposed aspiration to carve out



Introduction11

a place for himself in history, the period since his emergence has, as we have said, been characterised by a widespread sense of disappointment with the changes in the quality of Italian governance that seemed to be promised by the circumstances surrounding his political debut. Yes, much of what has happened will have been due to structural factors such as the fact that governments since the early 1990s have continued to be coalitions subject to a series of internal divisions, so that those leading them will have been unable, most of the time, simply to demand that supporters follow their lead. It will have been due to parliamentary standing orders and constitutional provisions that make it impossible for the government to choose, on its own authority, the procedure or the priority to which its bills will be subject in the parliamentary timetable. And it will have been due, of course, to the parties’ interlocking vetoes in a fragmented party system, vetoes exercised under the pressure of objective social and economic circumstances. But on the other hand, following the decisive April 2008 election, Berlusconi – as the head of a coalition of just two parties, over one of which he exercised unassailable power – was the strongest prime minister in the history of the Republic. A similar simplification had taken place among the non-governing parties, and the two main parties of government and opposition shared over 78  per cent of the seats,3 giving them many more votes than necessary to overhaul the Constitution with the certainty that it would not be vulnerable to repeal as had happened in 2006. During the election campaign, both Berlusconi and opposition leader Walter Veltroni had abandoned the reciprocal denials of legitimacy that had hitherto helped to render institutional reform intractable. Both had clear incentives to reach agreement on reform, offering as it did the opportunity of a place in history as the fathers of a new constitutional settlement, something presumably attractive to a Berlusconi reputed to want to crown his career at the end of his prime ministerial term with election to the presidency. However, little more than a month after the election Berlusconi’s conflict of interests once more shot to the top of the political agenda, ending the possibility of dialogue. We have what, on the face of it, looks like a wasted opportunity. As such, it calls attention to the abovementioned methodological perspective that should inform our endeavours. Since the intention of this work is to offer understanding and insight into the contribution made by Berlusconi the individual to change in Italian politics, what is called for are both chronological and thematic accounts. With this in mind, chapters 1, 3 and 5 together offer a narrative account of the life of Berlusconi the individual through which we describe his rise as an entrepreneur, his political career, and what was responsible for the vicissitudes of his fortunes in and out of office after 2001. Chapters 2, 4 and 6 explore in more detail questions raised during the course of the narrative. These are, first, what is the nature of the Berlusconi message? Discussions of the entrepreneur and his career often feature the term ‘Berlusconismo’ – implying, we argue, the existence of a distinct set of ideas that amount to an ideology. So chapter 2 assesses the basis for this claim. Second, in chapter 4, we ask how we are to understand Berlusconi’s party, Forza Italia. When Forza Italia was launched, it seemed like a hasty improvisation,

12

Silvio Berlusconi

one that many political commentators were initially reluctant to take seriously. Two decades later, it remained a party with distinctly patrimonial characteristics, with an unashamed lack of concern for consultation with the party base. Such features – exceptional among parties in Western democracies – represent a serious barrier to the likely survival of the party once Berlusconi leaves the scene. This chapter therefore explores why Berlusconi has allowed them to persist, and how they have affected the quality of parties and party competition generally in Italy. Third, chapter 6 explores Berlusconi the entrepreneur, asking what has been the nature of his relations with the political class? The answer will throw light on an essential question concerning Berlusconi’s political debut and the emergence of Forza Italia in 1994. That is, if these were due to the need to create an effective centre-right alliance if the left was to be stopped at the general election of 1994, what was it that induced Berlusconi – as opposed to any other businessman with more or less clearly defined right-wing sympathies – to take on the task of uniting the right? If the answer is to be found in the entrepreneur’s previous experience of operating on what in Italy has traditionally been an ill-defined border ­separating politics and business, then it will have much to say about the role in Italian politics of ‘clans’, that is, groups of individuals operating on the aforementioned border in pursuit of a combination of both political and economic objectives. The fourth section of the book focuses on the heart of our concerns, considering Berlusconi’s legacy in four areas: culture, electoral behaviour, public policy and the quality of Italian democracy generally. It has been argued that Berlusconi’s media empire has furnished Italians with new sets of values and aspirations as substitutes for old sets of reference points – the Church, the parties of the left, values of parsimony and sacrifice – which by the 1980s were clearly in decline. We therefore explore, in chapter 7, what these new sets of values and aspirations are, their political significance, and the specific contribution of Berlusconi to their emergence. We then ask what the electoral impact of Berlusconi’s leadership has been (chapter 8). In other words, we ask how much, precisely, can be attributed to the role of charismatic leadership by Berlusconi in explaining the centre-right’s electoral success in recent years. As we have seen, campaigning in Italy has become highly ‘candidate-centred’ – and indeed it is widely assumed that the most important political assets of Forza Italia and the centre right in recent years have been the entrepreneur’s image and his ‘magic’. On the other hand, Italian National Election Study data (ITANES, 2001) have cast doubt on the view that the outcome of the election of 2001 could be explained in terms of its being ‘a referendum on Berlusconi’, suggesting that other factors may have been more important. Chapter 9 explores how Berlusconi has fared as a head of government. In Italy, as in most parliamentary regimes, the role of prime minister is so broadly defined that its powers are heavily dependent – within certain constraints – on the prevailing political circumstances and on the personality of the incumbent at the time. This chapter assesses the Berlusconi premierships in the light of this, looking at what he wanted to achieve and how successful he was. Making his



Introduction13

political debut in 1994, Berlusconi promised a ‘new Italian miracle’. Then, during the course of the general election campaign of 2001, he famously signed, on television, a ‘contract with the Italian people’, promising not to seek re-election if he failed to achieve at least four of the five objectives set out therein. This chapter explores how much of what Berlusconi promised to achieve this government, and his subsequent government from 2008, were actually able to deliver, and how can we account for their performances. We then ask, in chapter 10, what is the legacy of Berlusconi’s career for Italian democracy generally. It is often argued that Berlusconi’s reaction to the legal difficulties arising out of his entrepreneurial activities, particularly in terms of the ad personam laws introduced after 2001, had negative consequences for the quality of Italian democracy, but the claim so far lacks a secure empirical foundation. Finally, we draw everything together to consider, first, what the analysis of Berlusconi’s impact on Italian politics suggests, from a theoretical point of view, about the significance of leaders – party leaders and heads of government – and especially populist leaders generally; and, second, what the cross-national, comparative significance of Berlusconi’s career has been, especially in light of the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Throughout the book, the basic argument is that Berlusconi is significant far more for what his career tells us about Italian politics and how it has unfolded over the past quarter century than for how he has changed it. As I shall seek to show, he has succeeded in doing nothing to undermine Italy’s status as a fully fledged democracy, as some on the left would have it; nor has he succeeded in achieving anything remotely resembling a ‘new Italian miracle’ as his supporters on the right hoped and expected he would. What he has done has not been original, having, rather, reflected tendencies already present: he has been the bearer or the agent of change, not one of its most significant drivers. He has in that sense been an epiphenomenon. He has not made a significant difference, and Italian politics would in all probability have unfolded in much the way that it has, even if not in entirely the same way. And ultimately, this is because, while individual men and women make their own history, they do not make it as they please, but in circumstances that enable even the most powerful of them only to retard or accelerate change, but not to alter its fundamental direction. The argument will hopefully serve a practical, political purpose (as political history inevitably does, given that its subject matter is not impervious to what is written about it), that is, to make some small contribution to curing the ‘infantile disorder’ of our current infatuation with leaders. This might then make us more willing to stop complaining, as populist leaders encourage us to do, about ‘unresponsive elites’, and to take more responsibility for our circumstances through forms of collective action that have so sadly been eclipsed by the post-Cold War culture of individualism – of which Berlusconi has, of course, been one of the most high-profile personifications. In order to understand how he acquired such a position we have to know, first, who Berlusconi is and what the events and circumstances were that brought him to initial prominence, a task that we undertake in the chapter that follows.

14

Silvio Berlusconi

Notes 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_Norwegian_parliamentary_ election,_2017 (accessed 20 April 2018). 2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Latvian_parliamentary_election (accessed 20 April 2018). 3 These proportions were higher than ever previously achieved since the war and well in line with the corresponding proportions for the other large European democracies.

Part I

Emergence

1

From childhood, through business career to political debut, 1936–93 In this chapter we describe the succession of events that were responsible for the emergence of Berlusconi as a public figure, focusing on his business career and the growth of his commercial empire. The narrative leaves one with the strong impression that his career (like those of most people, we may suppose) was marked by significant elements of path dependency – the inertia that keeps phenomena in existence, long after the factors that initially brought them into being have ceased to exist. Having, for instance, succeeded in establishing a dominant position in the field of commercial television, that dominance would continue and grow thanks to self-generating processes having to do with the capacity to attract advertising revenue and therefore to finance the programmes that would attract large audiences and so forth. This leads to the conclusion, when viewing his business career as a whole, that while his role was fundamentally that of a man who was ‘eventful’, he was, at certain turns, ‘event making’, to use the terminology introduced in the Introduction. This is suggested by those occasions on which he was able to turn misfortunes into advantages, as we shall see. In this chapter we describe the events of Berlusconi’s life against the background of the social, economic and political changes that were taking place at the time: in some cases these developments were directly reflected in the entrepreneur’s activities and therefore help us to understand them; in other cases they were directly responsible for the career opportunities Berlusconi took. We begin with a description of his childhood and youth before describing his initial business forays and how these led to increasingly ambitious building projects and thus to the establishment of his media empire. We then go on to describe how, once it had been established, the empire was able to grow even larger thanks to his relationship with national-level politicians and especially the Socialist prime minister, Bettino Craxi. We complete the account with a description of the most significant of the remaining business ventures and of how these and Berlusconi’s relationships with the world of politics led to some of the earliest of his encounters with the judicial authorities.

Childhood and youth, 1936–61 The world of Berlusconi’s early childhood was one of hardship – but also of aspiration. He was born on Tuesday 29 September 1936 in via Volturno, in a district

18

Emergence

of Milan known as l’Isola or ‘the Island’, a name which may have come from the neighbourhood’s relative isolation thanks to the construction of a railway that cut off former points of access from other areas nearby. Situated about two and half kilometres to the north of the city centre, l’Isola was a district whose blocks of flats marked it out as predominantly working-class – suggesting that Berlusconi’s family was somewhat better off than its neighbours; his 28-year-old father, Luigi, was a functionary of the Banca Rasini, one of the tiny financial institutions that to this day give to the Italian banking system its characteristically fragmented and localised structure. His 25-year-old mother, Rosa, was a housewife, as the vast majority of married women were at this time, so completing the profile of a family that a number of the Italian-language biographies (e.g. Ruggeri and Guarino, 1994: 21) of the entrepreneur describe as typical of the Milanese lower middle class. As such it is likely that the Berlusconi household’s income was round about 450 lire per month, giving it about one-and-a-half times the income of the average manual household at the time. As he progressed in his career at the bank Luigi would have been able to come increasingly close to realising the dream immortalised in the famous song of 1939, Mille lire al mese (‘A thousand lire a month’) – a song that expressed the aspirations of white-collar Italians everywhere to a salary which (though amounting to no more than about €860 today) would at the time have conferred status and some escape from generalised relative hardship: average Italian wages were about half of those in France, a third of those in Britain and a quarter of those in the US. The average Italian consumed a third as much meat and milk as his or her British or American counterpart and considered coffee, tea and sugar to be luxury items. There was a car, a telephone and a radio for every 100, 70 and 40 inhabitants respectively, while the corresponding numbers for Britain were 20, 13 and 6 (Chiarini, n.d.). The hardships of Berlusconi’s early childhood were compounded by the events of the war. Luigi served as a simple foot soldier, while his family moved to a small village near the Swiss border, Oltrona di San Mamette. In an interview given to journalist Steffano Lorenzetto in 2006, Rosa recalled how, pregnant for the second time, she was obliged each day to walk to and from Fino Mornasco, three kilometres away, to catch the train to Milan to work as a secretary for Pirelli (Lorenzetto, 2006). In July 1943 the Allies had invaded Sicily, Mussolini had been deposed and Hitler, suspicious of a possible Italian defection, had poured German troops into Italy from the north. On 3 September the Italian government had signed with the Allies a secret armistice which, when announced on 8 September, had led to the disintegration of the Italian army, left with no orders other than to cease hostilities against Anglo-American forces and to resist attacks from whatever other quarter. The Germans, in reaction, had occupied the entire peninsula and on 12 September snatched Mussolini from prison; under pressure from his rescuers, he agreed to set up a new fascist state in the north of Italy. On 15 September Mussolini ordered all Italian troops, on pain of being referred to the War Tribunal, to report to the nearest German command post. Under these circumstances, an illegal crossing of the Swiss frontier seemed to be the only



From childhood to political debut19

option. Luigi escaped to Switzerland, where he was held in an internment camp until July 1945 (Fiori, 1995: 19–20). If the family’s income initially had to support three people, from 1943, when Berlusconi was 7, and from 1949, when he was 13, it had to support four and five people respectively; the former year saw the birth of his sister Maria Antonietta, the latter the birth of his brother Paolo. The consequent economic limitations to which the family was subject seem to have been reflected by the arrangements made for Berlusconi’s education from the year before Paolo’s arrival; he was entrusted to a local boarding school, Sant’Ambrogio, run by the Salesian Fathers as an alternative to the Swiss college to which a more florid Milanese family of the petit bourgeoisie would otherwise have aspired. And in his final year he was apparently obliged to relinquish his status as a boarder and become a day pupil because of the difficulty his father was having in paying the fees (Ruggeri and Guarino, 1994: 23). At Sant’Ambrogio, Berlusconi performed well academically, and according to a former classmate was wont to help his weaker companions by doing their homework for them. In exchange, he would demand payments of 20 or 50 lire and, in an early application of the marketing strategy soddisfatti o riborsati (satisfied or reimbursed), return the money if the work failed to achieve a pass grade (Stille, 2010: 32–3; Fiori, 1995: 22). The future entrepreneur’s behaviour seemed to reflect both the firm discipline of the boarding school and the sense of opportunity of the world beyond it. The war was now over. If, in its immediate aftermath, cities lay in ruins, if the railways and the road network were unserviceable, if there were shortages of basic consumer goods, then paradoxically, these very facts meant that the situation was rich with entrepreneurial possibilities. Together with the Marshall Plan of 1947 and then the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 they laid the foundations for the later ‘economic miracle’ whose first signs began to make themselves felt from the early 1950s: from 1951 to 1962 the Italian economy grew at an average annual rate of 5.3 per cent, as compared to 3.9 per cent for the US and 2.8 per cent for the UK. The recollections of childhood acquaintances depict the young Berlusconi as a self-confident person, one who loved to perform. It was an inclination he was able to exploit for practical purposes after he graduated from Sant’Ambrogio and enrolled in the Law Faculty at the University of Milan: short of money, his father asked him to finance his studies himself, which he duly did by playing in a band with his childhood friend and future president of Mediaset, Fedele Confalonieri; by working as a door-to-door salesman; and by spending his summers acting as an entertainer on board cruise ships (Fiori, 1995: 26; Ruggeri and Guarino, 1994: 24). Again, Berlusconi’s activity seemed to encapsulate broader cultural trends, l’arte di arrangiarsi (‘the art of getting by’) being one that immediately leaps to mind: the title of a 1955 film staring the comic Alberto Sordi, the phrase is used by Italians in everyday parlance to refer to perceived national character traits not at all unlike those the British have in mind when they refer to the socalled ‘Dunkirk spirit’. Essentially, it refers to the art of overcoming adversity and

20

Emergence

t­ urning it to one’s advantage by employing creativity and enterprise, qualities that have enabled Italians to survive war, terrorism, corruption and economic crisis. Negatively, it can involve opportunism and an indifference to rules or principles; positively, it denotes innovation and originality (Diamanti, 2009). The film covers a period of several decades during which the Sicilian Sasa Scimoni ‘must adapt to the various power structures in Italy. Whether it be the monarchy, the socialists, the fascists or the Church, Scimoni manages not only to acclimate himself to the prevailing winds, but also turn a neat financial profit in the bargain’ (New York Times, n.d.). La dolce vita (‘the sweet life’) is another phrase that springs to mind. The title of a film written and directed by Federico Fellini which came out the year before Berlusconi graduated (1961), the phrase is used in common parlance to refer to a relaxed, luxurious lifestyle and therefore also to the period from the end of the 1950s to the late 1960s, years of prosperity and optimism. The film ‘portrays the eccentric night life of would-be actors, impoverished aristocrats, playboys and dandies, fashionable intellectuals, and ever ready paparazzi’ at a time when the economic miracle and the flow of consumer goods was challenging traditional values and making possible more colourful lifestyles.1 Berlusconi’s cruise-ship voyages, the high-quality clothes that went with them and his legendary abilities to charm members of the opposite sex all seem to capture the spirit of the time in exactly the same way that the film does.

First forays into business Not only was the economic miracle reflected in Berlusconi’s activity but it also provided him with his first major business opportunity, thanks to what it did to the demand for housing and other construction. People whose incomes doubled between 1952 and 1963 had more children and needed larger houses; many began to look for hotels by the sea; the wealthier sought second homes. Added to this were the effects of the internal migrations brought on by the concentration of the boom in the north of Italy, as was to be expected: more industrialised than the south, it enjoyed better infrastructural resources, such as a good transportation system, and it was closer to northern European export markets. Therefore, when the post-war boom in international trade created new business opportunities it was far more likely that enterprise start-ups would be located there than in the south. This would in turn influence subsequent location decisions in a selfgenerating process, not very successfully countered by the government’s efforts to develop the south through the Cassa per il mezzogiorno (‘Fund for the south’). Meanwhile, the economic miracle brought with it television and cars – generating awareness of new possibilities in other regions along with greater geographical mobility – as well as better access to basic education, and therefore more of the cultural resources necessary to realise the new possibilities. Thus it was that the period of post-war growth triggered massive flows of internal migration: involving over nine million people between 1955 and 1970, at its height between 1960 and 1963 this saw about 800,000 people a year migrate from the south to the



From childhood to political debut21

north. ‘In Milan alone, the centre of the boom, 260,000 families arrived in the space of a decade, the equivalent to the addition of a city of 600,000 inhabitants’ (Fiori, 1995: 28, my translation). This in turn triggered what journalists and other writers would call ‘il Far West edilizio’ an expression intended to highlight the uncontrolled and indiscriminate nature of the massive construction boom that ensued. On the one hand, new arrivals in the northern cities often found that the initial shortage of affordable housing condemned them to squalid living conditions in large dormitory towns in the suburbs from which they longed to escape. On the other hand, local authorities struggled to provide the schools, hospitals and other facilities needed to enable them to cope with the sudden massive influx of people. Above all, they lacked town-planning legislation adequate to deal with a phenomenon that had no precedents, or with the vast numbers of holders of agricultural land now desperate to transfer it to builders knowing that a change of designation would increase its value many times over. During his final year at university Berlusconi had worked for a building firm, Immobiliare costruzioni, as an assistant to its owner. He had also won 2,000,000 lire: a prize offered by the advertising agency, Manzoni, for the best degree thesis on the topic of commercials. It was a considerable sum, the equivalent of about €50,000 today. With this and his law degree he now sought an associate with whom to buy, in via Alciati, about five kilometres to the west of the city centre, a piece of land on which he would build an apartment block. Through his father and his father’s employer, Carlo Rasini, he was put in touch with a builder, Pietro Canali, a client of the Banca Rasini which provided the surety needed for the acquisition: while the land cost 190 million lire, then from his prize, his savings and his father, Berlusconi was able to put together no more than ten million. The costs of the building work, meanwhile, were met by taking advantage of the heavy demand and selling the apartments before they were built: purchasers would pay a deposit when signing the contract of sale and the rest as the work progressed.

Near disaster: Brugherio In 1963 Berlusconi moved on to an altogether more ambitious project, the construction of an entire residential quarter for four thousand inhabitants. Brugherio, 14 kilometres to the north-east of Milan, was the location; Edilnord the company he established to realise the project, together with Canali, Rasini, Eduardo Piccitto (an accountant) and the builders Enrico and Giovanni Botta. Some of the resources needed to finance the project came from the partners, but the vast bulk of it was supplied by Renzo Rezzonico representing the Swiss finance company Finanzierungesellschaft für Residenzen Ag, which was alleged to act as a vehicle for the money-laundering activities of the Mafia (Ruggieri and Guarino, 1994: 39–40). Carlo Rasini was sceptical of the project from the beginning given that Brugherio was dominated by chemical and industrial plants, far from shops

22

Emergence

and isolated from surrounding areas. Alexander Stille (2010: 35–8) argues that Berlusconi’s own anecdotes, describing how he managed to save the project from collapse, are revealing of his business methods. The entrepreneur decided to try to persuade one of the national pension funds to invest in the project and through the managing director of Manzoni was put in touch with the vice-president of the acquisitions committee of a large fund whom he persuaded to visit the building site. He then arranged that at the moment of the visit a large number of his relatives would be present, pretending to be potential purchasers; however, the pretence was exposed when a rather stupid cousin arrived and started greeting and hugging all the assembled relatives. Not discouraged by this setback, Berlusconi, through a friend in Rome, was put in touch with the vice-president’s secretary with whom he ingratiated himself and whom he persuaded to telephone him the next time the vice-president was due to make a trip to Milan. Tipped off about a forthcoming visit he rushed to Rome and got a seat on the train opposite the vicepresident. Deploying all his charm, he managed to persuade the vice-president, by getting him half drunk and establishing a ‘common cultural link’ thanks to a conversation about the genitals of women from the Caucasus, that Brugherio represented a good investment. Stille observes that the put-on with Berlusconi’s relatives was simply fraudulent. Though claiming to have relied solely on his determination rather than on favours of any kind, Berlusconi describes, in somewhat vulgar terms, how he exploited the acquaintance of a friend in Rome to seduce a secretary in order be alone with a man whom he could use to help him out of a fix. Though claiming to be an exponent of the free market, he used personal connections and other questionable means to persuade an important pension fund to acquire apartments in a squalid area of Milan that no one else wanted to buy. Whatever the truth of the anecdotes, they are, it can be argued, revealing of what Berlusconi’s audiences find attractive about him, for they seem to reflect the cultural appreciation of furbizia (‘cunning’ or ‘astuteness’), the quality of one who manages to use their wits and intelligence to turn a situation to their own advantage. The attractiveness of the quality almost certainly lies in its ambiguousness. On the one hand it can imply a propensity to seek advantage by misleading or deceiving others. On the other hand it can refer simply to the ability to resolve problems by means of exceptional creativity. And its attractiveness almost certainly lies in the keen awareness that even its negative connotations are ambiguously negative: attempts to mislead or deceive cannot always be deprecated and only the foolish would turn their backs on such behaviour as a matter of principle. This is especially true when it comes to the citizen’s dealings with the state, whose efficiency and even-handedness are, in popular perceptions, not to be relied upon. So when Berlusconi later launched himself into the world of politics, his evident capacity for  furbizia undoubtedly helped to support his claim of being on the side of the ordinary Italian against the professional politicians who, unlike him, did not have the interests of the ordinary Italian at heart. By the time the Brugherio project came to an end, Berlusconi had married (Carla Dall’Oglio, born in 1940) and had his first child (Maria Elvira, born



From childhood to political debut23

in 1966) – his second child, Pier Silvio, was born in the year of the project’s c­ ompletion, 1969.

More ambitious still: Milano 2 The year before this saw the foundation of Edilnord centri residenziali, the company that would oversee the project that turned Berlusconi into one of the country’s leading industrialists: Milano 2, the construction of an up-market satellite town in the municipality of Segrate, about 9 kilometres to the north-east of Milan city centre. The necessary land, 712,000 square metres, was bought for 3 billion lire (€1,549,370) from Count Leonardo Bonzi, who had stipulated an agreement with the municipality to make provision for the infrastructural facilities necessary to make the area habitable in exchange for authorisation to build homes occupying 2.5 million cubic metres of space. The significant features of the project from the perspective of the entrepreneur’s rise to power are threefold. The first is the mystery surrounding the origin of the funds, and the legality of the operations, used to finance the project. Edilnord centri residenziali was a società in accomandita semplice (a ‘limited partnership’ company) involving two types of partner: an accomandatario (‘full partner’) and an accomandante (‘sleeping partner’). Accomandatari provide the labour and the know-how necessary to realise the company’s objectives, while accomandanti provide the capital. In this case the suspicions of journalists have been aroused by the identities of both: the accomandatario was Lidia Borsini, a cousin of Berlusconi’s, and from June 1970 her mother, Maria Bossi – rather than Berlusconi himself. The accomandante was again Renzo Rezzonico, this time representing the Swiss-based Aktiengesellschaft für Immobilienanlagen in Residenzzentren, whose funds were held by the International Bank of Zurich (Ruggeri and Guarino, 1994: 48) and which was founded ten days before Edilnord centri residenziali, on 19 September 1968, by the Luxembourg branch of the US-based Discount Bank Overseas Ltd, Aktiengesellschaft’s sole shareholder (Fiori, 1995: 36). Linked to the Milano 2 project were a number of other companies also run by Berlusconi figureheads, as well as the Banca Rasini, later suspected of having been used as a vehicle for the laundering of funds deriving from mafia and other organised-crime activities. Berlusconi was 33 at the time, with the near disaster of Brugherio just behind him: Credit is obtained only by he who offers certainty. And if the transaction is colossal it is natural to expect that the beneficiary will be asked to provide a correspondingly large number of correspondingly solid guarantees: a safely profitable business proposition, one that can be realised without encountering any obstacles, with all the necessary requirements – authorisations, licences, permits – in place, and in any case, with robust forms of surety, whether of a political or other kind. Beyond a certain amount, money is not given to anyone unable to provide reassurance as to their cover. Entrepreneurial abilities certainly represent a strong card; but at such a high level of financial exposure, they are, on their own, ­insufficient. (Fiori, 1995: 40, my translation)

24

Emergence

The second significant feature of the project, then, is the extent to which it seemed to rely on political and similar contacts. The best-known episode concerns the diversion of the flight paths of aircraft taking off from the nearby Linate airport. While the noise enabled the land to be acquired at a lower price than it might otherwise have commanded, it made the sale of the apartments more difficult. Stille (2010: 40–2) suggests that Berlusconi managed to get the flight paths diverted thanks to connections with the right-wing faction of the Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democrats, DC) and to a public relations gimmick. According to this version of events, in the initial phase of Milano 2, Berlusconi arranged for the construction of a new hospital, San Raffaele, imposing as a condition that it be built near the site of his apartments. So when Edilnord representatives travelled to Rome to obtain the diversion of the flight paths, they were able to claim to be motivated not by the desire to increase the value of Berlusconi’s investments, but by the welfare of the still-to-be-built hospital’s patients. Against the protests of the residents of areas nearby, Edilnord brandished the results of an environmental investigation conducted by the Milan Polytechnic – an investigation that subsequently turned out to have been commissioned by Edilnord itself and whose authors were obliged to offer a public apology in order to avoid being dismissed by the university.

Emergence of the television empire The third significant feature of the project is its planting of the seed from which the Berlusconi television empire would later grow. As an optional extra for his wealthy clients, Berlusconi decided to offer access, via cable, to a private television station, Telemilano, which, from 24 September 1974, offered news and information about local services as well as screening the occasional film. The early 1970s saw the mushrooming of numerous small ‘pirate’ TV stations, sometimes run by far left groups (Stille, 2010: 72) and other ‘outsiders’ seeking to challenge the state’s monopoly on broadcasting via the airwaves. There was considerable pent-up demand for television advertising: the state broadcaster, Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI), was dominated first by the DC and subsequently also by the Socialists and the Communist Party, each of which had one of the three television stations, RAI1, RAI2 and RAI3 respectively, within its sphere of influence. Rooted in both of the dominant political subcultures, the Catholic and the Marxist, was a certain antipathy to unbridled capitalism, consumerism and hedonism, so that television advertising was strictly limited and rigorously controlled. In 1976 the Constitutional Court responded to the mushrooming television networks by ruling that they could continue to broadcast, but only on a local level (so preserving RAI’s national-level monopoly). Berlusconi decided as a consequence to transform Telemilano into a station broadcasting via the airwaves and acquired channels 38 and 58, seeing his television interests as a means of offering firms a vehicle for reaching consumers that was available to them only on a strictly limited basis through RAI. As Stille (2010: 72–6) points out, there were few operators, besides Berlusconi, with the capital necessary to launch broadcasting projects of any real weight.



From childhood to political debut25

The two largest publishers of books and magazines, Rizzoli and Rusconi, were Berlusconi’s major competitors in this sphere, but unlike Berlusconi they did not understand the power and significance of advertising: as producers of culture rather than entertainment, they attempted to introduce advertising in the most discreet way possible so as not to annoy the viewer. Berlusconi took the opposite approach, inserting advertisements in abundance at the moments of greatest interest and tension in films so as to be sure that viewers would watch the advertisements as well as the film. Stille’s summary of the significance of Berlusconi’s initiative is worth quoting at length: Television is an area in which the Berlusconi myth corresponds quite closely to the reality. There is no doubt that, as compared to his competitors, Berlusconi had a clearer vision of how to be successful in commercial broadcasting, and that, as a salesman, he could give the best of himself. He was able to create the impression that he was selling not only a product: he was offering the vision of a new and better world, a message of growth and freedom for the small enterprises that had not yet managed to make the qualitative leap. He offered a kind of utopian vision of infinite growth and infinite prosperity and well-being. Berlusconi is not mistaken in describing himself as a ‘missionary’ for commercial television. The sales techniques he developed at this time form the basis of his rhetoric and his political appeal: a call to arms to the Italian middle class against suffering the oppression of the old political parties, represented by the state television monopoly, against the cultural and economic elites that dominated the country. Berlusconi’s is the promise of liberation, the promise of a land of plenty. (2010: 76–7, my translation)

Berlusconi’s main problem at this point was that he needed to be able to offer to the vast array of medium-sized enterprises that sprouted and flourished in the soil of the post-war boom the opportunity to become established as brands known nationally – while his stations could only broadcast locally. The solution Berlusconi found was to buy up vast libraries of films, soap operas and similar material, broadcasting them, with advertisements, on each of his stations simultaneously. Thereby, he could remain within the letter of the law while reaching his national audience. Meanwhile his competitors, and especially the small local TV operators, were pressing for a law that would regulate the sector, fearful as they were of elimination or takeover by the great advertising predators, like Berlusconi, with his Publitalia and its vast army of agents selling advertising slots on commission, while they were able to broadcast only local advertisements often of embarrassingly poor quality. More specifically, in its broadcasting judgement of 1976, the Constitutional Court had left open how the term ‘local’ was to be defined, a matter which – along with issues such as the assignment of frequencies, the installation of broadcasting facilities, limits on advertising etc. – was to be left to ordinary legislation. Berlusconi was violently opposed to such legislation. On the one hand, it could be assumed that when it came, the legislation would draw from the example of similar countries and include measures designed to prevent any single firm

26

Emergence

acquiring a hegemonic position in broadcasting or in the attraction of advertising revenue. Given that, once he had got started, Berlusconi was able to attract much bigger names to his TV shows, larger audiences, more attractive advertising slots etc. in an upward spiral that became self-generating, it was very much in his interests that the free-for-all be allowed to continue. On the other hand, his strongest competitors, firms such as Rusconi and Mondadori, had developed their growth strategies precisely on the assumption of early legislation on commercial broadcasting that would reflect the anti-trust laws in place elsewhere, and had therefore invested much more cautiously than Berlusconi in programming, scheduling, equipment, advertising facilities and so on.

Craxi and company Berlusconi’s confidence that he was pursuing the right strategy rested in large part on his confidence that the Socialists, under Bettino Craxi, would be able to block the feared legislation for him. The two men had met through the architect Silvano Larini, whose political standing gave him influence among the technical staff overseeing the Milanese inter-municipal plan (il Piano intercomunale milanse) on whose judgements depended the authorisation or blocking of building projects and conspicuous earnings (Fiori, 1995: 77). Berlusconi and Craxi had a great deal in common, including an appreciation of decisiveness and of pragmatism (if not disdain for principles); a hatred of communism and the Italian Communist Party (PCI); a commitment to the accumulation of power; determination; unscrupulousness; and a belief that the pursuit of wealth and success was a legitimate aspiration. And they had very significant interests in common: Craxi could see that commercial television, and therefore Berlusconi, represented the future as far as political communications were concerned, and therefore that, by working closely with the entrepreneur and using his influence to weaken the state television network, he had a great deal, potentially, to gain in terms of support for his party. Thus it was that Craxi’s rise to power, culminating in his appointment as prime minister in August 1983, ‘coincided with and was linked to Berlusconi’s occupation of the airwaves’. The politico-business association between the two was ‘so blatant as to evoke situations characteristic of certain South American dictatorships’ (Ruggeri and Guarino, 1994: 84, 86, my translation). Finally, if Craxi was concerned to assist Berlusconi, then following the election of 1983 he was very well-placed to do so. The DC remained the mainstay of all feasible governing coalitions given that the main parties of left and right, the PCI and the Italian Social Movement respectively, continued to be deemed unacceptable as coalition partners. But in 1983 the DC suffered heavy losses (–5.4 per cent in terms of votes and 37 fewer seats) and was now unable to form a government without the Socialists, who thus acquired a power of veto over the government’s initiatives. Assisted by Craxi, and by his competitors’ cautiousness, Berlusconi’s television empire grew larger and larger. In August 1982 Edilio Rusconi concluded that he was no longer able to compete given the apparently unlimited sums of money that Berlusconi was able to invest, and eight months after his launch of a major



From childhood to political debut27

new network, Italia 1, he decided he would have to abandon commercial television altogether, selling Italia 1 to Berlusconi for 32 billion lire (€16.5 million). The entrepreneur now had two major commercial TV networks under his control – the other being Canale 5, developed from Telemilano and launched in 1980 – enabling him to compete more effectively with his remaining competitor. Thus it was that in 1984 Mondadori found itself facing losses of 180 billion lire (€93 million) arising from its Rete 4 network, which it consequently sold to Berlusconi for 135 billion lire (€69.7 million). In 1980 construction accounted for 60 per cent of the turnover of Fininvest, the financial holding company established in 1978 to bring control of Berlusconi’s commercial interests under one umbrella. Just four years later, 85 per cent of the turnover was accounted for by television. In 1980 Publitalia turned over 12 billion lire (€6.2 million). In 1984 it turned over 900 ­billion lire (€465 million) (Fiori, 1994: 104–5).

The threat of regulation In October 1984, pressed by the surviving small networks, magistrates in Turin, Rome and Pescara ordered the deactivation of the facilities that allowed Berlusconi to broadcast beyond the locality. He was accused of having violated article 195 of the so-called codice postale (literally, ‘postal code’) requiring prior authorisation of activities that involved broadcasting beyond the ‘local area’: however this was defined, Berlusconi was in effect broadcasting nationally and therefore deemed to be in violation of the law. Craxi responded by insisting on the introduction of a law legalising Berlusconi’s position. Article 77 of the Constitution allows governments, in situations of emergency, to issue decrees having the force of law. They come into effect immediately but must be converted, by Parliament, into ordinary law within sixty days, failing which they become null and void. Post-war governments typically had great difficulty in dominating a legislature which the Constituent Assembly had, in the immediate aftermath of the Fascist experience, deliberately designed in such a way as to allow it to resist executive attempts to dominate. So, despite the limitations on the circumstances in which decrees could be used, governments often sought to circumvent parliamentary obstacles in the way of the implementation of their programmes by having recourse to them, despite the absence of any obvious emergencies – even repeatedly reissuing decrees that Parliament had not converted into ordinary law within the constitutionally required time period (Newell, 2006a: 389). This was what happened now. On 20 October the government issued decree no. 694 ‘containing urgent measures concerning radio and television transmissions’, and on 21 October Berlusconi was already broadcasting again. Parliament now deliberated the measure, beginning with a consideration of its constitutionality. On 28 November it was deemed unconstitutional by 256 votes to 236. Although, as we have said, Craxi’s Socialists were indispensable to the survival of the governing coalition, and although, therefore, the prime minister might have been expected to have his way, all the parties had to reckon with the possibility of indiscipline among

28

Emergence

their backbenchers, and in this particular instance the necessary discipline could not be arranged thanks to the provision, in Parliament’s standing orders, for secret voting. This, until 1988, was available in a wide variety of cases in deference to article 67 of the Constitution which stipulates: ‘Each Member of Parliament represents the Nation and carries out his duties without a binding mandate.’ The provision was the subject of considerable controversy: not infrequently the cause of great difficulties for governments, it also provided a vehicle whereby interest groups could influence legislation in ways that were of doubtful legitimacy. Many Christian Democrats, and especially those on the more progressive wing of the party, were opposed to the decree – either because they perceived that, by assisting the Socialists, it would damage them, or because the unbridled expansion of commercial television offended their Catholic values, or both. Craxi’s response to this situation was to reissue the decree, giving another sixty days in which to get it approved and a breathing space in which to find ways of bringing parliamentarians to heel. The means deployed were several. First, he attempted to woo the Communist opposition. Not yet in full control of RAI3 (something that did not occur until 1987 when responsibility for directing the station passed from Giuseppe Rossini to Angelo Guglielmi), the Communists were offered control of the third channel’s news and entertainment programmes through relevant additions to the decree. They thus declined the invitation of representatives of the so-called ‘independent left’ (high-profile personalities elected on the PCI’s lists but without being party members) to use filibustering to obstruct the conversion of the decree into ordinary law. Second, in order to ensure the decree’s conversion before the required period of sixty days elapsed, Craxi persuaded the president of the Senate, Francesco Cossiga, to impose unprecedented limits on opportunities to debate the measure. The Italian Parliament’s chambers have co-equal legislative powers, so proposals have to be passed, in identical format, by both. By Friday 1 February 1985 the decree had been passed by the Chamber but not by the Senate, and it was due to expire at midnight the following Monday. The decree was therefore forced through the upper house in a day, and became law no. 10 of 1985, amid the understandable protests of opposition senators; although the authority to fix the timetable is his to deploy, the Senate’s president is also bound to act as a neutral arbiter, defending the rights of the opposition parties as much as those of the majority, and ensuring that each group pursues its ambitions using nothing more than persuasive arguments and voting (Massai, 1992: 64). Finally, Craxi decided to make conversion of the decree a matter of confidence, thus implicitly threatening to bring down the government over which he himself presided unless he got his way. Twenty years later, in 2004, Marco Travaglio – a writer well-known in Italy for his critical political commentary and especially for his denunciation of abuses of power – commented: ‘That day, twenty years ago, long before 1994, il Cavaliere really took to the field, taking control of Parliament and then never letting go. Ten years before running for office’ (Travaglio, 2004, my translation). Meanwhile, the controversy over Berlusconi’s status as a national broadcaster, and over how broadcasting should be regulated, continued. Already on



From childhood to political debut29

25 February 1985 magistrates in Turin had asked the Constitutional Court about the legitimacy of law no. 10 – placing Berlusconi’s political allies under pressure to introduce proper legislation. When the legislation came (in the form of law no. 223 of 6 August 1990, the so-called legge Mammì) it was widely referred to as a legge fotografia (literally, ‘photograph law’) because of the way in which it essentially legitimised the existing state of affairs rather than attempting to change or restrict it. In essence, Berlusconi would be allowed to keep his three television stations. Though there would be limits on the extent to which films could be interrupted for advertising, there would be no limits on the share of the advertising market he would be able to control. In a nod in the direction of anti-monopoly principles, the law stipulated that the owners of television stations would not also be able to own newspapers and vice versa. This meant that Berlusconi would have to sell his controlling stake in the newspaper il Giornale (whose shares he had bought for the first time in 1977), which he did by the simple expedient of signing them over to his brother. When, in March 1990, the proposed law came up for discussion in the Senate, PCI representatives, supported by some members of the DC, managed through a secret vote to pass a series of amendments limiting advertising. Gianni Letta (a former journalist who joined Fininvest in 1987) described the amendments as implying ‘the end of commercial television’ (quoted by Fiori, 1995: 176). Consequently, when on 12 July the bill passed for consideration to the Chamber, the government killed off the amendments by making the vote on the original articles a question of confidence: in accordance with the standing orders such a vote would have to be public and to be taken before the amendments, which would then fall automatically if the original articles were approved. Three features of this episode are suggestive of close and possibly improper relations between Berlusconi and individual members of the political class. First, on 18 June, Berlusconi had said publicly that the bill would be subject to a confidence vote so that either the unwelcome advertising limits would be abandoned, or there would be a government crisis and the bill itself would be set aside. Consequently, when the question of confidence was attached to the bill, it was easy to portray the decision as the execution of an order given by a private individual outside Parliament. Second, by this time another general election had come and gone. The Socialists were still indispensable for coalition formation, but the government was now presided over by the Christian Democrat Giulio Andreotti, a rival of Craxi in the race for the presidency of the Republic, which had to take place no later than 1992. According to Fiori (1995: 179) the two made a deal concerning media interests to ensure that their respective presidential prospects would be protected. On the one hand, Andreotti would be allowed to use his influence to ensure that la Repubblica (a major newspaper that Craxi was keen for Berlusconi to control) would remain under the control of the rival industrialist Carlo de Benedetti. On the other hand he would see to it that the amendments concerning advertising restrictions were expunged from the Mammì proposal when it reached the Chamber. Finally, on 26 July five government ministers on the left of the DC resigned in protest against the decision to make these a­ mendments a matter of

30

Emergence

confidence. It was a situation without precedent: under normal circumstances, a government faced with such a significant expression of internal dissent might have been expected to resign, but the five had already made it clear that they would not bring the government down by voting with the opposition parties on the matter of confidence, and the president of the Republic, Francesco Cossiga, had indicated that with Italy holding the European Community (EC) presidency at the time, he wanted a rapid solution to the crisis. Thus it was that within 24 hours the five were simply replaced. By undermining the prestige of the government and institutions, these three episodes were likely, as Massimo D’Alema (1990: 1) argued, significantly to have diminished the international authority of the country and thus its term as EC president. In that way did they illustrate the extent of the power that Berlusconi was able to wield over politicians, Parliament and government.

Business ventures good and bad Thanks to his television networks, Berlusconi was able to establish himself as a household name. On the one hand, as we have seen, given the sheer political and social significance of its emergence, his TV empire occupied a place high on the agenda of public discussion in the mass media – especially thanks to the political conflicts to which it gave rise. For example, there was the conflict with the directors of RAI surrounding the attempts of Mediaset (the holding company bringing together Berlusconi’s media interests) to snatch stars and TV personalities in a ratings war that continued until the so-called pax televisiva between the two with the appointment, in October 1986, of the Socialist Enrico Manca as head of RAI. Then there was the conflict over advertising. In order to protect the position of newspapers, a law had been passed in 1975 stipulating that each year a limit on the total advertising revenue allowed to the state’s radio and television stations would be negotiated by RAI and the Federazione Italiana Editori Giornali (Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers). In 1988 Berlusconi claimed that the agreed increase of 182 billion lire (€94 million) for that year was too much – ­provoking a year-long conflict between Socialist and Christian Democrat members of Parliament’s RAI Supervisory Commission (Commissione di vigilanza RAI) which had responsibility for signing off the agreed amounts. On the other hand, his television networks enabled him to achieve a high profile through initiatives that had a large degree of resonance in popular culture, such as his acquisition (in March 1986) of the football club AC Milan which, from a lowly position in Serie B (in 1980–81 and 1982–83), went on, thanks to Berlusconi’s considerable investment, to acquire a position of pre-eminence, winning the Italian Football Championship in 1988, and winning in 1989, and again in 1990, the UEFA Champions League, the UEFA Super Cup and the Intercontinental Cup. Not all of Berlusconi’s business ventures in the 1980s brought him fame and fortune, and some went decidedly badly. One of these was his investment in the French private television station La Cinq. This began broadcasting in February 1986 thanks to an initiative of President François Mitterand, who was concerned



From childhood to political debut31

about the possible consequences of the French National Assembly elections that year. If the right won, then they might privatise two of France’s state-run channels, placing them under the control of entrepreneurs with right-wing sympathies. However, if, in the meantime, two new private TV stations were launched, then when the right took office, they might be forced to abandon their ideas: planned carefully, the new stations might capture a sufficiently large share of the advertising market as to make it no longer worthwhile for potential purchasers to acquire the public stations. Thanks to the mediation of Craxi, who was vice-president of the Socialist International, Mitterand allowed Berlusconi, viewed with diffidence in France, to acquire a 40 per cent stake in the enterprise – ‘without competitive tendering and ignoring the Audiovisual High Authority put in place to ensure balance’ (Bell, 2005: 112). The remaining 60 per cent was in the hands of a group led by financier and industrialist Jérôme Seydoux. By October 1991 the accumulated losses of the channel amounted to 3.5 billion francs (€5.3 billion), leading to its liquidation and permanent closure on 12 April 1992. The factors contributing to the very different outcome of this venture as compared to Berlusconi’s TV ventures in Italy appear to be three: first, the much tighter regulatory regime within which La Cinq was obliged to operate. For example, shortly after its launch, the station was obliged to pay a heavy fine for failing to respect limits on advertising and the obligation to privilege programmes of European and French origin, thus almost certainly compounding its other problems by damaging its image. Second, if Berlusconi had gone into the project seeking to expand the market for Mediaset’s programming, then adapting this to French tastes proved more difficult than anticipated – and obviously, smaller audiences meant smaller advertising revenues. Third, thanks to the power of other stakeholders, Berlusconi had much less of a free hand in running La Cinq than he did in running his Italian networks, and this led to conflict; used to giving orders, he now found that concerted attempts were made strictly to limit his discretion: having won the elections in March 1986, the right now insisted on reassigning the contract for La Cinq through a process of tendering which saw the existing contract cancelled. In order to retain his stake in the network, Berlusconi was obliged to submit a bid with a man not of his choosing, the right-wing Robert Hersant, whose undertakings effectively to reduce him to the status of a sleeping partner were essential to overcome the hostility of the incoming premier, Jacques Chirac, to the continuing involvement of the Italian, Berlusconi, in the project. While all this was going on, Berlusconi was facing difficulties on another front. 1987 saw the death of Mario Formenton, president of the large publisher Arnaldo Mondadori, which triggered a battle for control involving the company’s three major shareholders: the Formenton family, Berlusconi’s Fininvest and Carlo de Benedetti’s CIR. At first the Formenton family sided with de Benedetti, signing an agreement to sell him shares that would give him control of the company – but then they changed their minds and sided with Berlusconi. De Benedetti sued the Formentons for breach of contract, obtaining in June 1990 a ruling that the agreement with him was still valid. Berlusconi appealed the decision, obtaining a

32

Emergence

ruling in his favour in 1991. Although this seemed to represent a victory for the TV magnate, subsequent developments rendered it enormously costly. In 1995 Stefania Ariosto was a wealthy Milanese socialite and friend of Cesare Previti, who was at the time a friend and legal advisor to Berlusconi. Ariosto had large gambling debts and was worried about threats of violence on the part of loan sharks to whom she owed money. Expressing her concerns to judicial investigators, she also mentioned Previti’s close connections with the judiciary, including his role in representing Berlusconi during the hearings that led to his successful takeover of Mondadori. She divulged that Previti had boasted that the favourable takeover verdict had actually been won thanks to money he had given to one of the judges involved, Vittorio Metta. This prompted a series of investigations that revealed that large sums of money had been passed from All Iberian, an offshore company owned by Berlusconi, through a series of accounts to Previti, and that the money had then gone through a series of other transfers to end up in the hands of a mysterious beneficiary whom investigators believed to be Metta. Previti, Metta and others were put on trial for corruption and convicted, in the Court of Cassation, in 2007. Thanks to the statute of limitations, Berlusconi managed to obtain, in his own case, an acquittal. Meanwhile, civil proceedings for the illegal transfer of Mondadori were pursued by de Bennedetti and CIR. These resulted, in 2009, in damages amounting to €750 million (reduced on appeal to €560 million) being awarded against Berlusconi and Fininvest.

Propaganda due One of the earliest cases involving Berlusconi as a defendant was that arising from allegations that he committed perjury during the course of proceedings for libel that he had initiated in 1987 against the journalists Mario Guarino and Giovanni Ruggeri, and Carlo Verdelli of the weekly magazine Epoca. Guarino and Ruggeri had given Verdelli an interview, published in the magazine, in which it was implied that Berlusconi had since 1983 been on trial for currency offences, and which linked his name with the Masonic lodge, P2. In court, when asked about his associations with the lodge, Berlusconi replied, falsely, that they had begun shortly before the lodge was discovered in 1981 and that he had not paid a membership subscription when he had joined. Accused by Guarino and Ruggeri of false testimony, Berlusconi was found guilty by the Appeal Court of Venice in May 1990 but was discharged thanks to an amnesty passed by Parliament in 1989. Controlled from the 1960s by an obscure Tuscan businessman named Licio Gelli, P2 (standing for Propaganda due) was a Masonic lodge with apparently subversive aims. Berlusconi joined the organisation in 1978, three years before its existence was discovered by police who were investigating the collapse of the financial empire of the banker and P2 member Michele Sindona, and his links to the Mafia. Gelli’s interest in freemasonry seems to have derived from its relative secrecy, the mutual assistance of its members and its preoccupation with ‘moral uprightness’. This meant that it could potentially be pressed into the service of the extreme right, with which Gelli himself had in various ways been associated. As a



From childhood to political debut33

young man he had fought for Franco in the Spanish Civil War. During the Second World War he had been an ardent Fascist. After the war he had, by emigrating to Argentina, taken the path followed by many war criminals – before he then returned to Italy to run a mattress factory where, from the late 1960s, he became worried by the various signs of the growing power of the left in politics. The emergence of P2 was in many ways a reflection of the troubled history of Italian freemasonry generally. From the time it was introduced into the country in the eighteenth century it had always encountered the fierce opposition of the Catholic Church, which saw Masonic teachings as incompatible with Church doctrine. Among other things, freemasonry required of its members the profession of a belief in a Supreme Being or Great Architect of the Universe, while insisting that the specific interpretation of the term was to be left to the member himself (membership being exclusively male). For the Church, then, masons are guilty of deism, or the belief that God can only be known by reason and observation of nature: on the one hand freemasonry is, for Catholics, a religion, as it has its own creeds and rituals and prayers to the Great Architect of the Universe; on the other hand it is relativistic, denying the unique claims of Jesus Christ and the absolute authority of the teachings of the Church (Law, 1985). Given this hostility, Masonic lodges in Italy tended to be anti-clerical and revolutionary, in which capacity they would often operate as secret societies. The latter feature earned them the distrust of the state as well as the Church, and during the Fascist period freemasonry was outlawed altogether. After the war the legal position of freemasonry was arguably ambiguous: though no longer outlawed, article 18 of the Constitution nevertheless banned ‘secret associations’. Faced with considerable religious and political opposition, Italian freemasonry required friends wherever it could find them, and in 1877 the Grand Orient of Italy granted a warrant to a lodge in Rome called ‘Propaganda Massonica’. This lodge was frequented by politicians and government officials from across Italy who were unable to attend their own lodges … The lodge was not on the Grand Orient’s registers but operated as the Grand Master’s own private Lodge, allowing for the initiation of members whose names would not therefore appear on the Grand Orient’s rolls … When the Grand Orient was revived after the Second World War it was decided to number the lodges by drawing lots; Lodge Propaganda drew number two, thus it became P2.2

In 1970 Gelli became secretary of P2, by which time Italy had seen the enormous social changes associated with the economic miracle and the consequent weakening of traditional values; the student and worker protests of 1968 and the autumn of 1969; and the continuing electoral advance of the PCI. On 12 December 1969 a bomb had exploded at the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana in Milan, killing 17 people and wounding 88. Initially, responsibility was laid at the door of anarchists. In 1972 the Red Brigades carried out their first kidnapping. In 1974, against expectations, 60 per cent of voters sided with the left in refusing the

34

Emergence

invitation of the DC and the right to support, in that year’s referendum, repeal of the recently introduced law legalising divorce. In 1976 the PCI’s vote increased by 7 per cent to bring it up from 11 to just 4 percentage points behind the DC. Against this background, Gelli set about recruiting to P2 top-ranking individuals in a wide range of fields, with the apparent intent of countering the leftward drift by creating an organisation that could secretly influence or control the institutions of the state and perhaps even assume power in the event of an election victory by the PCI. He managed to recruit the heads of all three of the country’s secret service organisations; numerous high-ranking officers of the armed forces including generals and admirals; 44 members of Parliament; three government ministers; one party secretary; journalists, broadcasters, bankers and industrialists; civil servants; police chiefs, and members of the judiciary – for a total of 962 names according to the lists found when police raided Gelli’s house in 1981. Views concerning the significance of P2 differ between those who see it as a veritable right-wing conspiracy, a ‘state-within-a-state’, and those who regard it more modestly as an organisation mainly devoted to the personal enrichment of its members, albeit in underhand ways. P2 has, however, been cited in connection with a number of scandals and outrages that took place during the so-called anni di piombo (‘years of lead’) from the start of the 1970s to the early 1980s. This was a period marked by violence and terrorism when, with the complicity of the United States, members of the secret services seemed willing to collaborate with rightwing extremists to foment disorder in a ‘strategy of tension’ that would create a climate favourable to an authoritarian ‘restoration of order’. If the PCI sought to counter this risk through a policy of collaboration with the DC and the attempt at a grand coalition of ‘national solidarity’, then the view in conservative circles, such as P2, was that this would effectively amount to a capitulation to the hated Communists. It is thus possible, if not likely, that the lodge was – for ­example – involved in the Red Brigades’ 1978 kidnap of DC politician Aldo Moro. The principal architect of the ‘historic compromise’ – the plan to bring the PCI into government – Moro was eventually murdered by the Red Brigades, thus ensuring that the compromise plan would never come to fruition. On 17 March 1981 a police raid on Gelli’s villa in Arezzo led to the discovery of the list of P2 members, after Joseph Miceli Crimi – another member who was trying to help Michele Sindona escape justice – confessed to investigators that he had gone to Arezzo to speak to Gelli about Sindona’s situation. The list was made public by the prime minister’s office only on 21 May, the delay causing the fall of the then government led by the Christian Democrat Arnaldo Forlani. On 9 December 1981 a parliamentary commission of inquiry was set up which concluded that P2 was a secret organisation aiming to influence the functioning of the country’s institutions in accordance with a project intended to undermine democracy. On 28 January 1982 a law (no. 27/1982) was passed that finally enshrined in ordinary legislation a definition of the term ‘secret associations’ referred to in article 18 of the Constitution. This did not mean that P2 members could be prosecuted, however: while membership of P2 was unconstitutional, its adherents could not – in deference to the principle that an act is criminal only if



From childhood to political debut35

prohibited by a law in force at the time it was committed – be held to have acted illegally. It is quite easy to appreciate why a person with Berlusconi’s qualities might have been viewed as a potential P2 recruit by Gelli. In the first place, he was an important industrialist whose political views were viscerally anti-communist. His media interests gave him the capacity to further his political aims. Asked why he had bought into the newspaper il Giornale, Berlusconi replied, The Giornale project came about because, personally, I was very worried to see that the forces of the left were growing in Italy – forces that had not yet completed the journey towards democracy. So it was a decision to take to the field in order to build a bulwark against a dangerous trend that had begun. (quoted by Ferrari, 1990: 59, my translation)

Asked in 1977, in another interview, what he thought he would do to support the politicians of which he approved, he replied: ‘Certainly not by paying kickbacks but by placing at their disposal the mass media, in the first place Telemilano…’ (quoted by Fiori, 1995: 48, my translation). These intentions chimed rather closely with the content of P2’s ‘Plan for Democratic Renewal’, the title of a document found in 1982 in the suitcase of Gelli’s daughter at Fiumicino airport in Rome. The document stated, among other things, that it would be necessary to ‘a) acquire certain campaigning weeklies; b) coordinate the provincial and local press through a centralised agency; c) coordinate many cable TV stations with the agency for the local press’ (quoted by Fiori, 1995: 56). In asking, then, why Berlusconi would have wanted to join an organisation such as P2, many have suggested – pointing to the apparent overlaps between the ‘Plan for Democratic Renewal’ and his subsequent activities and stated ­positions – that he was driven by a precise set of political aims and objectives. One cannot help but be struck – for example – by the similarities between Berlusconi’s conception of the ‘supporters’ clubs’ on which his political party, Forza Italia, would later be based, and the new political movements whose launch had been floated in the ‘Plan’. The former were to be composed of ‘political activists and representatives of civil society who were, by temperament open to politically pragmatic action and willing to give up the usual and rigid ideological dogmas’. The latter were, according to the Plan, to be ‘founded by an equal number of supporters’ clubs’ likewise ‘composed of political activists and representatives of civil s­ ociety … by temperament open to politically pragmatic action and willing to give up the usual and rigid ideological dogmas’ (Newell, 2000: 106–7). And there are a number of other examples of similarity one could give, drawing from the areas of the media, reform of the justice system and so on. In 2003, in an interview with la Repubblica, Gelli implied that Berlusconi, who was then prime minister and whom he described as ‘an extraordinary man, a man of action’, was gradually implementing the Plan: ‘Everything is being realised, little by little, piece by piece. Yes, perhaps I should have the copyright. The justice system, television, law and order: I wrote about all this thirty years ago’ (De Gregorio, 2003). On the other

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Emergence

hand, the main motivator might have been the thought of personal gain – as Berlusconi himself seemed to imply when in October 1981 he told judicial officials investigating the lodge: ‘Gelli explained to me that through freemasonry, an international organisation, I would find work opportunities and international contacts useful in my role as president of the Consortium for Industrial Construction’ (quoted by Fiori, 1995: 50, my translation). We know from the aforementioned parliamentary commission of inquiry, for example, that Berlusconi’s firms were able to obtain credit, on unprecedentedly favourable terms, from banks whose directors were also members of P2.

Conclusion However this may be, Berlusconi’s P2 association further highlights what can be taken as the leitmotif of his business career as a whole: that his successes were heavily dependent upon his political contacts. More than this, as his relationship with Craxi especially suggests, he was intimately acquainted with the world of politics and an active player in it. This has a significant implication for how the subsequent phase of his career, to which we turn in chapter 3, is to be interpreted. The new phase, covering the period to 2001, opens with his decision to create a new political party, Forza Italia, and to run for office in the general election of 1994. The interpretation might be that when he did this what was driving him was a desire to continue to pursue, first hand, the private, personal interests that he had previously pursued as a lobbyist. After all, he had the necessary resources, and he had an understandable motive; his decision came in the wake of the disintegration of a political class which, as we have seen, assured the necessary subordination of legislators, ministerial bureaucracies and banks to his needs and interests. This in turn implies that his political debut was not the novelty it was made out to be at the time. Coming in the immediate aftermath of the great Tangentopoli scandal, which had brought disgrace to all of the traditional governing parties and a massive upsurge in anti-political sentiment, the 1994 election was fought by a Forza Italia whose campaign message had novelty and political renewal as its central themes. There were, to be sure, aspects of Berlusconi’s political career that did represent new departures – that were original. However, to tell voters, as his supporters did, that Berlusconi was ‘new’ because he had never been the leader of a political party before, and that Forza Italia was ‘new’ because it had not existed before, was to overlook the political deals struck under Craxi’s protection; to overlook the large numbers of ex-Craxiani, ex-Andreottiani and ex-Forlaniani recycled within the ranks of Forza Italia; and to trade on voters’ lack of information and ingenuity. So what kind of novelty did Berlusconi’s political career represent? What sort of ideological outlook did it reflect? And if his P2 and Forza Italia initiatives really were driven by a political project that went beyond the protection of his own commercial interests, what were its main themes? These are the questions to which we turn in the chapter that follows.



From childhood to political debut37

Notes 1 http://www.romanhomes.com/why_rome/la_dolce_vita.htm (accessed 20 April 2018). 2 http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/anti-masonry/anti-masonry01.html#p2 (accessed 20 April 2018).

2

Berlusconi’s political message

In the last chapter we explored Berlusconi’s involvement in the Masonic lodge P2, noting the overlaps between the lodge’s ‘Plan for Democratic Renewal’ and some of the ambitions driving the launch of Forza Italia, and suggesting that this raised a question about the nature and the substance of his ideas. On the one hand, suggestions that Berlusconi’s political debut was driven by little, if anything, beyond a desire to protect his personal commercial interests point in the direction of a lack of a broader political project and thus of much by way of a clear vision. On the other hand, the opposite conclusion is suggested by the frequent and routine references to ‘Berlusconismo’ in writings about the entrepreneur1; for the suffix ‘-ismo’, like ‘-ism’ in English, is – arguably – most frequently used to imply a precise set of ideas (or practices – and therefore a precise, or perhaps better, a distinct, set of ideas by implication). In this chapter, therefore, we take on the task of addressing two specific questions: first, what have been the main themes, ideas, visions – to the extent that it is possible to identify them – underlying and driving the action of the entrepreneur in his role as a politician since the early 1990s? Or in other words, is there anything distinctive about the ideas that have driven Berlusconi and if so what is it? Second, is there any sense in which his ideas might add up to – be legitimately thought to constitute – an ‘ism’ and if so, what is it? In short, is there such a thing as Berlusconismo? If so, in what does it consist? In order to address these questions, this chapter is divided into four sections. In the following section we consider what an ‘ism’ is, arguing that it is, essentially, an ideology so that if we are to talk legitimately of Berlusconismo we have to be able to show that it covers a distinct set of ideological ideas and beliefs. In the section after we provide a descriptive account of the substance of Berlusconi’s ideas. In the third section we assess the extent to which they meet the criteria laid down in the section below and therefore amount to an ideology.

Criteria of Berlusconismo Few politicians, even among the most influential, have the suffix ‘-ism’ added to their names. No one has ever spoken of ‘Mitterandism’, ‘de Gasperism’ or ‘Churchillism’. People do speak of ‘Berlusconismo’, however – as they spoke of ‘Thatcherism’ and ‘Reaganism’ before the entrepreneur’s rise. The reason (in the case of Thatcher and Reagan at least) appears to be that these were politicians



Berlusconi’s political message39

driven not simply by practical considerations but by a political ‘project’ (Hall, 2011: 10), one focused not just on a set of policies but on the attempt to alter, ­society-wide, modes of organisation, thought and value. It is not surprising, then, that when one looks for definitions of what ‘Reaganism’, ‘Thatcherism’ and so on are, one often encounters suggestions that couch them in terms of ‘ideology’, ‘principles’, ‘statements or positions’, ‘a set of constructs’, ‘values’, ‘ideas’, ‘movements of thought’, ‘world views’, ‘outlooks’, ‘stances’, ‘interpretations’, ‘understandings’ and so forth; for the suffix is typically used to denote sets of general beliefs, usually of a normative kind, that is, judgements of what is and of what ought to be and be done. Looking at the etymology, one finds that the suffix has for long often been used as a noun to denote something as specific as an ideology (as in socialism, feminism, pacifism and so on); and so it is not surprising, again – given that the term ‘ideology’ is itself often used in a pejorative sense – to find that when ‘-ism’ is used thus, the intention of the speaker is often critical. For instance, those who have propounded the virtues of a conservative approach to politics (or, more concisely, but paradoxically, the virtues of ‘conservatism’) have traditionally wanted to assert that they, unlike their liberal and socialist opponents, have, by the very nature of the conservative outlook, been free of pernicious ‘isms’. Yet terms such as Berlusconismo, Thatcherism, Reaganism and so forth are used not just to denote an ideology, but also to denote ‘patterns of action’, ‘political projects’, ‘strategies’, ‘movements’ informed and driven by the associated ideologies. Indeed in their book on Thatcherism, Jessop et al. argue that four broad approaches stand out, namely, Thatcherism as her ‘personal qualities’, as a ‘style of political leadership’, as ‘the policies pursued by the Conservative Party under Thatcher’ and as ‘the changing strategic line of the Conservative Party as organized under the Thatcher leadership’ (1988: 5). However, actions of whatever kind are performed for reasons – implying the existence of desires and beliefs – and we cannot describe an action without thereby committing ourselves to the existence of the desires and beliefs that make it the action that it is (Rosenberg, 1988: 21). So Berlusconismo, if it exists, must exist as a distinctive set of attitudes and beliefs. On the other hand, attitudes and beliefs can only be discerned by observing actions (including speeches and writings) of some kind: we have no means of accessing them that is ‘direct’ in any sense. The action does not have to be tied to any consciously pursued leadership style, policy project or political strategy: conceivably it could reflect an absence or even a rejection of such ambitions. What it does have to reflect, if we are to take it as evidence of the existence of Berlusconismo, is ideas distinctive enough to require usage of the term itself – this because the ideas’ distinctiveness is not adequately captured by alternative, already available terms (such as ‘liberalism’, ‘populism’ or whatever other term might have seemed appropriate). In such circumstances, we might again describe Berlusconismo, assuming it exists, as an ideology (and by analogy, Reaganism, Thatcherism and so on as alternative ideologies); for whatever else it is, an ideology is an ensemble of ideas and beliefs that underpins, justifies, provides the rationale for, lines of political

40

Emergence

action: it ‘unites a party or other group for effective participation in political life’ (Friedrich, 1963: 89), and does so because it has an ‘ethical, evaluative component’ (Sainsbury, 1980: 8): that is, it ‘points a moral’ (Plamenatz, 1970: 75–6). Those ideas and beliefs that qualify as ‘ideological’ have this effect because they are grounded in concepts which, as Adams (1989: 39) points out, ‘appear to combine both descriptive and evaluative elements, and this rather odd duality has logical consequences’. Consider the concept of a weed. ‘Within gardening, weeds are bad things: they are what gardeners pull up. What counts as a weed is relative to what any gardener wants to grow’ (Adams, 1989: 40). The concept is clearly descriptive, for the limits set by the concept of a plant show that there are actually things in the world to which the term can refer according to public criteria for its application; but it is also evaluative, as within these limits it is non-referential – as is shown by the case of a person who refuses to count anything as a weed and is happy to let anything grow. Other concepts falling into this category include ‘terrorist’, ‘murder’, ‘hooligan’, ‘democracy’, ‘exploitation’, ‘slave labour’ and so on. When they are embedded in propositions about the world, the propositions necessarily have prescriptive implications – they point a moral – because of our understanding of the concepts as pointing to things that are either good or bad. For example, the assertion that ‘high income tax makes people less willing to work hard’ implies, since ‘hard work’ is something good, that, all else being equal, one must oppose that which diminishes it, i.e. high income tax. That the assertion implies this necessarily, and not just in the subjective estimation of the person uttering it, arises from the fact that evaluative terms such as ‘hard work’ are terms upon whose meaning or significance all users of the English language agree as a condition of being able to communicate with each other: ‘all users of English must agree that atrocity is something bad, that people of good will is something favourable, and so on, if they are to communicate’ (Osgood, Saporta and Nunnally, 1956: 47). To take another example, consider the slogan, ‘Abortion is murder!’ That this necessarily carries the implication that abortion must be opposed is apparent when one reflects on what the term ‘murder’ actually means. In ordinary usage it refers to a kind of killing – and therefore has a descriptive content, for there are public criteria for the application of the term ‘killing’. But it also has an evaluative component, for murder is precisely wrongful or unjustified killing. It is illogical to ask whether murder is something good or bad because it is bad by definition. We might disagree on what is to count as murder but we cannot disagree on its badness, otherwise, in using it in a conversation with each other, neither of us would know what the other meant. The necessary implication of the slogan, ‘Abortion is murder!’ is thus a consequence of the inherent badness of the term ‘murder’ together with the fact that to argue over whether one should oppose badness and support goodness would simply be logically incoherent. In short, then, ideology consists of descriptive and explanatory beliefs that have normative implications for action, where the implications arise from the fact that there are evaluations implicit in the beliefs in question. It is because of



Berlusconi’s political message41

this that ideologies point morals, are spurs to action and tend to be held with passion and commitment. And it is because of this that ideological disputes tend to be intractable; for in a very real sense, ideological disputants live in completely different worlds: The Liberal enters the factory of a commercial firm and sees factory owner and workers in an economic relationship freely entered into in a free market and so he is seeing the good society in action; while the Marxist observing the same situation sees exploitation and dehumanization. Their disagreement is not of the sort that can be settled; there is simply no procedure for settling which is right; their views are irreconcilable and incommensurable. To hold a view like this is not a matter of proof or evidence. You either see the world that way or you do not. (Adams, 1989: 91)

Finally, to talk about ‘an ideology’ is to imply that the ideas and beliefs of which it consists hang together in some way, that they constitute a system. The notion of belief system implies that a change in one element will result in a change elsewhere in the system, though there are several possible compensatory changes that could actually take place. ‘In such an instance, the element more likely to change is defined as less central to the belief system than the element that, so to speak, has its stability ensured by the change in the first element’ (Converse, 1964: 208). Central, in this sense, to a fully developed ideal-typical ideology, even if only implicitly, will be a conception of human nature, for the essence of ideological concepts is that they fuse the evaluative and the descriptive, and, whatever else they might be, values have to do with what is good or bad for humanity as such. They therefore ‘stem directly from that ideology’s account of essential human nature’ (Adams, 1989: 98). If ‘freedom’ or ‘equality’, for example, are values, it is because human beings cannot express their essential humanity without them – and this makes us aware that implicit in the ideology’s conception of human nature is a conception of the ‘Good Society’, for the good society by definition is nothing other than the society which embodies the values inherent in the account of human nature: if humans require ‘freedom’ in order to flourish, the good society is one characterised by freedom etc. If ideologies are explanatory as well as descriptive systems of belief, then they must explain why the present world fulfils or falls short of the ideal. They will therefore contain an account of the present state of the world and how we might realise the ideal world. The whole system is bound together by the evaluative content of ideology: the good society is the social expression of the values inherent in the ideology’s description of essential human nature, while these same values also determine the nature of the account of the present world that is offered. ‘This is because the world as evaluated, and what is explained is what is deemed significant in terms of the values of the ideology and its version of ideological man’ (Adams, 1989: 101). Finally, it is because the value content of an ideology allows one to infer prescriptions that the ideology also contains an account of how to achieve the ideal world. To summarise then, to talk of Berlusconismo is willingly or unwillingly to

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Emergence

imply the existence of ideas and beliefs that are spurs to political action (and that therefore inform, justify and render comprehensible such action) and that do so because of their ideological quality. That is, they are ideas and beliefs grounded in concepts both descriptive and evaluative as a result of which they have prescriptive implications. They are components of an ideology to the extent that they constitute a belief system providing an explicit or implicit account of human nature, the present state of affairs, the ideal state of affairs, and how to achieve the ideal state. The fact that when in office Berlusconi seemed, as we shall see in later chapters, to be uninterested in any kind of public policy agenda that was not directly related to his private commercial interests or his immediate-term popularity points away from the existence of an ideology that can be called Berlusconismo; and even those sympathetic to the entrepreneur have been reluctant to go as far as to ascribe to him anything resembling an ‘ideology’ (not surprisingly, given the term’s negative connotations). For example, Sandro Bondi, culture minister in the fourth Berlusconi government, wrote in a letter to la Repubblica, in September 2008, that ‘so-called “berlusconismo”’ had represented and continued to represent ‘the greatest attempt at modernisation of the economic and political structures of the country, not on the basis of an ideology, but on the basis of a genuinely liberal and reform-minded set of values…’ Whether Berlusconi’s friends are right or wrong in denying the status of a distinctive ideology to his ideas depends on the substance of the ideas in question.

Berlusconi’s ideas The most high-profile of the themes associated with Berlusconi and his political action have been widely discussed, and are usually accounted for, not surprisingly, in terms of their role in advancing his interests. One of these is anti-­communism, which figured highly in the 26 January 1994 speech with which he made his debut as a politician, and became a leitmotif of speeches and pronouncements from then on. In the January 1994 speech it appears as the first, indeed the principal reason that he gives for his decision to take to the field – which is clearly portrayed in his speech as a decision driven by an urgent need to save the country from the left. At that time, he was seeking to bring together parties in an alliance that seemed essential if a centre-left victory in the general election, portended by the outcome of the local elections the previous autumn, was to be avoided. Insistence on the anticommunist theme would polarise the political conflict in the run-up to the 1994 election and thus weaken the capacity of the small centre forces, unaligned with left or right coalitions, to attract party allies or the voters left orphaned by the disintegration of the traditional moderate parties of government. Anti-communism reflected the entrepreneur’s awareness that taking to the field to prevent a left-wing victory was functional for the protection and pursuit of his business interests. It also evoked a long-standing and deeply rooted theme in Italian electoral politics which, though it seemed quaint five years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, nevertheless had considerable resonance with Italian voters.



Berlusconi’s political message43

A second widely discussed theme is the populist quality of Berlusconi’s message, a quality which seems to have first emerged with force shortly after he lost office, right at the end of 1994, thanks to the defection of the Northern League, and which led the president to appoint a new government under a new leader. According to Berlusconi, the president’s actions were illegitimate because they ignored the fact that just a few months previously his position as prime minister had been decreed by the voters, who were therefore the only ones authorised to remove him from power, from which it followed that the only legitimate response to the collapse of his government was fresh elections. Famously, in the run-up to the 2001 elections he claimed that he would be a ‘worker premier’ not a ‘prima ballerina’ like his centre-left predecessors (Marroni, 2001). Later, in 2003, claiming to be a victim of judicial persecution, he argued that ‘The government is of the people and those who represent it, not those who have won a public competition, have donned legal robes and have a duty to do no more than apply the law’ (quoted by Travaglio, 2010: 228). In the run-up to the 2006 election he gave, at a meeting of the employers’ organisation Confindustria, a rabble-rousing speech which, by enabling him to cut an anti-establishment profile, seemed designed to extol, by implication, the virtues of the small employer. In short, the entrepreneur’s pronouncements over the years have expressed all the classic ingredients of a populist outlook, here understood as the tendency of leaders to claim an exclusive affinity with ‘ordinary people’ and their outlooks, to be critical of established elites and to be impatient with democratic constraints, formal rules and constitutional checks and balances that would obstruct their ‘mission’ on behalf of the common good. A third theme that has frequently been associated with Berlusconi and his political messages is liberalism, which could in many ways be seen as a natural concomitant of his populist outlook: seeing himself as an ‘outsider’, an opponent of the professional politicians, one whose entrepreneurial experience would enable him to do for Italy what he had done for himself, he found that the passage from opposing the representatives of oppressive state institutions to opposing the public sector and public intervention generally was seamless. The Italy he wanted, he said in the run-up to the 1994 general election, was An Italy with lower taxes and less bureaucracy, an Italy that gives more space to those who take on the risks of enterprise, to those who assume the responsibilities of providing jobs and creating wealth: we want an Italy, in short, that gives greater space to private initiative and less to the state: an Italy with more emphasis on the private, less on the state. (Berlusconi, 2000: 24)

Already well established in the Anglo-Saxon democracies at this time, the theme had traditionally had relatively little space in Italian politics largely because ideological liberals had had, thanks to perceptions of the communist threat, mostly to shelter under the Christian Democratic umbrella. Ideological liberalism was associated with industrialists and the haute bourgeoisie with the result that parties having a real commitment to liberal principles – the Partito Repubblicano

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Emergence

Italiano (Republican Party, PRI) and most obviously the Partito Liberale Italiano (Liberal Party, PLI) – had remained small and with limited followings. Berlusconi understood that he had much to gain by offering himself as the Italian spokesperson for what by the early 1990s had become the global mainstream: the growth of the Northern League (Lega Nord, LN) had indicated that there was political potential in championing liberal themes of individualism, the market and entrepreneurship, but the League’s appeal was limited by its simultaneous emphasis on northern autonomy with its exclusionary overtones (Ignazi, 2014: 60–1). Now that moderate voters likely to be attracted by these themes had been orphaned by the traditional parties’ collapse, there was an opportunity to give liberalism a new lease of life in Italy through the construction of a new kind of party – Forza Italia – that could go beyond the limits of the traditional liberal parties, fully exploiting, in the manner in which Berlusconi excelled, the potential offered by the mediatisation and personalisation of politics. Fourth, Berlusconi’s messages have been said to reflect a commitment to Christian Democratic values and outlooks, something that was especially in evidence following the 1996 elections when it was apparent that Forza Italia – no longer able to base its appeal on a claim to novelty – was facing electoral difficulties whose resolution required organisational overhaul and the creation of a mass membership, and therefore the creation of a catch-all profile. The first national congress of Forza Italia – held in April 1998 to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the famous ‘Christ-versus-Communism’ election of 1948 – was designed to put the seal on the process of organisational and ideological overhaul. Opening the congress, Berlusconi claimed that his party stood for the same values – democracy, freedom and the West – as the parties which in 1948 had defeated the Socialist-Communist Popular Front. His party was, he said, a party of the centre – a party that was liberal but not of an elite, on the contrary, a liberal democratic party of ordinary people; a Catholic but not a confessional party; a non-religious, but not an intolerant anti-religious party; a national party but not one seeking a national-level concentration of power … the party of the people, the party of sensible people, the people of good will, the party of those Italians who carry in their hearts a great love for others and their country, the party of those Italians who love freedom. (Berlusconi, 2000: 41)

Finally, if, as mentioned, Berlusconi asserted an affinity with ordinary people whose interests he claimed to defend against a rapacious state and professional politicians, then a central component of his message, from the start, was his supposedly extraordinary personal qualities whose portrayal, as Giuliana Parotto (2007) has argued, has often been surrounded by a heavy religious symbolism. One of the most memorable episodes of the campaign leading up to the election of 2001 was the delivery, to all Italian households, of a glossy pamphlet, Una storia italiana, on behalf of the Casa delle libertà. In the pamphlet, Berlusconi’s decision to go into politics is described not as a choice but as a response to a call,



Berlusconi’s political message45

a personal sacrifice the entrepreneur makes in response to the moral obligation to lend his skills to the cause of saving the country from chaos. If turning one’s back on a life of material comfort for the heroic sacrifices of public engagement has the qualities of a religious conversion, then as converts are subject to public ridicule and to persecution, Berlusconi’s repeated claims to be the victim of a judicial witch-hunt help to reinforce the idea of the entrepreneur as the misunderstood saviour. Recalling chapter 4 of Matthew’s Gospel, Una storia italiana describes Berlusconi’s period in opposition after 1994 as ‘the crossing of the desert’, where the electoral challenges of the period are defined, in analogy with the temptations placed in the way of Christ, as ‘tests’ (prove elettorali). Most famous and explicit of all is the entrepreneur’s declaration in November 1994 that one who is elected by the people is, in effect, ‘the Lord’s anointed’. Berlusconi clearly understood that in the then novel context of party-system bipolarity where coalition leaders were candidate premiers, where old-established ideologies were on the wane and antipolitical sentiments growing, there was more potential in attempting to sell the idea that the answer to the country’s problems lay in putting a new kind of person in office, rather than in a radically new programme. Against this background, Berlusconismo seems an elusive phenomenon because the various themes associated with the entrepreneur’s messages have not been consistently acted upon and because there are tensions within and between them. We will explore Berlusconi’s legislative record in more detail in chapter 9; however, early expectations generated by pronouncements suggesting commitment to a liberal ideology have been largely disappointed. As the Economist (2011) complained, a few months before the entrepreneur was forced from office in 2011: Even Mr Berlusconi has occasionally managed to pass some liberalising measures in between battling the courts: back in 2003 the Biagi labour-market law cut red tape at the bottom, boosting employment, and many economists have praised Italy’s pension reforms. He might have done much more had he used his vast power and popularity to do something other than protect his own interests.

But more than mere indolence was involved, as Berlusconi has on more than one occasion opposed measures that would have contributed to the shrinkage, which he professed to believe in, in the role of the state. A classic example came during the period of the Prodi government between 2006 and 2008. By then the centre-left parties, like their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, had long lost any kind of cultural hegemony. Consequently, they sought to continue with the programme of reform they had initiated in the 1990s under the international pressure of the forces of neoliberalism and neo-conservatism. Famously, the programme included a reform, alongside a range of similar measures, of the legislation governing the provision of taxi services, whose public regulation is – not only in Italy – notoriously driven less by the interests of passengers and citizens generally than by the desire of existing taxi-drivers to protect positions of privilege. Consequently, when proposals were put forward to increase the number of licences available, the opposition of drivers was incandescent and at

46

Emergence

times illegal (Boitani, 2008: 202). Berlusconi’s reaction was to support the drivers, suggesting, through his spokesperson Giampiero Cantoni, that Pierluigi Bersani, the minister seeking to promote the reform, wanted to silence the protesters who, when Berlusconi had been in government, would have had ‘the right to be masters of their own cities’ and to voice their protest in the public squares (la Repubblica, 2006). Berlusconi was probably motived by a combination of things: an awareness that fomenting the drivers’ protest would add to a climate of public dissatisfaction with a government whose hold on power was already very tenuous thanks to its internal divisions and small majority; his awareness that the self-employed and small business people were a very important reservoir of support for his party; his awareness that these categories in particular, cynical and lacking confidence in the state and public institutions as they were, had a very deep-rooted tradition – through their pressure groups and the politics of clientelism – of seeking and expecting state intervention and protection whenever it seemed advantageous to them. So Berlusconismo is difficult to pin down because the entrepreneur’s actions have not always reflected his words. It is difficult to pin down too because even at the level of words alone there have been inconsistencies. If he could say, as he did during the 1994 election campaign, that he was inspired by the principles of freedom in all of its multiple and vital forms – ‘freedom of thought and opinion; freedom of expression; freedom of worship …; freedom of association … freedom of enterprise … freedom of markets regulated according to certain, transparent and impartial laws’ (Berlusconi, 2000: 21) – then his announcement at Forza Italia’s first congress – that the summons he had famously received in the autumn of 1994 while chairing an international conference amounted to attempted obstruction of the government in the exercise of its duties (Berlusconi, 2000: 50–1) – seems discordant; for a liberal is one who believes that checks and balances and the division of powers are the sine qua non of the fundamental freedoms he had outlined on the earlier occasion. The importance he has attributed in speeches over the years to the importance of love – his belief in the love and respect owed ‘first and foremost to the sick, to children, to the old, to the marginalised’ (Berlusconi, 2000: 160) has, Parotto has argued, served ‘to underline the personal character of leadership, whose central element is the lack of a clear separation of the public and private spheres’ (2007: 35). For the genuine liberal, separation of the public and private is – again – the sine qua non of the fundamental freedoms Berlusconi claimed in 1994 to believe in. Finally, Berlusconismo is difficult to pin down because, aside from the discrepancies between action and words and the seeming lack of complete commitment to given positions (e.g. liberalism), there are tensions between the positions the entrepreneur expresses. For example it is unlikely that a catch-all strategy, and a liberal or indeed any other principled political project, can be pursued together without the demands of the one proving, sooner or later, to be incompatible with the demands of the other; for whereas the former demands ideological flexibility, the latter demands rigidity. A genuinely liberal approach to politics is one that respects the rights of all contenders for office, asking only that they reflect the



Berlusconi’s political message47

same attitude; so it sits uneasily with Berlusconi’s anti-communist rhetoric and his insistent denial of the democratic credentials of his centre-left opponents. One might then be tempted to conclude that what is commonly referred to as Berlusconismo is in fact insufficiently coherent to merit the term. Alternatively, one might be drawn to the view that incoherence is precisely what one would expect, since Berlusconismo represents a rejection of commitments – because it is a variant of the nihilism often said to be characteristic of postmodernity (Woodward, 2002) – or else indifference to them – because it is nothing other than a belief in the powers of salvation of the man himself – in which case it implicitly suggests that coherent commitments are superfluous. An alternative suggestion – that there is coherence in Berlusconismo and that it represents a fully fledged ideology – is outlined below.

Berlusconismo as an ideology We have argued that there are three criteria that have to be fulfilled if the term Berlusconismo is to be more than just a figure of speech: there has to be a set of ideas sufficiently distinct that their essence cannot be adequately captured by alternative, already existing terms; they have to be ideological in nature; and they have to constitute a belief system. The suggestion that the first criterion is met can be substantiated by reference to the work of Giovanni Orsina, who argues that the Berlusconi phenomenon cannot be fully understood unless one is willing to take seriously the idea of Berlusconismo as a coherent ideology. The quality of Orsina’s argument (2013: ch. 3) is such that it deserves to be described at length. For Berlusconi, ordinary Italian citizens are enterprising, hard-working and good: If today we enjoy prosperity, then it is due to the fact that millions and millions of Italians continue to do their duty every day, every morning, leaving their homes for their schools, factories and offices, and it is precisely to them that we owe our prosperity and the freedom that we have hitherto enjoyed. (Berlusconi, 2000: 24–5)

Civil society is therefore the fount of all virtue; and in assuming such a position Berlusconi stands on its head a view that Italy’s cultural and political elites had long taken for granted, namely, that Italian society was backward and defective and required reforming at the hands of a modernising elite if the country was to gain full membership of the club of the advanced nations. Berlusconi is as aware as anyone of Italy’s problems: of the extent of tax evasion, organised crime and so on. But if the elites attribute such problems to cynicism and a lack of trust of citizens in the public authorities and the institutions of the state, for Berlusconi the main cause is precisely the opposite, a lack of trust of the state in its citizens: the tax rates set by the revenue authorities, who don’t trust the taxpayer, are established on the assumption that taxpayers, and especially the self-employed,

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Emergence declare only half their income. And so, starting from this position of mistrust, what does the state do? It has imposed absurdly high rates thinking: I’ll tax you twice as heavily because you declare only half of what you earn. (Berlusconi, 2000: 223)

Italy’s problems, then, are to be attributed not to civil society but to its political elites: if the number of tourists coming to Italy goes down, while in France and Spain it goes up, then, since ‘it cannot be the case that Italian tour operators are less capable, less willing to work, less passionate, less enthusiastic than their Spanish counterparts’, the cause must undoubtedly be sought in the deficiencies of the country’s political leadership (quoted by Orsina, 2013: 102). The solution to the problem lies in adapting the state to civil society, not the other way round, and it is a threefold one: first, the passage of laws that respect ordinary citizens by reducing the scope of state intervention and by being less chaotic, confusing, irrational and oppressive. Then citizens will trust the authorities, and illegality will decline, because ordinary people are fundamentally virtuous: ‘when the state asks you to do something you feel is right, then you are the first to want to be at peace with the state and with your conscience’ (Berlusconi, 2000: 149–50). Second, there needs to be a new way of doing politics, one focused less on ideological divisions and more on concrete solutions to specific problems; one couched in a language that ordinary people can understand; one that attempts to resolve social conflicts rather than aggravate them; for underneath the artificial ideological divisions of politics there is a natural human solidarity – an idea that had a long time previously been expressed in the famous work of Giovannino Guareschi (Orsina, 2013: 109).2 Third, a new relationship between the state and citizens, and a new way of doing politics, requires the creation of a new political elite which must be drawn directly from civil society so that the place of professional politicians, capable of producing only incomprehensible jargon, can be taken by those with real expertise, able to bring to the public sector the managerial efficiencies of the private; so that a civil society for so long oppressed by the public and political apparatus can throw off the yoke, fight back and instead take over the apparatus (Orsina, 2013: 109). Berlusconi’s anti-communism follows naturally from this outlook and the primacy it accords to civil society; for the Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party), and by extension its successors, have since the war been the most significant representatives of precisely the historic perspective that Berlusconi wishes to reverse, namely the belief in the capacity of an enlightened political elite, with the right political programme, to overcome the shortcomings of Italian society to make an efficient, modern democracy. Traditionally, the Italian Communists saw themselves as the representatives of disciplined commitment, public service and efficiency in politics, holding up the city councils they controlled, such as Bologna, as models of what they could achieve.3 And implicit in their anti-Fascism, therefore, was what could easily be perceived as an elitist and hostile view of civil society; it was hardly possible to believe that a nation that had lived with and supported a Fascist regime for twenty years was not in need of a makeover. Given his



Berlusconi’s political message49

belief that Italian society was, on the contrary, fundamentally healthy, Berlusconi was bound to deny that there was anything positive in the Communists and their successors: ‘We do not recognise any moral superiority in you. You are not at all the different, the healthy, the better part of the country as you seek to have us believe’ (Berlusconi, 2000: 96). And since the end of communism internationally did not mean that communists or their successors had ceased to be a force in Italian politics, his anti-communism was a natural corollary. His belief in the need of a new political elite drawn from civil society reflected a theme with deep roots in Italian history, namely the platonic one that in attempts to address anxieties about the state of the nation, what counted was who governed rather than how government was to be organised, regulated and limited. Consequently, a second corollary of Berlusconi’s outlook on society and the state is his indifference to issues of institutional reform, discussed in more detail in chapters 9 and 10, as well as his hostility to institutional checks and balances. By standing in opposition to political conflict and ideological divisions, the emphasis on the virtues of civil society and the human values binding it paradoxically helped to heighten and polarise political conflict in the bipolar context of the 1990s onwards; for the belief that what was required was a new political elite, drawn from a civil society that was the fount of all virtue, implied that the new elite would be likewise exclusively virtuous, which left little space for legitimate political disagreement and competition. It was for this reason then that, despite his oft-repeated claim to represent a break with the politics of discord and conflict, the effect of his decision to enter politics as the leader of one of the two coalitions competing for government was precisely to heighten division and conflict in the Italian political system. Conceived in these terms, Berlusconi’s message does, we believe, have sufficient coherence and distinctiveness to justify the term Berlusconismo. It is, as Orsina (2013: 125) suggests, an amalgam of liberalism and populism without being fully wedded to either, for the two are contradictory. It is liberal in the primacy it accords to civil society and to its capacity to endow itself with the institutions and political arrangements that will best meet its needs, but it is anti-liberal in its attitude to political competition (its tendency to demonise its opponents) and in its lack of tolerance of institutional checks and balances. It is populist in its juxtaposition of a good people and bad elites and therefore in its hostility to limits on the freedom of action of the people’s elected representative, but it has not seriously pursued a project of regime change designed to remove those limits. Berlusconismo is clearly ideological in the sense in which we have defined the term, being founded on descriptive and explanatory beliefs with normative implications for action. Consider, for example, how Berlusconi’s 1998 description of the values of civil society has an evaluative dimension that clearly points a moral (in this case that his listeners should vote for his party): I salute in those of you here today, among our eight million voters, the people of freedom, the people who, on 18 April 1948, chose democracy and the values of

50

Emergence the West; … the industrious and tenacious people who, from the ashes of the war were able to create, out of a country that was ruined and underdeveloped, one of the most prosperous countries in the world; the people who are a majority in Italy and who, on 27 March 1994, found themselves drawn to Forza Italia thanks to the same values as those of 1948: the principles in which we too believe and which are the foundation of our civic and political engagement; principles that are not the complicated ideological abstractions of political analysts and chancers, but the simple and basic values of good citizens, values that are the foundations of all the great western democracies. (quoted by Orsina, 2013: 107–8)

Finally, Berlusconismo as described has sufficient coherence to meet our third criterion, that is, to qualify as a belief system. It starts from a view that the nature of humanity – Italian citizens in this case – is fundamentally generous and honourable, but that this essential nature is unable to flourish thanks to an oppressive state and sterile ideological conflicts on the part of politicians pursuing misguided attempts to improve a citizenry which is already noble and upright. The Good Society is therefore one that is governed by the ‘friendly state’ (stato amico) at the service of citizens (Berlusconi, 2000: 38–9), in which politics stimulates and supports, rather than guiding or substituting, the spontaneous activities of civil society; and it is achieved when the political class is drawn directly from appropriately qualified individuals, from civil society, able to lend their skills to the potentially noble activity of politics. As an ideological belief system, Berlusconismo, then, has all four of the features we earlier suggested as the fundamental characteristics of such systems: a diagnosis of the essential nature of humanity; of the nature of the Good Society; of the ills of the present society; and of how we get from the present to the Good Society.

Conclusion If we were forced to choose a single word to characterise the nature of Berlusconismo as an ideology, then the word would be ‘nihilism’ – in the sense of a rejection of the belief that knowledge is possible, that there exist necessary rules, norms and laws accessible and communicable by a political and intellectual elite. Berlusconismo is, in that sense, sceptical and anti-intellectual. What counts, when it comes to settling political issues and governing, is having people with the necessary expertise – Berlusconi himself – to be able to resolve specific problems in the here and now. The great danger inherent in nihilistic outlooks is that by implying that existence is without meaning, and therefore pointless, they give rise to a mood of despair – hence the constant emphasis Berlusconi famously places – especially when speaking to his followers – on the importance of optimism.4 It is as if he subscribes to the view that we live in a postmodern age in which there is no metanarrative that can explain society; in which history is no more; in which all we have is the present moment. Under these circumstances, all we can do is to place our trust in the redeeming abilities of a person with special qualities – Berlusconi. However, once we relinquish the fruitless search for secure



Berlusconi’s political message51

f­oundations and sure truths, then, instead of falling into despair, we can – if we choose – confront life with an attitude of relaxed and joyous affirmation. Doing so in the face of foundationlessness, however, requires a strong and cheerful ­temperament – and therefore, by implication, a person with Berlusconi’s extraordinary abilities, a man whose wisecracks and apparent ‘gaffes’ affirm that politics is not to be taken seriously; that politicians are ultimately no different, and no better than, the ordinary people they are supposed to represent; that the ordinary citizen, by implication, is in no sense inferior. Ultimately, therefore, perhaps what explains Berlusconi’s political success is that he has been driven by an ideology that has given him the capacity to make Italians feel good about themselves. All countries’ citizens see their societies, to one degree or another, in one respect or another, as ‘exceptional’. What has historically distinguished Italian conceptions of their exceptionality has been its negative quality – thus providing the basis for the strength of the post-war parties with their projects for reform and societal improvement. Berlusconi’s opportunity came with the mounting popular dissatisfaction with the leadership of these parties and with their disintegration and the party-system transformation that was the result; for he offered reassurance in an age of uncertainty while telling Italians that they were fine as they were. How did the disintegration of the traditional parties come about? And what was its role in making possible Berlusconi’s emergence as a front-line politician? These are the questions with which we begin the chapter that follows, tracing the second phase of his career, from 1994 to his election victory in 2001.

Notes 1 For example, Norberto Bobbio’s (2008) book is subtitled Scritti sul berluconismo; Piero Ignazi (2014) subtitles his book La parabola del Berlusconismo; Giovanni Orsina (2013) entitles his book Il berlusconismo nella storia d’Italia. 2 In the 1950s and the early 1960s Guareschi published a series of short stories, subsequently made into films, whose central characters were the hot-headed Don Camillo, a priest, and the equally hot-headed Peppone, the Communist mayor of a small town in northern Italy. What emerges very strongly from the stories is that though the two are constantly squabbling, and though their public roles put them at odds with each other, they both have an interest in the well-being of the town, grudgingly admire each other, and show their goodness and generosity by working side by side with each other in hard times. 3 ‘And when they ask us what we would do, what path we would take if we dominated the whole of Italy, we modestly give the example of what our party has managed to do here’ (P. Togliatti, from a speech given during the eighth Provincial Congress of the PCI in Bologna, 1956, quoted by Bellini (1990: 109)). 4 ‘I once invented a slogan: you must always have the sun in your pocket and take it out, at the right moment, in order to donate it, with a smile, to all the people you come in contact with, first and foremost to your loved ones, to your family, to those who work with you. This is a rule for living, a rule of generosity which, if you learn to carry it around within you, will enable you to achieve great things with other people’ (speech given to the national congress of the Forza Italia youth, 11 December 1999).

Part II

Berlusconi the politician

3

Forza Italia and national politics, 1994–2001

Fundamental to Berlusconi’s political career were the sweeping changes that overtook the party system at the beginning of the 1990s, without which his emergence as a successful front-line politician would not have been possible, at least not in the form it took. So we have to spend some time understanding these changes and the underlying forces that drove them. We then consider what is likely to have driven Berlusconi to join the political fray; why he won the election of 1994, and why his first experience of government was so short lived. From there we proceed to describe how, in the years of opposition between 1995 and 2001, he was able to protect his commercial interests thanks to help from the parties of the centre left, before considering the election campaign that brought him to the height of his political dominance.

Party-system changes, 1989–94 The party-system changes amounted to an actual transformation of the party system, in the sense that most of the major parties disintegrated to be replaced by new ones, or else underwent fundamental changes of identity and name – while the dynamics of party competition also changed. The process was triggered by the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. What this did was to bring to a head the internal and external pressures operating in and on the Italian Communist Party. The internal pressures were the need to maintain the party’s Leninist heritage as the essential element of unity, the external pressures the need to move away from this heritage as a means of broadening the party’s appeal. The collapse of the Wall led the general secretary, Achille Occhetto, to decide to cut through this dilemma by proposing a transformation of the PCI into a non-communist party with a new name, the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS). This took place in 1991 but provoked a major party split.1 These events then had two further important consequences.

Effects of the end of communism The first was an acceleration of decline in the appeal of the traditional governing parties, especially the Christian Democrats. Their support rested essentially on three pillars: Catholicism, clientelism and anti-communism. The first of these

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had lost strength over the years as the social effects of the economic miracle had brought a decline in church attendance and in the willingness of those who ­continued to attend to follow the political instructions given more or less explicitly from the pulpit. Clientelism continued to bring votes, especially in the south, but because of its arbitrary quality and the cynicism it generated, it was an inherently fragile support. The appeal of anti-communism effectively lost its capacity to mobilise voters once the PCI changed its name. In the general election of 1992, the DC obtained 29.7 per cent of the votes, falling below 30 per cent for the first time in its history. The Socialists, meanwhile, saw their vote share decline by 5 per cent in terms of size (from 14.3 to 13.6 per cent). They were victims, like the DC, of mounting public dissatisfaction with the corruption and policy-making inefficiency bound up with the clientelism of the governing parties, which voters no longer felt compelled to support out of fear of communism. In the north, many votes now went to the Northern League, a populist party which mobilised support by linking dissatisfaction with the traditional parties to northerners’ sense of superiority towards the poorer south: while the parties’ tax and spending activities helped them retain their southern clientele following – so the argument went – these same activities, by perpetuating general inefficiency, damaged the enterprising north from where the bulk of the taxes came anyway. Therefore, what was needed was a set of (never precisely defined) ‘federal’ arrangements which, by limiting the functions of the state to the provision of defence, public order and a few other elements, would remove from the parties the basis on which they had been able to tax the north while giving little or nothing in return.

Tangentopoli and its effects The second important consequence of the end of the communist question was the explosion of the massive corruption scandal which became known as Tangentopoli (or ‘bribe city’). The term arose from the sense of ridicule towards the city where the scandal first broke: Italy’s commercial capital, Milan, since its inhabitants sought to distinguish themselves for their probity, having even dubbed the city il capitale morale (‘the moral city’). The scandal started on 17 February 1992 when judicial investigators looking into the affairs of the Socialist Mario Chiesa caught him in the act of taking a bribe from Luca Magni, the proprietor of a small firm who had agreed to pay 14 million lire in exchange for a 140 million lire cleaning contract at the old people’s home that Chiesa managed. Suspicions about Chiesa had first arisen after his former wife had gone to the authorities with details of his florid financial affairs while complaining about the alimony he was paying her. Magni, who had also ­complained – about the bribe he had been asked to pay – was persuaded to turn up to his meeting with Chiesa with a briefcase containing a listening device. A member of the Socialist Party faction headed by Paolo Pilittieri, who was the brother-in-law of Bettino Craxi, Chiesa assumed that he would be protected by his political contacts – as had happened in other cases (by, for instance, the provision of a seat in Parliament where the person in difficulty would be protected



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by parliamentary immunity) or by the informal relations of connivance between politicians and members of the judiciary involving the exchange of judicial for ­political favours. But a general election was due on 5 April. Chiesa had been caught with his fingers in the till and his party was frequently the object of media satire because of its shaky grasp of the principles of probity. Craxi therefore decided to abandon him to his fate, claiming that this was an isolated case and publicly labelling him un mariuolo (a little rascal). Faced with the evidence that his political career was in ruins, Chiesa in his turn decided to empty the sack. His revelations and those of the people he implicated brought to light the existence of a massive network of ‘mutually beneficial linkages’ (Waters, 1994: 170) between the political parties and powerful economic groups in the city – that is, corrupt party-funding arrangements that had become systemic – and the scandal soon spread to other cities as ever larger numbers were caught in the investigators’ nets. What seems to have happened is that public prosecutors created for suspects a kind of ‘prisoner’s dilemma’: held incommunicado on remand, suspects would be offered the choice of remaining in prison or else release if they confessed. Accomplices, knowing that they too would be picked up in the event of a confession but not knowing exactly how much had been revealed, thus had an incentive to tell ‘their side of the story’ as soon as possible, before the confessions of those in prison had gone ‘too far’. By the end of 1993 no fewer than 251 Members of Parliament were under judicial investigation, including four former prime ministers, five ex-party leaders and seven members of the cabinet. Ten suspects had killed themselves (Bull and Newell, 1995: 74; Nelken, 1996: 109; Newell, 2000: 56). Viewed like this, the Tangentopoli explosion was a chance event ultimately triggered by the complaints of Chiesa’s ex-wife; viewed from another perspective it was directly related to the end of communism. This political development had two impacts. The first was on judicial investigators themselves, in removing whatever justification there might once have been for being lenient towards the more dubious clientele practices of the governing class – for refraining, that is, from embarrassing the Communists’ opponents. In order to understand this point, one has in the first place to appreciate the significance of article 112 of the Constitution which stipulates that public prosecutors have an ‘obligation to institute criminal proceedings’. This means that they are obliged to look into all allegations of wrong-doing which come to their attention. If this appears to limit their discretion – in deference to the principle of equality before the law – it in fact increases it; for on the one hand, it is materially impossible for them to pursue with the same degree of alacrity every single allegation of which they might be aware: some judgement about credibility and therefore priorities is inescapable. On the other hand, the principle legitimises prosecutors’ exercise of discretion in investigating crimes they think may have been committed. Because of this, there had been a number of celebrated instances, prior to 1992, of prosecutors using their authority to pursue the powerful in corruption cases. However, precisely in order to avoid the risk of this happening, politicians as a category had long established informal relations with the judiciary, using its hierarchical organisation to curb – via marginalisation, transfer or the pressure of superiors more sensitive

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to ‘political needs’ – the activities of excessively zealous junior prosecutors. This then throws a spotlight on the second impact of communism’s collapse which, as we have said, loosened voters’ ties to the governing parties. For this reason, as the Tangentopoli scandal grew, investigators found that an enraged public was increasingly casting them in the role of heroes bringing to justice an entire political class whose downfall and humiliation ordinary citizens found frankly intoxicating. In such an atmosphere of public excitement caused by the sight of so many once untouchable figures at last getting their comeuppance, it was simply no longer possible for politicians to intervene in judicial investigations in the way they might have done in the past. The effects of Tangentopoli on the political parties were financial, organisational and electoral. The financial impact was straightforward. During the 1970s and 1980s the parties had become increasingly dependent on corrupt forms of funding while facing – thanks partly to the growing costs of politics associated with the international trends described in the Introduction – mounting accumulated debts. Therefore, by reducing the amounts available from illegal sources of finance to a trickle, the investigations pushed all the traditional parties fairly quickly towards bankruptcy. The organisational impact led to the parties’ virtual disintegration. The spread of corruption had itself considerably weakened the parties’ organisations by favouring the recruitment of individuals whose motives were venal while penalising policy and ideological commitments. The process was self-reinforcing – a gradual decline in the numbers of ideologically committed members tending to reduce the attractiveness of membership for those with similar ideological beliefs; a growth in the numbers of members whose motives were instrumental, tending to make membership more attractive for those of like mind – and weakened the parties organisationally by virtue of the concomitant decline in reserves of members’ loyalty and commitment. Hence, when Tangentopoli destroyed the basis for instrumental relationships by effectively cutting off the flow of resources that sustained them, it left the parties vulnerable to complete collapse. The sudden collapse of the parties is reflected in the dramatic decline in figures for party membership which, according to one estimate, went down from 3,804,000 in 1991 to 1,330,000 in 1993 when Tangentopoli was at its height (Follini, 1997: 250). The electoral impact was a haemorrhage of support in the voting booths from all the traditional parties of government. By the time of the municipal elections that took place in November 1993, the governing parties had become shadows of their former selves. The DC was on 10.7 per cent, the Socialists on 1.2 per cent and the remaining three parties – Republicans, Social Democrats and Liberals – on fractions of 1 per cent. Parties that had governed the country continuously since the war realised that they were undergoing a process of electoral meltdown.

Changes to the party system’s structure and dynamics If some of the party system’s major components were disintegrating, then meanwhile the structure and dynamics of the party system itself were changing. Again,



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being able to make sense of the underlying issues is crucial for an understanding of the opportunities created for Berlusconi’s political debut. The processes involved were twofold. First, the train of events set off by the PCI’s transformation undermined the basic assumptions that had governed both the main parties’ interactions and party–voter interactions since 1945. These assumptions had been that both the PCI and the parliamentary party furthest to the right, the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), were extremist, ‘anti-system’ parties and therefore ineligible for government. By posing as the main bulwark against a left and a right intensely feared by large numbers of voters, the centre-placed DC had been able to consolidate a position for itself as the system’s largest party and thus as the mainstay of all feasible governing coalitions. Consequently, it found itself permanently in office; and as none of the mainstream parties would have anything to do with the parties located furthest to the left and the right, elections never produced any of the left–right alternation in government of the kind seen in the UK and elsewhere. Rather, elections (using a system of proportional representation) would be called; the votes would be counted, and the parties would negotiate the formation of a coalition only at that point – the inclusion of the DC and the exclusion of the PCI and the MSI being constant features of such negotiations. All of this changed, because the 1991 transformation of the PCI and the consequent crisis of the DC also brought change to the MSI. Like the PCI, it too sought to overcome its pariah status through a process of moderation and the adoption of a new name, the National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale, AN), in January 1994; it was aware that the DC’s collapse provided it with an unprecedented opportunity to find allies in the construction of a new pole to oppose the left. Thus it was that in the months leading up to the election of 1994, the party system shed its former ‘polarised pluralist’ character (Sartori, 1976) to take on the basic characteristics of bipolarity, namely, the presence of formations, one occupying political space on the left, the other to the right, each presenting themselves to voters as competitors aiming to win overall majorities. In producing this outcome, the crises and changes undergone by the three parties were all bound up with one another. On the one hand, the collapse of the DC and its role as a dam against the opposing extremes removed the fundamental, and hitherto insurmountable, obstacle in the way of the MSI finding allies on the right. On the other hand, it was the PCI’s transformation which, by removing the anti-communism on which so much of the DC’s support rested, had hastened that party’s demise in the first place. The second process involved in the party system’s transformation was the electoral system change consequent upon the referendum of April 1993. This took place thanks to article 75 of the Constitution which allows referenda to be held on proposals to strike down laws when requested by half a million electors or five regional councils. The calling of the referendum was ultimately a consequence of public dissatisfaction with the political class, and debate on institutional reforms to improve the functioning of the political system that went back to the 1980s. What happened was that a cross-party group of intellectuals and others in public life, tired of the inconclusiveness of the parties’ discussions about reform, decided to impose reform on them by gathering the signatures necessary to request the

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holding of various referenda. One included a proposal to strike down part of one of the articles of the law governing Senate elections. The effect, if voters passed the proposal, would be to introduce the single-member simple plurality system for the distribution of 237 of the 315 seats. Since the Italian legislature is ‘perfectly bicameral’ (meaning that each chamber has identical legislative powers), the effect of this in turn would be to put the parties under pressure to introduce a similar system for the Chamber as well. This is precisely what happened: given the circumstances, the vote assumed the significance of a referendum on the political class as a whole and on a 77.1 per cent turnout the proposed change had the support of 82.7 per cent.

The emergence of the new coalitions We have already seen that the party system was losing its ‘polarised pluralist’ characteristics and instead becoming bipolar. The new electoral system meant that parties on the centre left and centre right would be forced to form electoral coalitions. That is, they would have to reach stand-down agreements with each other, uniting behind a common candidate in each single-member constituency. In that way they would maximise their collective chances of winning the coveted overall majority by minimising the possibility of parties further away on the political spectrum taking seats at their common expense. The municipal elections held in the autumn of 1993 revealed the significance of electoral coalitions, with the parties of the right losing large numbers of important mayoralties precisely because, unlike the parties of the left, their vote was split. By this time, with the new electoral law for Parliament in place, and a legislature that had been thoroughly delegitimised by Tangentopoli, it was clear that the president of the Republic would soon call a fresh general election. Thus it was that Berlusconi took to the field with a new political party, Forza Italia, to bring together the available forces of the centre right. The most significant of these were the MSI/AN and the Northern League. Neither would ally with the other: the former had its strongest support in the south and stood for nationalism and a strong centralised state; the latter was based in the north and stood for decentralisation and resistance to the centre. However, both would ally with Berlusconi: for the MSI, alliance offered the opportunity of legitimacy and escape from the political ghetto; for the Northern League, alliance offered the opportunity to avoid having to compete with Forza Italia, and thus to avoid possible damage at the hands of a force whose message of novelty and political renewal gave it a strong appeal to segments of the electoral market that the League had hitherto attracted. Consequently, two alliances were formed: one called the Alliance for Good Government, between FI and AN, in the south, where the League was non-existent; the other called the Freedom Alliance, between FI and the League, in the north, where AN fielded its own candidates but was uncompetitive. Ranged against the forces of the centre right at the election of 1994 was a coalition of the centre left, called the Progressive Alliance, bringing together the PDS, RC, the Greens, former Socialists and left-leaning former Christian Democrats.



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The party system that emerged in 1994, then, was fragmented but bipolar, and it retained these characteristics until 2013: the elections of 1996, 2001, 2006 and 2008 were all contests between shifting coalitions of centre left and centre right. Berlusconi’s party was, in the latter case, the fulcrum around which the coalition was built, Berlusconi himself its constant leader and candidate for the premiership.

Taking to the field Berlusconi’s decision to join the fray in 1994 was one that matured over time, as the events of 1992 and 1993 unfolded. With the outcome of the 1992 election and then the spread of Tangentopoli, it became increasingly clear that the politicians who had helped him to make his fortune were losing their grip on power and that if the forces of the right were not melded into an effective coalition a centreleft victory was almost certain. These developments and potential developments threatened Berlusconi’s economic interests in at least two ways. His commercial empire was in deep financial trouble in the early 1990s thanks to a series of diversifications which had increased turnover but reduced profits due to the losses suffered in the areas the entrepreneur had moved into. We have already seen this in the case of La Cinq. Not long after the start of this venture Berlusconi bought the major supermarket chain, La Standa, with a similar negative outcome. If his political contacts had given him access to sources of credit on terms that would not normally have been offered, now that he was in difficulties and under pressure from the banks, he needed political protection more than ever. Much of the money was owed to public banks like Comit, Credito Italiano (not then privatised) and the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, which had been in the Socialist Party’s orbit. So the prospect of a government led by the PDS, which had fought against the number of Fininvest’s channels as well as against the plethora of commercials they showed, was enough to prompt Berlusconi to act. (McCarthy, 1996: 137)

There was, in short, the risk that a centre-left victory at the upcoming general election might bring disadvantageous reform of the legge Mammì. Looking around at the individuals and groups potentially available to bring the centre-right forces together to prevent this happening, Berlusconi seems to have concluded at a certain point that none were available, while attempting to do it first hand offered the prospect of filling the gap left by his political protectors’ demise by taking their place. A related consideration seems to have been Berlusconi’s awareness that the so-called Mani pulite (‘clean hands’) investigations, which underlay Tangentopoli, were beginning to catch in their nets his own companies: in September 1992 DC senator Augusto Rezzonico told investigators about payments made by Edilnord in return for highways legislation that included provision for electronic sign-­posting designed to provide Fininvest with a lucrative contract. In 1993

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Berlusconi’s advisor, Gianni Letta, admitted to payments to the Social Democrats of around 70 million lire (Guarino, 2005: 300–2). Finally, Berlusconi’s decision will have been driven by his awareness that he had the personal skills and the resources (financial and material) to realise the project, one that had never been attempted before (Ginsborg, 2005: 62). Some consideration was given to the idea of linking the proposed new party to reformist politicians already popular, such as Mario Segni, who had spearheaded the movement leading to the successful electoral law referendum. Instead it was to be led by Berlusconi in person. Politics is all about performing, selling and communicating, which Berlusconi enjoyed and was accomplished at. He was no stranger to the art of the political speech, having made a number in the period leading up to approval of the legge Mammì. And he had the television stations at his disposal. In the months leading up to Berlusconi’s televised announcement, on 26 January, that he was taking to the field in order to save the country from the left and bring about ‘a new Italian miracle’, his advisors fell into two camps: ‘doves’ and ‘hawks’. The doves, including Fedele Confalonieri and Gianni Letta, were opposed to his entry into politics, convinced that it would bring unwanted attention to the details of Berlusconi’s business dealings and fearful that it might mean competing against potential allies who would therefore be unable to offer protection to the entrepreneur’s commercial empire. The hawks included people such as Bettino Craxi, convinced that Berlusconi would be able successfully to mobilise all those voters politically orphaned by the demise of the traditional governing parties. Evident signs that something was afoot alternated with repeated denials on the part of Berlusconi himself of any intention of taking to the fray. In that way, media speculation was kept on the boil, allowing Berlusconi and his nascent party to retain a high profile. The party’s name, Forza Italia, meaning ‘Come on Italy!’, was deliberately chosen to reflect the encouragement shouted from the terraces by football supporters cheering on the national team. Indeed, football analogies abounded in Berlusconi’s speeches as part of a strategy to mark a sharp contrast between him and professional politicians by conveying the idea that he was a man of the people. Despite that, there was little that was democratic about FI. The new party began life, in the summer of 1993, as the search for potential candidates on the part of trusted executives of Publitalia, using their contacts in the localities: chambers of commerce, the local media, sports clubs and so on. The candidate selection process was a bit like a Miss Italy contest (Guarino, 2005: 314). Aspirants were required to pay 5 million lire (€2,582), asked to attend a dinner with Berlusconi at his villa near Arcore, and the following day subjected to a series of rigorous tests including speaking on television. At the same time, Publitalia organisers were able to use their contacts with local business people to whom they sold advertising to set up Forza Italia supporters’ clubs all over the country. These provided financial resources – through the sale to members of kits and gadgets – and were conceived by Berlusconi as vehicles for the realisation of some of the themes set out in a document called ‘In Search of Good Government’. This had been drawn up by the political science professor Giuliano Urbani, who saw in the new electoral law an opportunity for the reassertion of the demands of civil society and new models of citizen participa-



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tion. However, although the clubs were sometimes involved in identifying potential candidates, they were in no sense the democratic base of the party. They were sometimes vehicles through which politicians from the disgraced old parties could reinvent themselves – and indeed large numbers of these people eventually found their way into Parliament as FI representatives, among whom Fininvest employees and Berlusconi’s personal advisors were also heavily represented. It is not at all surprising then that Michele Caccavalle, who eventually left the party in disgust, discovered, once in Parliament, that he had ‘not got a leader, but a boss’ (quoted by Ginsborg, 2005: 69) – or that Tiziana Parenti, who also left, declared that the party had a ‘serious problem of internal democracy’ (quoted by Guarino, 2005: 318).

The election of 1994 and the first Berlusconi government At the election held on 27 and 28 March, Berlusconi won handsomely. FI took 21 per cent of the vote while the MSI/AN (up from 5.4 to 13.5 per cent) made significant, not to say spectacular, gains. The League’s vote more or less held steady. Overall, the centre right emerged 12 percentage points clear of the Progressive Alliance with a solid majority in the Chamber and a near majority in the Senate. Berlusconi’s achievement was entirely without precedent. In the space of a few weeks he had built from scratch a political party which then emerged as the country’s largest. And all this happened despite public hostility towards the old political class (with which he had been closely bound) and despite public outrage at revelations of corruption (which during the campaign had begun to touch his own firms too). Berlusconi won the election, arguably, for four reasons. First, presenting himself as a man of the centre right, as a moderate, he occupied political space inhabited by those who had once voted for the now-defunct parties. Always a majority, these voters now fell into his arms. Second, he had a more effective system of alliances than his opponents: by including the Christian Democratic Centre, one of the two main ‘successor parties’ arising from the collapse of the DC, his coalition extended all the way to the middle of the political spectrum. Not so the Progressives who were unable to coalesce with the DC’s other successor party, the Italian People’s Party, which, together with various groups surrounding Mario Segni, contested the election as an independent, third force. Third, the sheer intensity of the media interest aroused by what he had decided to do enabled Berlusconi to dominate the campaign, to set the terms of debate, to put his opponents on the back foot, to oblige them constantly to respond to his initiatives rather than taking initiatives of their own. Fourth, he was a much better communicator than his rivals. He understood much better than they that the disappearance of the old ideological certainties meant that personality, charisma, celebrity, language and image counted for much more than in the past (Stille, 2010: 192). The absence of any precedent for an initiative of the kind he had taken, combined with a campaign focused heavily on him as an individual, enabled Berlusconi to pose as one who stood above the fray, an outsider ready to take on an untrustworthy political establishment. Combining simple language unmediated by parties

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but addressed directly to voters with the image of a self-made man, he conveyed the message that he spoke on behalf of ordinary Italians for whom he could perform the same wonders he had performed for himself. While his opponents talked about his links with Craxi, he promised a million new jobs (Ginsborg, 2005: 67). While they asked him to defend his economic programme against charges that it would damage ordinary workers, he asked them how many Intercontinental Cups they had won – so inverting the class connotations of the exchange by making his opponents seem like arid university professors, he, the billionaire, like a winner whom the average worker and football supporter could understand and admire (Stille, 2010: 190–1). The most significant aspects of his first experience as prime minister can best be summarised under four headings: his conflict of interests, his relationship with the parties of opposition, his legal difficulties and his relationship with his governing allies. The first arose from his position as the owner of the country’s three largest private television stations on the one hand and, on the other, his position as prime minister, which he did not formally assume until 10 May: the formation of the executive was delayed by the negotiations required for a governing pact involving not only FI, the Northern League and the MSI/AN, but three minor parties as well. The composition of the new government was itself a reflection of the conflict of interests and gave rise to controversy because of the inclusion not only of ‘direct descendants’ of the fascist tradition but also of a number of collaborators or employees of Fininvest, individuals with economic ties to the prime minister (Ignazi and Katz, 1995: 39). It is perhaps not surprising then that although, according to Stille (2010: 222), Berlusconi had the good grace to leave cabinet meetings when matters directly affecting his firms were discussed, the government always seemed to arrive at positions that favoured his interests. Thanks to the fact that so many people in Parliament were materially dependent upon him he was able to ‘occupy’ RAI, even though its board was formally appointed by the presidents of the Chamber and Senate: the men appointed as directors of news and current affairs for RAI1 and RAI2, for example, were both Fininvest employees. In order to give the appearance that he was addressing the conflict-of-interests issue he appointed a committee of three experts (one with links to Fininvest), whose proposals for the creation of a blind trust were embodied in a bill presented on 2 November. Even had the bill made it through Parliament before the legislature was dissolved little more than twelve months later, it would not, as Sartori (2002: 24–5) explains, have resolved the issue: blind trusts operate by turning over the management of a person’s investments to a trusted third party empowered to buy and sell assets without the person’s knowledge and therefore without the person knowing how his or her public actions will affect his or her private interests. It was impossible to render management of Berlusconi’s assets blind in this way: the assets in question were large firms, not diversified share portfolios. All of this served to sour Berlusconi’s relations with the parties of the centreleft opposition and to set the underlying tone of his interaction with these forces for the rest of his political career. For his adversaries, the proposed blind trust was a crude smokescreen that had been put up as a means of warding off genu-



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ine proposals advanced by the senator for the independent left, Stefano Passigli, during the summer. These proposals had been based on the recognition that in a case such as that of Berlusconi, the conflict of interests could only be resolved by divestment of the assets in question, something the entrepreneur naturally refused to contemplate. From this it seemed to follow that both his position as prime minister and specific actions such as the RAI appointments were inherently illegitimate. For Berlusconi, on the other hand, such attitudes spoke to the inherent illegitimacy of his opponents as potential governing actors; he had won the elections and from this it seemed to follow that he should have a free hand in matters such as the RAI appointments. Their denial of the point – the insistence that he be hedged in by checks and balances – was, from Berlusconi’s perspective, evidence of his opponents’ lack of democratic credentials, proof that they were unreconstructed communists. The ongoing inability of majority and opposition to accord each other legitimacy spoke to the absence of shared procedural norms, thus fuelling arguments that Italian democracy was defective. The tensions came to a head in July when the government issued a decree law depriving prosecutors of the power to remand in custody those suspected of financial crimes including corruption and extortion. Suspects would at most be subject to house arrest. The code of criminal procedure makes available a power of remand, under certain conditions, to prevent the risk of defendants tampering with evidence, escaping, or posing a danger to the public. So it seemed that the intention behind the decree was to impede the work of investigators who were at the time looking into allegations involving a number of people associated with the prime minister’s own companies. In fact in April, investigations had been initiated into allegations of bribery involving the financial police (la Guardia di Finanza) on the one hand and various companies on the other, including Edilnord, headed by Berlusconi’s brother Paolo. As the scope of the investigations widened, increasing numbers of the financial police admitted to having accepted bribes from firms belonging to Berlusconi – who was famously notified that he himself was under investigation just as he was hosting an international summit on organised crime on 21 November. Prior to that the decree law, dubbed il decreto salvaladri (literally, ‘the thief-saving decree’), had provoked public outrage, as well as the fury of the opposition, as hundreds accused of corruption offences were released from prison. Public prosecutors at the centre of the ongoing Mani pulite investigations threatened to resign. Berlusconi responded by saying that they wanted to dictate what the law should be – but his allies felt obliged to take their distance from the decree, forcing him to allow it to fall in Parliament on grounds of manifest unconstitutionality. The episode was a further nail in the coffin of his already shaky relations with the Northern League. The MSI/AN had had to be diplomatic in its opposition to the decreto salvaladri as it was dependent on Berlusconi for its new-found legitimacy and wanted to avoid being chased back into the political ghetto from which it had spent so many years trying to escape. The League was much less dependent. Its leader, Umberto Bossi, felt marginalised by the apparent strength of the alliance between the two remaining party leaders, Berlusconi and the MSI/AN’s

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Gianfranco Fini – who was in any case cold towards the decentralising reform that was essential to the League’s fortunes but that failed to make any headway. Moreover, overlaps in the two parties’ appeals, both of which were populist and focused on charismatic leaders, meant that the League had a pressing need to mark its separateness from FI: without it, the slippage of votes from Bossi to Berlusconi that had been registered in March, and again at the European Parliament elections in June, might continue. In the autumn, as the annual finance bill was being discussed, the government came under pressure from strikes and unprecedentedly large protests against proposals to reform the pensions system. On top of the other difficulties – conflicts of interest, suspicions of corruption, conflict with the judiciary – the protests drove down the ratings for Berlusconi whose government’s performance was now deemed not very, or not at all, satisfactory by 71.9 per cent (Ignazi and Katz, 1995: 44). Together with the centre left, the League presented a motion of no confidence. As it was backed by a clear majority, Berlusconi resigned as prime minister before the vote was taken, accusing his former ally of betrayal.

The years of opposition, 1995–2001 Losing office, Berlusconi in effect found himself, from the point of view of protecting his media empire and defending himself from judicial interest in his business affairs, almost back in the same position he had been in when his political allies began to lose power in early 1992. And he now faced a threat on a new front. Opponents of the legge Mammì had never laid down their arms (Uleri and Fideli, 1996: 96) and in early 1994, with the apparently dangerous confluence of media and political power represented by his victory, they began to gather the signatures necessary to request the holding of three referenda. Designed to abrogate essential parts of the legge Mammì, they would, if approved, impose new limits on the amount of advertising that could be shown on television; limit to one the number of TV networks that could be owned by single individuals; and reduce from three to two the number of national networks on behalf of which single agencies could sell advertising space. Berlusconi was able to win all three referenda comfortably: on a 57 per cent turnout, 57, 55.7 and 56.4 per cent respectively voted against abrogation of the three parts of the legge Mammì under consideration. The reasons were probably threefold. It is likely, first, that many if not most voters found the underlying issues – having to do with market competition, potential conflicts of interest and so on – somewhat academic and not easy to comprehend, especially because they were asked, at the same time, to vote on no fewer than nine other but quite separate issues. Under these circumstances – second – they would have been heavily influenced by the campaign for a no vote, conducted on Berlusconi’s TV channels, which reduced the issues to a much simpler and more emotive question: Did voters want to retain their current viewing options and did they want to continue to be able to watch great films free of charge? If so, then they had to vote ‘No’. Third, the referendum, not surprisingly, acquired the very strong connotations of a vote for or against Berlusconi and his



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fortune: unless voters had a very strong dislike of the man, they would probably be disinclined to inflict gratuitous damage on an entrepreneur who had made his fortune by means which, as far as they were aware, were not illegitimate. This is probably why the percentage voting ‘No’ exceeded the percentage of voters who could be expected to support the parties calling for a yes vote. Similar perceptions were probably involved in the outcome of the election of 1996. After Berlusconi’s resignation at the end of 1994, a technocratic government headed by his former treasury minister, Lamberto Dini, had taken office with a limited mandate, and Dini had resigned at the end of 1995 having passed a budget to improve public finances in view of the euro membership criteria contained in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. Berlusconi lost the ensuing election, in no small measure because he was unable to repair his broken alliance with the Northern League so that the centre-right vote was split in many areas. Yet his own party won 20.6 per cent of the vote, and thus hardly declined at all, despite the allegations of wrongdoing that had come to light since he had first taken to the field. These included the suggestion, in February 1994, that Paolo Berlusconi had paid 910 million lire (€469,975) to secure the sale of real estate to the pension fund of a large Milanese bank; allegations against Marcello dell’Utri, in March 1994, of tax fraud and false accounting as well as allegations of links with the Mafia; the abovementioned bribery allegations involving the financial police; charges of illegal party funding, formalised in November 1995, based on evidence that several billion lire had been paid to Bettino Craxi in October 1991, by Fininvest, through the offshore company All Iberian; and the allegations, mentioned in chapter 1, concerning bribery in the Mondadori case, which came to light in March 1996, a month before the elections. That such allegations seemed not to damage Berlusconi particularly was probably due to an interrelated combination of factors not unlike those related to the legge Mammì referenda. In the first place, the allegations were complex, and numerous similar allegations had been made since the start of 1992. Like medicines that become the less effective the more you take them, so it is with inquiries, legal notifications and indictments: the more they follow one after the other, the less people pay any attention to them, and the less they give rise to public judgments that count or have any lasting impact. (Pizzorno, 1998: 114, quoted by Vannucci, 2009: 242)

This is especially likely to be so in the case of allegations made in the Italian media which, along with so many other aspects of civil society, have traditionally lacked autonomy from politics. This has made it difficult for journalists to acquire the necessary authority to enable them to play the role of ‘fourth estate’ and avoid being dismissed as persons with agendas to pursue. In such a context, Berlusconi’s claims that the judicial investigations were a communist conspiracy were likely to seem plausible to many, as the claims would have tapped a deepseated cultural cynicism about people and their motives generally, and especially about politicians and public officials and their motives. Paradoxically, widespread

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cynicism is likely to have protected Berlusconi; since the revelations came on top of those that had provoked public outrage against the old political class, to many they would have suggested, at worst, that Berlusconi did no more than what all politicians did. And in any event, the allegations were precisely that: some of the consequent legal proceedings resulted in acquittals; others were timed out thanks to the statute of limitations; still others had to be abandoned because in the meantime Berlusconi had managed to engineer a change in the relevant law. So formally, Berlusconi (if not all of his collaborators) had no actual guilty verdicts against him; and under these circumstances, his supporters would, as the theory of cognitive dissonance teaches, have had a strong drive to dismiss the allegations as arising from the malevolence of his detractors. In opposition following the 1996 election, Berlusconi found that in the attempt to use Parliament to protect his media empire and remain free of the clutches of the judiciary, he could actually rely on the support of the governing centre left. The leaders of these parties were convinced that conflict-of-interests legislation and similar measures had to be treated with extreme caution. Their directly negative implications for Berlusconi’s interests meant that they would inevitably be construed as an attack on him personally, thereby assisting the entrepreneur in seeking to undermine the democratic credentials of the centre left in the minds of ordinary citizens, many if not most of whom were unfamiliar with notions of conflicts of interest and therefore not at all moved by them. In their approach to Berlusconi, centre-left leaders were aware of what had happened during the 1994 election campaign when the president of Parliament’s anti-Mafia commission, Luciano Violante, had allegedly told a journalist that dell’Utri was under judicial investigation for presumed Mafia links. Instead of forcing Berlusconi to account, the suggestions had forced Violante to resign under the weight of accusations that he had abused a non-partisan position to divulge confidential information with the aim of damaging political opponents. Finally, the leaders of the centre left wanted to gain the cooperation of Berlusconi and his allies in passing through Parliament a comprehensive package of constitutional reform. Such cooperation was especially important to PDS leader Massimo D’Alema, who on 5 February 1997 was elected president of the Bicameral Commission for Constitutional Reform. This was set up on 24 January of the same year with the task of drafting proposals for the revision of part II of the Constitution, which sets out the institutional geography of the Republic. The proposals, once passed by Parliament, would be put to the people in a referendum. The commission was set up as part of an attempt to make progress on the institutional reform which, as noted above, had been debated since the 1980s. In particular, it was set up as a reflection of the assumption, widespread among politicians, that the party-system transformation and electoral law reform of the early 1990s had begun a desirable process of regime transition that required constitutional overhaul to bring it to completion. This in turn required the support of parties across the government– opposition divide if it was to have the authority needed to make it long-lasting. The setting up of the commission gave rise to a new word in the Italian political lexicon – incucio (a surreptitious marriage of convenience; an underhand



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deal)  –  used by commentators to refer to their assumption of a tacit agreement between D’Alema and Berlusconi to work together for mutual benefit: in exchange for the constitutional reform that would enhance the political standing of D’Alema, the PDS leader would – so it was thought – ensure the action and inaction necessary to protect the legal and commercial interests of Berlusconi. Liking to think of himself as a particularly shrewd politician, D’Alema apparently thought he could use Berlusconi’s vulnerabilities to extract agreement from him to support various measures of institutional reform; but on this occasion it was Berlusconi who got the better of D’Alema. Discussions in the commission continued until 2 June 1998 when FI withdrew its support for the constitutional reform project altogether, bringing the collapse of the commission, ostensibly over the relatively technical question of the conditions under which the president of the Republic would be empowered to dissolve Parliament. By this time, Berlusconi had, with the help of the centre left, achieved three important results, the first of which concerned the Constitutional Court and the legge Mammì. On 7 December 1994 the court had ruled that article 15 paragraph 4 of the law was unconstitutional. This paragraph had stipulated that the number of television franchises granted for national broadcasting to a single party could not exceed 25 per cent of the total and in any case not more than three. According to the court’s ruling, the unconstitutionality of the paragraph arose, in essence, from the fact that it was less rigorous than other legislation designed to prevent excessive media concentration (for example in the field of the press) and was therefore in breach of article 3 of the Constitution which establishes the principle of equality before the law. It was consequently inadequate for the task of ensuring pluralism in the media as required by article 21 of the Constitution, which guarantees to citizens ‘the right freely to express their thoughts in speech, writing, or any other form of communication’. The ruling went on to stipulate that it was for Parliament to provide legislation, for terrestrial broadcasting, that would offer the necessary guarantees of pluralism by specifying the permitted levels of concentration – which, however, would necessarily have to be less than those allowed by the legge Mammì given the court’s ruling. The ruling also meant that the legislation would have to be passed by 27 August 1996; for, while the legge Mammì had not done anything to assign the available franchises (having simply authorised Berlusconi’s networks to continue broadcasting), law no. 323 of 27 August 1993 had assigned franchises to parties with such authorisation for a period of up to three years. The implications of the court’s ruling were that Berlusconi would have to surrender one of his networks or shift it from terrestrial to satellite broadcasting. He was saved from these implications thanks to the activism of the minister for posts and telecommunications, Antonio Maccanico, who produced a decree law (no. 444 of 28 August 1996) of just one article stipulating that pending a general reform of the telecommunications system to be implemented in accordance with the provisions of Constitutional Court ruling no. 420 of 7 December 1994, parties legitimately engaged in radio and television

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This date was then pushed forward to 31 July by decree law no. 545 of 23 October. In the meantime, the minister sponsored a bill, passed in July 1997, which stipulated that a single party would not be allowed to hold franchises making possible terrestrial broadcasting amounting to more than 20 per cent of the total. The law also set up the Autorità per le garanzie nelle communicazioni (The Communications Regulatory Authority, Agcom), and made provision for a ‘national plan for the assignment of frequencies’. Those with more than 20 per cent would be allowed to continue broadcasting until 30 April 1998. They would be allowed to continue even beyond that date provided that they combined their terrestrial with cable and satellite broadcasting such as to allow the gradual passage of their activity from the former to one or other of the latter. However, this would happen only when the Regulatory Authority had determined that the number of cable and satellite subscribers was ‘sufficient’ – a term that was never quantified anywhere. The second success for Berlusconi came on 31 July 1997 when a large majority agreed to the reform of article 513 of the code of criminal procedure. From then on it would be possible for the courts to use as evidence statements made to public prosecutors during the course of their investigations only if the persons making the statements were willing to confirm them when cross-examined at the subsequent court hearings. This was especially relevant to a number of Mani pulite trials then coming to an end: several of the entrepreneurs involved, arguing in effect that they were victims of extortion, had decided to confess their part in the exchanges, opting to forgo a full trial and so benefit from suspension or reduction of the sentences – while many of the politicians had opted for the full trial procedure in the hope of being saved by the statute of limitations. With the reform, prosecutors were now obliged to call the entrepreneurs back to court, hoping that they would agree to talk rather than taking advantage, as co-defendants, of the right to remain silent. If they did, then many of those who might otherwise have been found guilty would be acquitted. But even if they spoke, the additional time involved made it more likely that the proceedings would be timed out by the statute of limitations. And indeed, because the reform applied retroactively, the Court of Cassation threw several cases back to the appeal courts while the appeal courts threw cases back to the courts of first instance for them to be heard all over again (Travaglio, 2010: 130–5). One of the immediate beneficiaries of the reform was Berlusconi’s brother Paolo, accused of having paid a bribe of 150 million lire (€77,469) in 1992 to the DC politicians Gianstefano Frigerio and Maurizio Prada, for waste-management contracts in the municipality of Cerro Maggiore. The third important result for Berlusconi came in January 1998 when the Chamber of Deputies rejected, by 341 votes to 248, the request of public prosecutors for authorisation to arrest Cesare Previti. He had been caught up in allegations of involvement in the bribery of judges called upon to make a decision in a civil dispute, dating back to 1982, between the industrialist Nino Rovelli and a bank, the Istituto Mobiliare Italiano. Like the allegations involved in the Mondadori



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case, these too had come to light thanks to the revelations of Stefania Ariosto in the summer of 1995. Having been a senator and a minister in Berlusconi’s first government, Previti had been elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1996 – ­arguably as part of a plan to give him, along with others in Berlusconi’s entourage, the parliamentary immunity that would keep judicial investigators at arm’s length and thus reduce the risk that they might reveal compromising information concerning Berlusconi himself (Stille, 2010: 271). Though Berlusconi’s party and the parties of the centre right generally were in a minority, he was able to win the vote thanks to the support of some of the deputies belonging to the centreleft Italian People’s Party as well as deputies belonging to the Northern League (Di Caro, 1998).

The election campaign of 2001 The Northern League was to be of significance too in helping Berlusconi to achieve his next great triumph: victory in the general election of 2001. In light of the outcome of the European Parliament elections of June 1999 which saw the League’s vote fall to 4.4 per cent, it was apparent to the party’s leaders that they would have to mend their fences with Berlusconi to avoid the risk of being pulverised. The 1993 electoral law provided for three-quarters of the seats in each chamber to be assigned according to the single-member, simple plurality system, and one-quarter proportionally. The party would face extremely tough competition from a resurgent FI in the single-member constituencies and risked falling below the 4 per cent exclusion threshold that applied to the seats distributed proportionally. ‘Rather than risk being submerged, therefore, Bossi took the decision to reach an agreement with Berlusconi in return for assurances about seats in the Government in the event of victory’ (Bull and Newell, 2001). This meant that Berlusconi had a more efficient system of alliances than the centre-left Ulivo (‘Olive Tree’) coalition which, in contrast, was unable to patch up before the elections the internal divisions that had opened up during its time in government from 1996. First, it was dependent for its hold on office on the support of RC, many of whose deputies were unhappy with its economic policy and brought the government down in a confidence vote in the autumn of 1998. The government had thus given way to two further governments under D’Alema, sustained in office with the support of a handful of ‘turncoat’ deputies who in 1996 had been elected as part of the coalition of the centre right. Finally, in light of the less-than-glowing outcome of the regional elections of 2000, D’Alema had resigned to be replaced as prime minister by the former Socialist Giuliano Amato, at the head of a fourth centre-left government. This had prompted – thanks to Amato’s associations with the disgraced former prime minister Craxi – the breakaway of Italia dei Valori (‘Italy of Values’) under the Mani pulite investigator Antonio Di Pietro, who had begun a political career in 1997. ‘The launch of “Italy of Values”, combined with the failure to reach standdown arrangements with RC in the Senate, was to cost the Ulivo the election’ (Bull and Newell, 2001).

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To a large extent, the campaign itself took on the connotations of a referendum on Berlusconi – whose media interests, whatever their role in determining the outcome, were one of the most, if not the most, significant of the campaign issues. They featured in the campaign in several ways. In the first place, the centre left had sought to neutralise the obvious media advantage enjoyed by the centre right by passing law no. 28 of 22 February 2000 regulating campaign communications. Dubbed the par condicio (‘parity of treatment’) law, it was designed to ensure both impartiality in political broadcasts on radio and television, and equality of access to the media during election campaigns. In particular, it strictly regulated party-political advertising. Though not banning such advertising altogether, the law could perhaps be said to have amounted to a ban for all practical purposes;2 and in addition, Berlusconi complained bitterly that the equality-of-access provisions were unfair because they ignored the differences in popular support enjoyed by each party. Fatta la legge trovato l’inganno: by strictly limiting the amount of political advertising allowed, the law would, it was assumed, also serve the useful purpose of containing the costs of politics (and thus taxpayers’ money, given that parties were publicly funded); but it imposed no limits on campaign spending, and Berlusconi now used his copious resources to plaster the walls of all the major towns and cities, beginning nine months before polling day, with gigantic posters, each showing a portrait of himself and bearing simple slogans such as ‘Lower taxes for everyone’, ‘Help for those who have been left behind’, ‘Safer cities’, and so on. At the same time colossal sums were spent sending to millions of households a large and glossy magazine containing hundreds of photographs. Entitled Una storia italiana (‘An Italian story’) it purported to be a biography of the FI leader. The materials were suggestive of a campaign that was at once very traditional (‘Posters have always been a fundamental feature of Italian electoral campaigns’ (Campus and Cosenza, 2010: 5)), but one which, despite – or perhaps because of – these qualities was also extremely effective: the parties of the centre left felt obliged to copy the approach with (rather fewer) posters carrying portraits of their own leader, Francesco Rutelli. In that way they conveyed the message that the candidate setting the pace, the pioneer others were obliged to follow, was once again Silvio Berlusconi. A second way in which Berlusconi’s media interests featured in the campaign was that they helped to heighten the drama of the contest, giving it all the connotations of a conflict, not between alternative solutions to common problems, but between alternative civilisations. Thanks to the ‘leader-centred’ nature of the campaign and therefore its focus on the suitability for the office of prime minister of the men heading the two main coalitions, Berlusconi’s media empire inevitably led him to be attacked for his conflict of interests – attacks against which the entrepreneur sought to defend himself by escalating the conflict. His opponents were unreconstructed communists whose leader – mayor of Rome Francesco Rutelli – had been chosen not by any bottom-up process but by elites who had selected him merely in order to oppose the centre-right leader, a man of the people. Those whose sympathies lay on the centre left, including j­ournalists,



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responded by drawing attention to the legal difficulties of Berlusconi and his associates, an especially memorable instance being the episode of the television programme Satyricon devoted to Marcello dell’Utri’s alleged links with the Mafia. Incidents such as this provoked the outrage of the centre right – for whom such broadcasts in the middle of an election campaign were examples of the bias of state TV broadcasters and their lack of commitment to democracy – thus turning the campaign into a conflict over the rules of the game itself rather than a conflict over matters of substantive policy. Such a dramatisation of the contest, heightening the sense of what was at stake, suited both Berlusconi and his opponents: Italian election campaigns are less about winning over the supporters of ‘the other side’ than they are about mobilising one’s own potential supporters and getting them to vote. Vote-switching takes place much less between coalitions than between the parties of a given coalition. Thus it was that in a slight reversal of what had been a downward trend in turnout, 81.2 per cent of those entitled to vote presented themselves at the polling booths to give Berlusconi a slight majority – of 45.4 per cent as against the centre left’s 43.8 per cent in the plurality area: distributions that were not very different to those that had been registered at the previous general election which the centre left had won. The electoral system and the centre right’s more efficient system of alliances translated its vote majority into a very large majority of over 100 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Berlusconi’s own party also made striking gains at the expense of its allies so that his government in the new legislature would be dependent for its survival on the loyalty of just one of the coalition parties – Alleanza Nazionale. With the 2001 election outcome, then, Berlusconi found himself at the head of what looked as though it would be the strongest government in Italy’s post-war history. It was a very promising start to what, with the exception of a 24-month period between 2006 and 2008, would be a decade of Berlusconi as prime minister. It is to the consideration of this period that we turn in chapter 5, having considered in the next chapter some of the conventional wisdoms surrounding the nature and the role of his political creation, Forza Italia.

Notes 1 Those opposed to the change broke away to form, together with other left-wing groups, the Party of Communist Refoundation (RC). 2 The legislation stipulated that if private broadcasters were to carry political advertisements at all, they would have to offer them, free of charge and on an equal basis, to all parties having a minimum number of elected representatives or fielding a minimum number of candidates. The advertisements, which were time-limited, would have to be transmitted within specially designated broadcasting slots which could not exceed four per day.

4

Berlusconi the party leader

Having considered Berlusconi’s career against the background of the party politics of the 1990s, our attention in this chapter turns to assessing his actual impact on party politics, that is, his impact on the nature of political parties and the interactions between them. Specifically, there is a conventional wisdom according to which he is thought to have been responsible for having created an organisation of a novel kind capable of commanding a position as the largest party of the centre right, and therefore of acting as a coalition maker among the parties in that area of the political spectrum. And given the context in which all of this initially came about, that is, the disintegration of the traditional governing parties, he is credited with having been the architect of the new bipolar party system that replaced the tripolar system of the past. The purpose of this chapter is to assess these assumptions. In the section that follows we consider the organisational characteristics and dynamics of the party Berlusconi founded in 1994, asking what was original about it, and to what extent it reflected tendencies of the past. We will argue that what was distinctive about it as compared to other parties was its patrimonialism, but that this and related features were far from being original. And we will be asking: What did Berlusconi’s party do for the quality of parties and party competition in Italy and to what extent could Berlusconi have shaped his party differently? In the section following, by considering the events immediately prior to the emergence of the Alliance for Good Government and the Freedom Alliance on 7 and 10 February 1994 respectively, we assess the view that Berlusconi’s role was the decisive one with respect to uniting the parties of the centre right in coalition in the first place. In the penultimate section, we consider the impact of Berlusconi’s leadership on the configuration of the coalition he led, that is, how successful he was as a coalition maker. The final section draws together some conclusions.

Forza Italia When it emerged at the elections of 1994, Forza Italia struck commentators for several of its features, in the first place its name, which deliberately avoided the word ‘party’. Domenico Mennitti (1997), FI’s first national coordinator, argues that the name reflected Berlusconi’s anti-communism. For Berlusconi, the ability of the Communists’ successor parties to survive Tangentopoli, and the advent of



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the 1993 Ciampi government (originally including former Communist ministers), revealed the paradox that in Italy, the Berlin Wall had collapsed on the heads of the winners of the Cold War, not the losers (Orsina, 2013: 115–18). The name Forza Italia, recalling the chants of football supporters, was thus chosen to reflect the conviction that Italy was facing an existential threat from the left, an exhortation not to give up the struggle to resist it and a message of hope. The name was also designed to attract by evoking the feelings of patriotism spectators felt when watching the national football team in action – and thereby to convey the message that FI sought to speak up for everyone, the entire nation, ‘rather than … any particular social class or grouping’ (Hopkin and Paolucci, 1999: 325). In avoiding the word party, the name also reflected the organisational characteristics of the new entity, the second feature that appeared striking. When FI took office on 11 May 1994, it hardly existed as an institutionalised entity. ‘It consisted of Silvio Berlusconi, it amounted to the small group of his collaborators who in the months preceding the victory, had chosen the candidates, designed the communications campaign, drafted the programme, and organised a network of activists brought together in a series of clubs’ (Poli, 1997: 80–1, my translation). In this it reflected a deliberate decision to avoid giving the new entity the characteristics of the traditional mass parties with their broad membership bases, their networks of local branches, their bureaucracies and their ideological factions. On the contrary, it was to be a consciously slim entity. Its novel organisational features were central to its identity; for it sought to present itself as being inspired by the principles of ‘efficient management, typical of business firms’: Public opinion at the time associated parties with inefficiency and irresponsive bureaucracies. Through his business firm movement, Berlusconi imported the principles of competent managerial behaviour into a discredited political arena, in which parties were still generally organised along the old models and directed by professional politicians making a living out of politics. In the case of Forza Italia, traditional party models functioned as the counter-models to be avoided. Entrepreneurialism was proposed as a viable alternative to discredited partitocrazia. (Paolucci, 2006: 168)

Finally, observers were struck by the sheer velocity with which the new entity established itself. Opinions differ as to when, precisely, it was conceived. Some suggest 29 June 1993, when a number of individuals in Berlusconi’s entourage established an association – ‘Forza Italia! Association for Good Government’ – with the same title. Others would look further back than that given that that there had already been press speculation about the formation of an imprecisely defined ‘Berlusconi party’ in the initial months of 1993.1 Some, such as Berlusconi’s childhood friend and long-time collaborator Fedele Confalonieri, look as far back as the launch of the media empire, given that it involved challenges that were inherently political in nature.2 The precise timing doesn’t really matter. The point is that at its very first electoral outing FI had gone from nothing to become the largest party. Given that the election took place on 27 March, if we date FI from

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the day of its formal constitution (18 January), then it achieved its ascent in a little over two months. Few parties can claim such sudden success, and all of this made its appearance seem like a shocking turn of events or a deus ex machina, depending on one’s point of view. For observers, the above features reflected what they saw as the original, not to say unique, quality of FI. For Emanuela Poli, FI emerged not as a party but as something that aspired to be a political movement offering direct representation, that is, representation unmediated by any intervening organisation but expressed by the strong, personalised and charismatic leadership of Berlusconi himself. All of its components had elements of originality. Its leader had no background as a professional politician; its message was emotional rather than ideological; its candidates were for the most part new to politics; the activists’ clubs had almost no power and a highly uncertain role; and it was managed by Fininvest employees – who had approached the election as a marketing challenge, choosing a segment of the electorate (moderates politically orphaned by the demise of the traditional governing p ­ arties) among whom to launch a new product (Poli, 1997: 79–85). For Mauro Calise, this feature meant that FI had ‘nothing in common with the parties of the past’; for unlike them, it emerged neither as the expression of pre-existing social or religious cleavages nor as a pre-existing parliamentary faction. ‘Forza Italia [was] an artificial party, designed on paper on the basis of a sophisticated analysis of the political market, and an extraordinary capacity for managerial organisation’ (Calise, 2000: 75, my translation). The activists’ clubs had been put together with no other purpose than that of being able to sell a political product by making it possible to argue that the product had widespread support.3 Not surprisingly, then, for Jonathan Hopkin and Caterina Paolucci, FI was, in terms of organisation and behaviour, a party of an entirely novel type, one exemplifying what they called the ‘business firm’ model, that is, ‘a lightweight organisation with the sole basic function of mobilising support at election time’ (1999: 315). For Ernesto Galli della Loggia and others, what made FI an original creation was the fact that it was a ‘plastic party’, a metaphor used to describe a party that ‘remains without form if it lacks an artist able to mould the plastic to give it form and function’. In other words, without the driving force of Berlusconi and his boundless media and organisational ability, the party would remain without form, a losing proposition, by definition sterile: that is, incapable of regenerating itself and surviving its leader. (De Lorenzo, 2015, my translation)

For still others (e.g. Calise, 2000; Musella, 2013), FI’s originality was best captured by the term ‘personal party’, insofar as it was a party which, having been founded by Berlusconi, was controlled by him, and whose raison d’être was to further his political ambitions. The sheer number of labels invented for FI testifies to perceptions of its novelty. For McCarthy (1995) it was a ‘virtual party’; for Norberto Bobbio (1994) a ‘ghost party’; for Maraffi (1995) a ‘personal patrimonial party’. Common to these characterisations of FI – clearly – is a focus on the centrality of Berlusconi himself, and it is difficult to dispute the proposition that the



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role of Berlusconi within it set FI apart from other parties. In other parties, the ­distribution of power and authority is heavily weighted in favour of the leader. It was the extent of this imbalance and, especially, the nature of Berlusconi’s authority that made his party unusual; his was authority of a patrimonial kind, as opposed to the rational/legal kind found in the traditional mass-membership parties. In other words, Berlusconi owned his party and therefore enjoyed absolute authority within it: he was unaccountable. In the traditional mass party, the leader might also have been extremely powerful, but he did not own the party and could only exercise his authority in accordance with the party rules from whence the authority derived: he was accountable. The patrimonial quality of FI has persisted through time notwithstanding the pressures working against it. These pressures derived from awareness that, unless the party organisation was endowed with power and authority of its own, separate from that of Berlusconi (i.e. unless it was institutionalised), it was unlikely to survive the end of the entrepreneur’s own political career. Indeed, it was understood that if Berlusconi’s vulnerability was the party’s vulnerability, then the opposite was true too; for, as long as the party’s identity remained so closely bound up with the perceived leadership and other abilities of Berlusconi personally, then if the entrepreneur failed to meet public expectations, his party would lack significant alternative appeals to prevent electoral support drifting away from him. So those in FI not employed by Berlusconi, especially candidates and members of the clubs, concerned that the organisation’s and their own fortunes should not be totally linked to those of Berlusconi, brought pressure, after the 1994 election, for the transformation of FI into an autonomous party run on rational/legal lines. Berlusconi was obliged to bow to some of the pressure: although most of those with any involvement in FI needed him far more than he needed them, he did need them collectively, and he had an interest in avoiding, as far as possible, public conflict over the matter. On the other hand, he also had an interest in avoiding the creation of anything that would escape his control or look like the traditional parties, given that central to his appeal was that he was offering an alternative to them. Thus it was that in the aftermath of the 1994 election, FI’s components were brought together within the framework of a set of rules and a clear organisational structure, which, however, did not do much to change either the distribution or the fundamental nature of power in the party as we have described them. On the one hand, the rules left Berlusconi with almost unchecked power insofar as the basic organisational principle was nomination from above rather than election from below. There were no grassroots organisations with any influence of any kind able to attract members – and so not surprisingly the party tended to struggle in local election contests. On the other hand, even if matters had been different – even if, formally, election as opposed to nomination had figured more highly in the party – this would have changed little, simply because of the overwhelming informal power resources at Berlusconi’s command. For example, parliamentarians were aware (or believed) that they owed their positions to voters’ attachment to Berlusconi rather than to their own abilities; consequently, having been given responsibility within the initial party structure for the organisation and

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­ romotion of the party within their electoral colleges, they had little scope for p exploiting these responsibilities to construct their own power bases, and every interest in executing them in a way that would show signs of their loyalty. Empirical research among party officials reveals that control from the top down was rigid and ruthless. As an FI Member of Parliament explained in June 2007: The regional coordinators are nominated by B. and have enormous power because they have the last word in relation to candidatures and therefore put a block on anyone with a different idea or alternative project. The weapon of the candidatures is lethal because if, for example, I say to a local councillor, ‘Look, you’re upsetting me so I might withdraw your party nomination’, then either he disappears, or he falls into line. (quoted by Mariotti, 2011: 47)

Forza Italia, then, was clearly an unusual party; however, its originality can be overplayed. Obviously, it was not original in an absolute sense: if it had been, then we would not have had available concepts with which to describe it. But even in a less stringent sense, its originality can be questioned, for it reflected trends and tendencies with deep historical roots, and several of its features were borrowed from other parties at home and abroad. In the first place, the kind of power Berlusconi exercised over his party was of a quintessentially traditional kind and arose because huge numbers of people in the party were personally dependent on him. For the 1994 election, candidates were head-hunted by people who were his employees, and therefore both candidates and employees were, in the party, subjects, or servants, rather than citizens. True, candidates can in most parties be said to be personally dependent on powerful people within them simply because gaining office first and foremost requires a suitable party nomination. However, there is a crucial difference with the case of FI. Even if, to take the extreme case, the leader of an ‘ordinary’ party has, formally speaking, complete discretion in candidate selection, his or her power, though huge, will not be entirely arbitrary, for at the very least he or she will be removable from office in accordance with the party rules; and therefore he or she will in practice be subject to all sorts of constraints on candidate selection such as the need to satisfy this or that faction and so on. So there are relations of reciprocal dependency here. The case of Berlusconi was different in this respect: he was not elected to his position and could not be removed from it (and even later nods in this direction were, precisely, no more than nods); so the relationship of dependency ran entirely in one direction. Another way of stating this is to say that while in the ‘ordinary’ party both the party leader and the candidates are subject to the party rules, Berlusconi was above the rules: his power was arbitrary. Of course, ultimately there is an arbitrary element to all exercises of power simply because exercising power implies making choices between alternative courses of action, and making a choice implies exercising discretion. Sometimes, rules are used to hide and to rationalise what are in reality arbitrary decisions. However, there is a difference between a situation in which rules that should



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govern conduct are present, and one in which they are not: in the former situation, the decision-maker is actually or potentially obliged to explain his or her decision by reference to rules and in the latter situation he or she is not. Again, ultimately, everyone is routinely subject to the obligation to explain themselves by reference to rules in the broadest sense, as is evident as soon as we reflect on the nature of the responses we give to routine enquiries about our conduct such as why we went out in the rain without taking our umbrella. Our explanation that we couldn’t find it and were in a hurry to get to a meeting accounts for our conduct in terms of the rules that we should take appropriate steps to protect ourselves against wet weather and to arrive on time for meetings. The arbitrary element consists in weighing up the competing demands of these rules, for example, in deciding when to stop searching for the umbrella, though the decision might be explicable by reference to still further rules. However, in terms of less exacting criteria, the difference between the cases of the ordinary party leader and Berlusconi remains: with reference to decisions on behalf of the party, the ordinary party leader was subject to formal party rules that they were unable to change on their own authority; Berlusconi was not. As a consequence, Berlusconi was able to exercise power in a way that reminded observers of the absolute monarchs of past centuries (see, e.g., Viroli, 2010). These people typically governed by surrounding themselves with courtiers whose loyalty would be secured through their material dependency and the distribution of favours. Thanks to the sheer scale of the entrepreneur’s power, the analogies between the governing style of an absolute monarch and that of Berlusconi can be multiplied (again, see Viroli, 2010). Further, if FI was a personal party, then one could argue that many of its distinguishing features were, by the turn of the century, to be found in most if not all of the major parties in Italy. Thus, notwithstanding FI’s peculiarity as a party whose leader’s power over it was arbitrary, parties generally were, according to Calise, ‘becoming machines in the service of this or that leader’; machines in which relationships between leaders and followers were decreasingly based on ideological ties and increasingly based on ‘particularistic interests or emotional appeals’ (Calise, 2000: 5, my translation). This process of party change was, as Calise (2000: 12–14) and others have pointed out, a consequence of the diminishing significance of the religious and class divides of the past and thus a decline in the capacity of the established parties to perform their representative function by aggregating the demands of large social groups. Essentially, the declining significance of these groups meant a dilution of ideological commitments; a withering of party organisations on the ground; falling revenues; a growing reliance on the party in public office for finance and leadership; and growing electoral volatility. Consequently parties had had to become electoral-professional organisations (Panebianco, 1988) capable, if they were to win elections, of reconstructing their support bases each time. Hence, many of the features of FI that struck observers as stunningly original when it emerged were in fact to be found in other parties both at home and abroad. For example, the centralisation, professionalisation and personalisation which so struck observers about FI were, for British observers,

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equally striking features of the Labour Party at the time. In 1992 in America, Ross Perot had contested the presidential election by fielding the Reform Party which, just like FI two years later, had also been an artificial party, assembled on the basis of massive financial resources to win a specific election. In 1993 in Italy, Mario Segni had headed a referendum movement which had provided for FI the model of direct leadership in a campaign in which the nature of the political system itself was said to be at stake. So if, as seems to be the case, FI is more accurately seen as the expression of general processes of political and social change, rather than as a deus ex machina contrived thanks to the ingenuity of its creator, then it is difficult to see how it could have been otherwise, even if Berlusconi had wanted it to be. The purpose of parties is to win elections and in the context of the early 1990s, with the decline of ideologies and old social attachments and the growth of popular disaffection, victory could not have been achieved by relying on the model provided by the traditional parties of mass integration (even if it could be recreated at all): television, professionalism and money were essential. Therefore, given the amount of time at his disposal in late 1993/early 1994, it is difficult to see how Berlusconi could have created a party substantially different from the one he did create. And if the resources of television, professionalism and money assisted the party in the immediate term, then precisely because of that, they prevented FI from moving beyond its reliance on them to put down the social and ideological  roots  characteristic of the parties of the past, to become something other than the party it was. This was also true of competitor parties which had once operated as factions beneath the ideological veneer provided by mass-integration parties such as the Christian Democrats, but were now obliged to swim alone, unaided. One thinks here of parties such as Rinnovamento Italiano under Lamberto Dini, the CDU under Rocco Butiglione, UDEUR under Clemente Mastella and so forth. These, like FI, were vehicles for the political ambitions of individuals, and as such they reflected the long-standing traditions of notable and clientele politics. Often emerging as micro-formations within Parliament, as breakaways from other parties, they sought to survive and prosper by their capacity to act as veto players (Tsebelis, 2002); and they were organisations in which individual material ambitions, more than ideals, drove power relations. So again, FI can be viewed as part of a general syndrome. As such FI contributed to declining party strength, whose onset predated it and which rendered Italian democracy less attractive than it might have been. A strong party is one that is large and cohesive, implying that it has sizeable numbers of strongly attached members, supporters and voters. Because their internal relations were predominantly instrumental in nature, parties of the kind exemplified by FI, and by the post-Tangentopoli successors to the traditional parties, could not benefit from or cultivate such attachments. The point is that FI and similar parties operated to a significant extent on the basis of personal loyalties, loyalty to individuals being exchanged for rewards such as offices and so on. This necessarily meant, within the parties concerned, a



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loss of the power of ideas and ideals, because by accepting rewards for personal loyalty the persons concerned disempowered themselves, becoming beholden to the powers that be, supporting them less out of disinterested conviction than as a result of their private interests. Instrumental relationships are necessarily more fragile than those founded upon convictions because they rely on the continuation of a flow of material and non-material benefits. Benefits are by definition scarce and therefore less effective and much more expensive as a ‘glue’ for holding together large numbers of people. So parties where such a situation predominates remain small and un-cohesive. In them, the situation of followers resembles – to take up Viroli’s analogy again – the situation of courtiers for whom [t]he smallest variations in the monarch’s behaviour towards them was of enormous importance, being the visible expressions of their relationship with the monarch and of their position in courtly society. But such a situation of dependence, in its turn, influenced in various ways, the behaviour of the men and women of the court towards each other. (Elias, 1980; quoted by Viroli, 2010: 19–20, my translation)

This often involved all sorts of skulduggery and intrigue. But if it meant that courtiers were divided, then there was one thing that united them and that was constant displays of devotion to the sovereign. Based on her empirical research, Claudia Mariotti offers a striking description of these in the case of Berlusconi (along with equally striking illustrations of the operation of power in the party). From her interviews with fifty FI parliamentarians she concluded: FI parliamentarians seem to perceive Berlusconi not as a normal political leader who embodies the ideals of his adherents, but more as a father figure, sometimes a master, to whom they are tied by feelings of child-like devotion. Many of them perceive themselves as – and most of them actually are – political creatures of Berlusconi, born thanks to him, people who have important political office only because of Berlusconi’s trust and fondness for them. This affection is returned, bordering, in many cases, on adoration. (Mariotti, 2011: 48)

Such outward displays, and the instrumental nature of the relations they mask, are apt to create a strong element of scepticism not to say cynicism on the part of those directly involved; and sometimes displays of servility could give rise to exasperation and acrimonious ‘divorce’ between the leader and his entourage.4 The history of Berlusconi’s political career is littered with examples of dramatic fallings-out between the entrepreneur and former collaborators. A fascinating first-hand account of such an incident, which is again revealing of the internal life of FI and the operation of power within it, is given by Michele Caccavale (1997), a former FI deputy who described his experience of representing the party during the twelfth legislature from 1994 to 1996. Significantly, he entitled his book Il Grande Inganno or ‘The great deception’.

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Caccavale, a former Christian Democratic politician, was head-hunted at the end of 1993 before the birth of Forza Italia was publicly announced and while Berlusconi was busy denying that he had any intention of launching a new party. Though he found Berlusconi’s lies strange, Caccavale believed the explanations given for them – that they were designed to maximise the element of surprise when the party was launched – as well as suggestions concerning the entrepreneur’s extraordinary capacities. Ironically, Caccavale looked forward to the prospect of representing FI as he believed that it brought, as he put it, New faces, a new atmosphere, concreteness and pragmatism, no notables or ­factions and for me the possibility of engaging in politics first hand and in complete autonomy, distant from clans, faction leaders and political opportunists. (1997: 14)

He looked forward to playing a front-line role in the construction of a second Republic for Italy (1997: 29), but once elected he found that he was part of a large army of unenthusiastic parliamentarians, many with direct or indirect ties with Fininvest, constantly waiting around for orders from above (1997: 49–50). With the passage of time, he came to believe that he had made a dreadful mistake in associating himself not with a project of political renewal but with a kind of unscrupulous business lobby that had landed in Parliament (1997: 59); that Berlusconi was a chronic liar (1997: 90); and that he, Caccavale, was being used by Berlusconi and his entourage as lobby fodder in pursuit of their own, more or less private interests. Prior to the 1996 elections, he became aware that there were plans, among those close to Berlusconi, to deprive him of his seat to the advantage of Cesare Previti, and he attributed this to his membership of Parliament’s Anti-Mafia Commission which had on occasion obliged him to take initiatives that were embarrassing and inconvenient to members of Berlusconi’s clan (1997: 162–71). Aware that he was to be deprived of his seat, he considered the setting up of a new party, Forza Gente, with other FI dissidents, but was dissuaded from pursuing the idea by a number of obscure personal threats from people caught up in the complex network of legitimate and illegitimate relations of convenience holding Berlusconi and his circle together (1997: 162–71). As described in the next chapter, the emergence of the Popolo della libertà (People of Freedom, Pdl) in 2007–08 did almost nothing to change the rigid, patrimonial nature of the management of power within Berlusconi’s political vehicle. The event represented, in effect, an attempted takeover by Berlusconi, one that would enable him to gain political momentum through the new name and thus the sense of political renewal. By virtue of being a new departure in an organisational sense, it would help to prevent or overcome that routinisation of party life which, by institutionalising the party, might otherwise weaken his control over it. It was an attempt that was successful thanks to the party-political context in which it took place, revealing that just like FI, the Pdl owed its emergence to the existence of a specific political opportunity structure and therefore to circumstances unlikely to be repeated. In essence, given the electoral law in



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force at the time and given that the election outcome seemed a foregone conclusion, once it emerged that the Democratic Party (PD) had decided to turn its back on the broad centre-left coalitions of the past, the National Alliance (AN) had little alternative but to embrace the merger with FI that it had rejected when Berlusconi’s overture had been made for the first time on 18 November 2007. In attempting to swallow as large a fish as AN, Berlusconi found that the control he was able to exercise over the resulting creation was less than total, as was shown by the emergence of factions and factional conflict. It was Berlusconi’s efforts to put an end to this and tighten his control on the party that lay at the root of the split with former AN leader Gianfranco Fini, and, ultimately, the end of his latest period in office on 12 November 2011. Hence the kind of party that FI and the Pdl represented contributed nothing to the enhancement of party competition in Italy, because they had almost no other purpose than to advance the national political interests of their powerful leaders. This being the case, instrumental relationships and personal loyalty, more than ideas, were what governed their internal life, and hence electoral appeals were leader-centred and eclectic with the result that they blurred rather than aggregated demands; and they could do little, unlike the old mass parties, to integrate citizens into democratic political life. Mass-membership parties are structures that enable people to relate to and discuss with one another. In that way they organise people for the pursuit of agreed political objectives and so empower them. Berlusconi’s and like parties stand in stark contrast to these, being little more than extensions of their leaders’ wills. For this reason, rather than bringing their supporters together, they keep them divided and therefore in a state of weakness. Their organisational weakness and dependence on the skills of their leaders make it difficult for them to offer effective government (Gunther and Diamond, 2001: 29), as we shall see in more detail in chapter 9. Their instrumental and particularistic character underpinned the spread of anti-political sentiments by encouraging opportunistic behaviour manifested in corruption, trasformismo and similar phenomena. In summary, then, the party founded by Berlusconi in 1994 appeared at the time to be something original, the result of the ingenuity of its founder, whereas it was actually far less original than many assumed and was better understood as the fruit of specific social and political circumstances than the product of Berlusconi’s choices. Thus, many, though not all, of its distinguishing features were shared with other parties, which were like FI in being weak entities that struggled to contribute positively to Italian democracy. There is little evidence so far, then, of Berlusconi the party leader having ‘made a difference’. The following section considers what evidence there is that he made a difference with regard to the coming together of the centre right in 1994.

The Freedom Alliance/Alliance for Good Government Berlusconi is thought to have played an essential role in the transformation of the Italian party system in the early 1990s, first, because it was he and his decisions

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that brought together the parties available for coalition on the centre right in the 1994 election and, second, because it was he and his decisions that held them together thereafter. The second issue is considered in the following section; the first we consider here. The argument is twofold: that without the intervention of Berlusconi, the centre right would not have come together in 1994, and that without those circumstances it would not have won the election or been able to come together thereafter. As far as the first aspect is concerned, the suggestion is that the two main forces available for coalition in the early 1990s were the National Alliance and the Northern League, which would not come together spontaneously, since the first stood for the south and a large welfare state, the second for the north and a slimmed-down welfare state. Both were, however, willing to form (separate) alliances with Berlusconi; and it was Berlusconi who made AN, as a former pariah party, available for coalition in the first place, first through his public pronouncements (notably at the time of the municipal elections in Rome in the autumn of 1993) and then through the offer of an alliance with his novel creation, FI. Without FI – the argument proceeds – none of this would have happened, so it was thanks to Berlusconi that at the 1994 election, forces opposed to the centre left were able to combine – through the Freedom Alliance (between FI and the LN) in the north and the Alliance for Good Government (between FI and AN) in the south – to resist the centre left’s advance. As Aldo Di Virgilio put it: In designing his electoral strategy, Berlusconi placed alongside legitimation of the right a second competitive trump card: geographically varied alliances. He was therefore able to form distinct coalitions, in two different areas of the ­country – in the south, with the National Alliance, he formed the Alliance for Good Government; in the north, with the League, the Freedom Alliance. Given the manifest incompatibility between his two partners, and given his two partners’ marginal and territorially circumscribed bases of support until then, he constituted the unifying element that ‘[enabled] a “regionalised” right to penetrate, and operate in, a national market’ … On the basis of two formidable strategic intuitions – the opening to the right and the territorial differentiation of his alliances – Berlusconi thus decided to take a front-line role, intervening personally in electoral politics with Forza Italia, and to put himself forward, in place of Segni, as the person able to construct the alliance of moderates. (1995: 193, my translation)

Clearly, then, Berlusconi played a central role in the processes of alliance formation in the run-up to 1994. But then so did a number of significant other actors, notably the League, which could have opted for an alliance with Segni (and for a brief period appeared to be doing so), but which in the end decided in favour of an alliance with Berlusconi as a result of what appeared to be a series of strategic calculations; for through the agreement with Berlusconi, it obtained at least three important results: breaking a feared ‘encirclement’ (the possibility that Segni and Berlusconi would end up agreeing among themselves, perhaps



Berlusconi the party leader85 with the assent of Martinazzoli); avoiding arrangements with the Ppi, the heirs of the DC (and thus the risk of tarnishing its distinctiveness); exploiting its bargaining power by allying itself (not without some misgivings) with the party willing to concede the most. (Di Virgilio, 1995: 194)

Had it calculated differently, then the outcome, in terms of the other actors’ moves and the resulting system of alliances, would have been different. So the question at hand is, what would have happened had Berlusconi behaved differently or not been   an ‘element in the equation’ at all? Ultimately we can never know the answer to this question, but we can make some reasoned arguments. First, the Italian Social Movement (MSI, the forerunner of AN) had clearly made several efforts to achieve respectability and acceptability as a potential governing party prior to Berlusconi. Indeed, the constant search for respectability was an inevitable consequence of the strategic dilemma it faced, that is, the need to be responsive to the far-right fringes in order not to lose them to forces even more extreme, while having to try to court allies if it was not to be abandoned  by c­ onservative but less extreme voters as an irrelevance (see, e.g., Ignazi, 1989). This being the case, in a sense it had already overcome its pariah status and come in from the cold prior to the intervention of Berlusconi. Already, in April 1993, Gianfranco Fini’s right-hand man, Francesco Storace, had published a piece in the party’s newspaper, calling for a ‘national alliance’: What is needed is a new Right – the spokesperson and secretary reasoned in the columns of the party newspaper – ‘a national alliance for a presidential Republic’, able to ‘participate in the construction of the new Italy’, relinquishing a symbol which, though noble, is sterile as it would condemn us to another forty years of opposition. This was enough to suggest to many a ‘black thing’, a sort of Bolognina of the Italian Social Movement. (la Repubblica, 1993, my translation)

The piece in question was published at the height of the Tangentopoli ­scandal – when it was already clear that the traditional parties were in considerable t­ rouble – and a few days after the outcome of the electoral law referendum of 18 April. Discussion of the issue, in the party and in the media, continued during the subsequent months when it became clear, from the results of several local elections, especially those in June, that the traditional parties were disintegrating and that there would be a new majoritarian electoral law. The party leaders’ strategy was clear to everyone concerned, for the new electoral law and a mass of voters politically orphaned by the traditional parties’ demise offered unprecedented alliance opportunities for the party if it could moderate its image. Thus, in Fini’s designs, an overhauled party would be called Alleanza Nazionale, the Tricolour [would] take the shape of the Italian ‘boot’, on the anthem they [were] already working, and pricking one’s finger [would] not be permitted in order to join the party. Black shirts [would] not be permitted, nor fasces or Fascist badges: no more fascism, but no antifascism

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So the party was already making concerted efforts to secure its sdoganamento (‘customs clearance’) long before Berlusconi’s famous pronouncement on 23 November; and it reaped the fruits of its efforts on 21 November in the first round of that month’s local council elections when it took a record 12 per cent of the vote and made it through to the run-off ballot in major cities including Rome and Naples. The results revealed that ‘one of the “founding myths” of the Republic – the fascist–anti-fascist cleavage … so powerful at the level of the (political and cultural) elites, no longer represented, for the mass electorate, as powerful a discriminating factor’ (Di Virgilio, 1995: 193). Berlusconi’s pronouncement was merely the public recognition of that fact. So Berlusconi was, using the terminology discussed in the Introduction, arguably at most an ‘eventful man’ when it came to bringing the MSI in from the cold – one who took advantage of circumstances to further assist the MSI to overcome its pariah status without it being clear that his actions significantly shaped those circumstances. Second, one might question the assumption that without Berlusconi the MSI and the LN could not have come to any accommodation with each other: true, they were profoundly divided on the issue close to the raison d’être of both of them, the future of the Italian state. But subsequent developments, on immigration, civil liberties and so forth, showed, when they were in government, the considerable ideological and policy overlap between them. And in the months prior to 1994, there were significant actors within each party clearly aware that they would have to come to terms with each other and desirous of cooperation. Some months before Berlusconi’s discesa in campo, heated discussions were taking place at the highest levels of the MSI about the need for a programmatic, not just an electoral, agreement with the LN. According to Pino Rauti at the time, Agreement with the League is written in the stars, made essential by the current events of Italian politics. The League is an opposition party, like the MSI. Allying with the League, the majoritarian electoral law means we’ll have the knife by the handle.5

The emergence of AN attracted the attention of intellectuals, journalists and people in public life, including former president of the Republic Francesco Cossiga, who welcomed and supported the renewed turn towards moderation and the search for alliances on the right; and it is a fair suggestion that they would have been far less interested had the main party in this area of the political spectrum been determined to remain a pariah. Already in September 1992, the political scientist Domenico Fisichella had called for the construction of a national alliance to oppose the emerging ‘democratic alliance’ on the left, and which would seek to accommodate those with a range of moderate conservative outlooks including republicans, liberals and Catholics. From the League’s point of view, it was clear that the principal barrier in the way of an accommodation



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with the MSI at this time was uncertainty about the persisting significance, or otherwise, among the public of the fundamental fascist–anti-fascist cleavage; and in an effort to underpin the distinctiveness of his party, Umberto Bossi famously declared, at a party congress in February 1994, that his party would ‘never, never, never’ work with the MSI: ‘We of the League are those who continue the struggle for liberation conducted by the Partisans and betrayed by the particocrazia!’ ‘Never with the fascists!’, he thundered: ‘Never with the grandchildren of the Fascists! Never!’6 True, there were several thorny issues concerning the territorial distribution of power that divided Bossi sharply from the MSI, besides the ideological split. But it is ironic that Bossi made these pronouncements precisely at the moment when, in embracing Berlusconi, he had in fact agreed, de facto, to cooperate with the MSI (even though his agreement was camouflaged by the geographically variable nature of the centre-right alliance). On the other hand, Bossi was an astute politician, and as such he was aware that in an age of mediatised politics, the success of political projects depends above all on their sponsors being able successfully to exploit media imperatives to mobilise the indispensable levels of public support (Campus, 2006: 219–29). In other words, aware of the processes of transformation going on within the MSI, he would have known that work with those who in early 1994 he called ‘fascists’ was not, in fact, inconceivable and that under those circumstances he would be able to find a way to collaborate without damaging his support base – as events subsequently confirmed, beginning with Bossi’s agreement to sit in government with the ‘fascists’ in the first place. Third, then, it might be suggested that even had the League and the MSI not come together in 1994 through the offices of Berlusconi, they were bound to before long thanks to the imperatives created by the electoral law in force at this time. Based largely on the single-member simple plurality system, parties on either side of the left–right divide were obliged to come together to field jointly supported candidates in order to minimise the risk of parties further away on the ideological spectrum taking seats at their expense. The outcome of the 1994 election would have revealed the consequences of division and a rejection of alliances shaped by the basic left–right divide – as indeed it did in awarding just four seats in the plurality arena to the centre-placed Pact for Italy, although it attracted 15 per cent of the vote. So from this perspective, the role of Berlusconi could, in the language of necessary and sufficient conditions, be seen not only as not a sufficient condition for the coming together of the forces of the centre right at this time, but not even a necessary one: sufficient for bringing them together was the electoral law. With regard to the role of Berlusconi’s alliance objectives and the success thereof in determining the outcome of the election, we cannot say what the outcome of the 1994 election would have been in the absence of Berlusconi and therefore in the presence of an alternative pattern of alliances; but given that the Progressive Alliance was in a clear minority with about one third of the vote, their victory and the defeat of the centre right cannot be regarded as having been a foregone conclusion, given Berlusconi’s absence.

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Berlusconi as a coalition maker The same reasoning applies in relation to the role of Berlusconi’s alliance decisions in bringing victory to the centre right in subsequent elections. From one point of view they were decisive, Alfio Mastropaolo’s observation being thoughtprovoking in this connection: Italians can be accused of many faults but not of being unfaithful voters … analyses of vote flows suggest that straight switches from left to right and vice versa remain relatively rare … it is not the electors who decide the results of elections in Italy, but rather, as occurs in many other systems, the configuration of party ‘products’ that is offered in the electoral market place. (2009: 25–6)

The assumption underlying this, that voters are uninfluenced by the alliance decisions of their preferred parties, is not supported by the empirical evidence: in elections up to 2001, after which the electoral system was changed, voters in Chamber of Deputies elections cast two ballots: one for a coalition candidate standing in their single-member constituency, the other for a single party for the one quarter of the seats distributed proportionally. It was evident from the start that there was a not insignificant proportion of voters prepared to vote, in the proportional arena, for a party belonging to one or the other of the coalitions, but unwilling to support the same coalition’s candidate in the majority arena (see, e.g., D’Alimonte and Bartolini, 1997). So we cannot have any real confidence in the arguments that are made about the impact of this or that decision on electoral outcomes – all these arguments rely on an assumption about how people would have behaved had things been different. For example, it is often said that the vote of those registered in the ‘foreign constituency’ was decisive in bringing victory to the centre left in 2006, since four of the constituency’s six seats went to the Unione, which had a majority of two in the Senate. Had the provisions for voting by foreign residents not been put in place before the election, the centre right would have won. However, exactly the same type of argument can be made in relation to other decisions. A very small party, Progetto Nordest, took 92,002 votes in 2006, so it could be said that Berlusconi, who lost the election by 24,755 votes, would have won had he managed to include this party in his coalition. But it is an argument that relies on the assumption that those who voted for Progetto Nordest would also have done so had their party been involved in such an alliance; and we can have little confidence about this given that voters would have been being presented with, in effect, a different set of choices. In both examples, the force of the argument relies on the acceptance of strictly untestable counter-factual assumptions. So we cannot be certain about the impact of the centre right’s alliance d ­ ecisions – just as we have seen that we cannot be certain, in the case of the 1994 election, about Berlusconi’s role in bringing them about in the first place. In subsequent elections, the role in coalition formation of Berlusconi and FI must be regarded as having been decisive thanks to the force of path dependency: having established for itself an unrivalled position in the electoral marketplace thanks to the outcome



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of the 1994 election, FI was bound to come to play the role of ‘coalition maker’, that is, a party whose relative size enables it to dictate the terms on which alliance formation takes place. This did not mean that its power was absolute, as the alliances for the 1996 election revealed. The League had from the start feared the implications, for its popular support, of the overlap between Berlusconi’s themes and its own, especially the defence of ordinary people against the predations of partitocrazia; and, needing to mark its distinctiveness, it decided to take the risk of running alone, counting on the geographical concentration of its support base. Meanwhile, AN suffered a breakaway from those unhappy with the new path of moderation, and the breakaway, the Tricoloured Flame, too ran alone. So 1996 revealed that Berlusconi’s success in uniting the centre right in 1994 had been temporary, that his power as a coalition maker was subject to contingent circumstances. It and subsequent elections revealed that, greater or lesser as circumstances might make it, Berlusconi’s and FI’s power as a coagulator was ultimately the product of the 1994 centre-right victory – which might have happened without them.

Conclusion Berlusconi the party leader played a significant role in the party-political developments that marked Italian politics from the early 1990s, but these developments seem more convincingly explained by reference to general, structural changes than by reference to the entrepreneur. He of course played a role, but the weight attributed to it needs to be carefully calibrated; and it was decisive only because very powerful social and political changes, far exceeding the power even of a leader as powerful as Berlusconi, made it so: in specific circumstances, his role was a necessary condition for change, but never a sufficient one. What he contributed to Italian party politics, thanks to his initial debut and his subsequent involvement, was a party whose weaknesses prevented it from overcoming the circumstances that led to its creation in the first place. Consequently it helped to perpetuate the chronic difficulties faced by Italian parties generally in providing effective representation of ordinary voters, and as part of that, effective government. Central to Berlusconi’s message, as we saw in chapter 2, was that thanks to his skills as an entrepreneur, he, unlike the professional politicians, could make a significant difference in this area. In chapter 9 we consider this matter in some detail.

Notes 1 Tribunale di Caltanisetta Ufficio del Giudice per le indagini preliminari, ‘Decreto di Acrhiviazione (artt 409 e 411 c.p.p.)’, N. 1370/98 R.G.N.R; N. 908/99 R.G.I.P, p. 62. 2 F. Confalonieri cited in Friedman (2015: 75). 3 This is a well-established sales technique familiar to seasoned politicians who, when asked about their positions on issues, will often respond by saying, ‘I, like 74% [or whatever it happens to be] of Italians [or whatever group], think that…’, the point being that

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what is going on in such cases is an attempt to create something akin to the bandwagon effect by making the voter believe that the politician or policy at issue is popular. The effect happens thanks to psychological mechanisms that are either cognitive or affective or some combination of both. In the former case the individual, required to make a choice, has recourse to the fallacious argumentum ad populum (‘The majority of people support Berlusconi so he must be the best candidate’) in order to decide. In the latter case, the individual seeks to avoid the discomfort of feeling alone or in a minority. 4 The analogy with a marriage contract is a good one in this context. Such a contract is what Weber called a ‘status contract’, to be contrasted with a ‘purposive contract’. Whereas the latter makes possible specific, contractually specified exchanges while leaving the statuses of the contracting parties intact (as in the case of an employment contract), the former formalises commitments that are entirely open-ended and confers new statuses on the parties. 5 Quoted by Gianfranco Ballardin in ‘la spada della LEGA divide il MSI’, Corriere della Sera, 31 July 1993, http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/1993/luglio/31/spada_della_LEGA_ divide_MSI_co_0_93073 17186.shtml (accessed 20 April 2018). 6 ‘Quando Bossi diceva “Mai con i fascisti”’, next quotidiano, https://www.nextquoti diano.it/quando-bossi-diceva-mai-i-fascisti/ (accessed 20 April 2018).

Part III

Berlusconi the prime minister

5

Berlusconi in office, 2001–11

In government, 2001–06 When Berlusconi was sworn in on 11 June 2001, he became prime minister of what was to be the longest-lasting government in the history of the Italian republic. In doing so, he beat, by 355 days, the previous record of 1,058 days established by his friend Bettino Craxi (Pasquino, 2008); but much to his disappointment he was unable to achieve the feat of keeping his government in office for an entire legislative term. In a country that since July 1946 had had fifty-six governments lasting on average 350 days, to have done so would have been an enormous propaganda coup – especially for one who invested as much energy as Berlusconi did in cultivating the image, if not the reality, of decisionismo. On the one hand, his authority as prime minister was strengthened by the fact that, for the first time in the history of the Republic, he had taken office as the head of a single coalition assembled before the election, presenting its candidates throughout the country,1 and had won the 2001 election on that basis. On the other hand, his position was weakened by the fact that he was the head of what was, nevertheless, a coalition government. Consequently, in 2005 he was obliged to resign and form a new government through a rapid cabinet reshuffle thanks to pressure from the Union of Christian Democrats and Centre Democrats (UDC), following the heavy defeat of the Casa delle Libertà (Cdl) in the regional elections in April. The UDC was driven by the hope of enhancing its own fortunes at a time when the coalition faced growing unpopularity as the result of poor economic performance, and when a general election could at most be only a year away. Already the European Parliament elections the previous year had shown that if a government in difficulties was going to have to pay an electoral price, then, in the context of a proportional electoral law such as that used for the European Parliament, it would be paid by FI rather than its allies and that they rather than the opposition parties would be the principal beneficiaries. (Newell, 2008: 4)2

In that context, the UDC hoped that forcing a change of government and therefore a modification of its programme would enhance its own visibility, allow it to influence public perceptions of where among the coalition partners responsibility for unpopular policies and poor performance actually lay, and weaken the

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profile of Berlusconi within the coalition (especially his image as a strong leader). This too would enhance the centre party’s fortunes given the extent to which the electoral prospects of FI were so closely bound up with Berlusconi’s profile, and given that the UDC could expect to benefit from any electoral weakness of FI. So what is popularly thought of as a single government running from 2001 until the election of 2006 was in fact two governments, the first lasting for 1,413 days from 11 June 2001 to 23 April 2005, the second for 390 days from 23 April 2005 until 17 May 2006. Meanwhile, Berlusconi still had a number of judicial proceedings arising from his business affairs to contend with. When he took office, he was the defendant in the so-called All Iberian 2 trial involving allegations of false accounting; in the SME trial (so called because it related to allegations that the entrepreneur had bribed judges to find in his favour in a civil dispute concerning the acquisition of shares in the Società Meridionale di Elettricità); in the Mondadori case referred to in chapter 1; and in the Lentini trial (so called because Berlusconi was accused of having falsified the accounts of his football club, AC Milan, to facilitate an ‘underthe-table’ payment to Torino in connection with the transfer of a player, Gianluigi Lentini).3 As a consequence, media coverage of national-level politics was, from the start of his term in office, dominated by him and by the efforts he now made, using all of the institutional resources at his command, to frustrate the work of the judiciary (in an attempt either to delay the proceedings against him – hoping that the statute of limitations would come into force before the proceedings could be concluded – or to ensure that they collapsed altogether). The first move came in connection with the SME trial which had opened on 9 March 2000. In May 2000 Berlusconi’s lawyers had asked the presiding judge to rule as inadmissible a number of documents obtained from the Swiss authorities on the grounds of a number of formal irregularities, but had been rebuffed; so in October 2001 Parliament passed legislation (law no. 367/2001), in the matter of rogatory letters, to give legal underpinning to the case of inadmissibility that Berlusconi’s lawyers had sought to make. Meanwhile, law no. 61/2001 authorised the government to introduce secondary legislation modifying the law on false accounting. Penalties were reduced and so, therefore, were the times that would have to elapse before the statute of limitations applied, and the more restrictive became the conditions under which defendants could be held in custody and communications intercepted. For non-publicly listed companies, the new legislation provided that cases could only be brought by the firm’s partners themselves, and only then on the grounds that their interests had been damaged (something that was highly unlikely, given that false accounting was frequently used to pay bribes designed to help the firm increase its profits in various ways). Certain minimum sums of money would have to be involved before a case could be brought. Some types of false accounting (such as the presentation of false accounts to a bank in pursuit of a loan) were completely decriminalised. The consequence was that Berlusconi was saved from the false accounting charges arising in the Lentini trial, which collapsed in November 2002 thanks to the statute of limitations, even though documents obtained from the Swiss



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authorities and the statements made by Torino president, Gianmauro Borsano, suggested that the contested transfers of money had indeed taken place. Attempts by the public prosecutor, Gherardo Colombo, to persuade the judges involved to query law 61/2001 before the Constitutional Court were in vain (Fedrizzi, 2002). In the All Iberian 2 case, Berlusconi was given a ‘not guilty’ verdict on 26 September 2005: the prosecution had asked for a verdict of ‘timed out’ under the statute of limitations; Berlusconi’s lawyers, Gaetano Pecorella and Nicolò Ghedini, obtained the more respectable verdict on the grounds that what had been alleged did not constitute a crime, as indeed it did not under the terms of the legislation that Berlusconi himself had had passed. Finally, the charges relating to false accounting in the SME trial had likewise to be dropped, with the ‘not guilty’ verdict being delivered on 30 January 2008 following a delay arising from an application to the European Court of Justice by the judges trying the case for a ruling on whether law 61/2001 was compatible with EU legislation. Concomitants of these outcomes, by no means unwelcome from Berlusconi’s perspective, were similar outcomes for others caught up in the trials and for fellow industrialists implicated in other false accounting investigations, who were presumably not unmindful of how Berlusconi’s actions had assisted them. But if false accounting could be decriminalised, bribery was another matter, in relation to which the proceedings underway had to be obstructed by other means. In the first place, law 367/2001 proved ineffective, as the courts were able widely to circumvent it in deference to the precedence accorded to European over national legislation – giving rise to a war of words between government spokespersons and representatives of the judiciary that at times had all the appearances of a major constitutional conflict between the highest institutions of the state. Second, Berlusconi and his co-defendants, the most high profile of whom sat alongside him in Parliament, were often able to enforce the postponement of court sittings on grounds of ‘legitimate impediment’ arising from their institutional obligations. Third, they attempted to persuade the Court of Cassation to shift the hearings from the court in Milan to the one in Brescia, on the grounds of ‘serious threats to public order’, drawing upon the abovementioned war of words, among other things, to make their case.4 Success in such an endeavour would at least buy time, but it was unsuccessful. So the battle was now taken back to Parliament where another piece of ad personam legislation was passed, law 248/2002 or the so-called Cirami law. This introduced into the code of criminal procedure the concept of ‘legitimate suspicion’, or in other words doubt about the impartiality of the judges involved in trying a case, making it possible for defendants to apply to the Court of Cassation for a transfer of proceedings on these grounds. Most importantly, from Berlusconi’s perspective, the law also stipulated that judges should, when requested by the prosecution or defence, reconsider matters already dealt with before the proceedings were transferred. Not surprisingly, the provision was the subject of huge controversy given the additional opportunities it created for obstruction and thus the likelihood of trials collapsing as a result of the statute of limitations. And equally unsurprisingly, conflict became even sharper when on 28 January 2003 the Court

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of Cassation ruled against a transfer even on the basis of the new l­egislation. For Carlo Taormina, undersecretary of state at the Ministry of the Interior, the court’s ruling was ‘a declaration of war’. For Sandro Bondi, a member of the Chamber of Deputies Constitutional Affairs committee, it was the latest in ‘a chain of events that confirm[ed] the politicisation of the judiciary’. For Berlusconi himself it was evidence of ‘judicial persecution’, leaving ‘the principles of the Constitution and the separation of powers’ hanging in the balance (quoted by Travaglio, 2010: 226–8). Still, Berlusconi was not one to give up and so yet another avenue was explored. Thus it was that on 18 June 2003, Parliament was persuaded to pass law no. 140/2003, popularly known as the lodo Schifani, which stipulated among other things that the holders of the five highest offices of state, including the prime minister, could not be subjected to criminal proceedings of any kind (including for offences alleged to have been committed before they took office) during the period of their mandates. However, this attempt too was unsuccessful as the law was struck down by the Constitutional Court on 13 January 2004, on the grounds (among others) that it offended against article 3 of the Constitution which guarantees equality before the law. Consequently, Berlusconi was unable to avoid being tried for the bribery charges involved in the SME case. On 10 December 2004 he was found not guilty on some of the charges. On others, the judges concluded that there was enough evidence of mitigating circumstances to justify a reduced sentence – with the result that the charges became subject to the statute of limitations and the alleged offences had to be declared statute barred. However, Berlusconi’s troubles in the case were not yet over since the Italian judicial system provides for two stages of appeal – first, to the Court of Appeal and then, finally, on grounds of legality, to the Court of Cassation – and it seemed likely that prosecutors in the case would seek to use these opportunities to challenge the sentences. Consequently, further attempts at obstruction were made, this time by the passing of law no. 46/2006 – sponsored by Berlusconi’s lawyer and fellow parliamentarian, Gaetano Pecorella – which provided that sentences would not be appealable by the prosecution, in cases in which defendants had been acquitted or discharged. This attempt too was frustrated, and again by the Constitutional Court, which found that the law offended against article 111 of the Constitution which guarantees equal consideration for both of the parties involved in legal proceedings. Although Berlusconi was acquitted at both the appeals stage and at the Cassation stage of the charges of bribery in the SME case, in the meantime another case had arisen to cause him difficulties. In April 2005 proceedings had commenced – in the so-called Mediaset television rights case – in connection with allegations of tax evasion arising from the acquisition of television and cinematographic rights by offshore companies owned by two of Berlusconi’s children, who had then allegedly sold them, through a chain of other offshore companies, to the entrepreneur’s media enterprise, Mediaset, at artificially inflated prices. This had allowed Mediaset to include in its accounts costs that Berlusconi had never actually had to sustain and to place undeclared amounts of money in accounts



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abroad. In a related case, Berlusconi was accused of having bribed the English commercial lawyer David Mills, who had been involved in setting up a number of offshore companies on Berlusconi’s behalf. Mills had allegedly given false testimony during hearings related to the so-called All Iberian 1 case in the 1990s and to the Guardia di Finanza case referred to above.5 In both these cases, the alleged offences had taken place several years previously, so that an attempt was now made to avoid the potential consequences by interfering with the statute of limitations using the Alleanza Nazionale deputy, Edmondo Cirielli, as the vehicle. The law – which became popularly known as the ex-Cirielli after the deputy disowned it – had originally been designed to combat crime through tougher sentencing; but a quiet amendment was now introduced halving the time that would have to elapse before the statute of limitations applied in the case of offences carrying sentences of five years or more. Moreover, in serial cases involving several related offences, the terms of the statute would henceforth apply not from the date on which the last offence had been committed, but from the dates on which each of the offences separately had been committed. The calculation of Berlusconi and his associates was that they could now obtain rulings that a large number, if not all, of the charges against them had been statute barred a long time previously (Travaglio, 2010: 252). Widespread expressions of alarm – in the media, by justices, by other politicians – concerning the potential law-andorder consequences led their coalition allies in Parliament to conclude that this was a political hot potato too fiery to handle safely, and the law (no. 251/2005) was amended so that it applied only to those cases that were still being investigated or were subject to preliminary hearings and that had not yet been sent for trial. Still, this was insufficient to prevent the offences in the Mills case being declared statute barred (which happened in the case of Mills on 25 February 2010 and in the case of Berlusconi on 25 February 2012) or to prevent Berlusconi saving himself from the potential consequences of several of the charges arising in the Mediaset television rights case. The breathtaking conflict of interests and the unashamed abuse of power that all these episodes suggested provoked street protests, unprecedented institutional conflict, and a massive polarisation of public opinion – ensuring that Berlusconi himself was, more or less constantly during the 2001–06 legislature, the most highprofile issue on the agenda of Italian politics. Widely condemning Berlusconi’s actions in the international press, foreign observers looked on incredulously, asking themselves how it was possible that he was able to get away with them. The answer seems to be threefold. First, he had the support of a sufficiently large proportion of the public: those persuaded by his populist rhetoric and his promises to do for Italy what he had done for himself. And while he profoundly antagonised other sections of the public, paradoxically this assisted him: his high profile and his polarising qualities meant that to the extent that he antagonised those unsympathetic to him, to precisely the same extent did he shore up his support among those who looked on him favourably. Second, his centre-left opponents, especially those in Parliament if not those on the street, were often inclined to soft-pedal their objections, aware as they were

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that denunciations of Berlusconi that were too shrill had the potential to backfire on them. As argued in chapter 3, the very notion of a conflict of interests, while understood by liberal intellectuals, did not have much purchase with the voters, less well-endowed materially, whom the centre left needed to persuade in order to have a chance of winning and who were especially attracted by Berlusconi’s promises of economic miracles. For those voters, if Berlusconi was trying to feather his own nest, what was new about that? Wasn’t that what all politicians did? What was important was that he succeeded in making them better off. Therefore, the efforts of the centre left were mostly concentrated on attempting to shift the agenda of public debate away from Berlusconi and his judicial problems and on to other issues. For example, the so-called lodo Schifani actually originated in a proposal first made by the centre-left spokesperson Antonio Maccanico, in an evident attempt to neutralise the whole issue. Third, Berlusconi was, as discussed in the last chapter, the leader of a party with significant patrimonial traits, a leader whose followers owed their political positions to him personally and whose continued enjoyment of those positions depended on his more-or-less arbitrary decisions. And though he was the leader of a coalition government, it was a coalition whose members, as long as he retained his popularity and his capacity to attract votes, needed him as much as he needed them. Thus it was that he was often able to bind his partners more closely to him by having them sponsor some of the legislation designed to help him. The Cirami law, for example, was so called because its principal sponsor was Melchiorre Cirami, who was a spokesperson not of Berlusconi’s party but of one of its allies, the UDC. The events described at the beginning of this chapter arose precisely because of questions concerning Berlusconi’s personal popularity at that point in the legislative term, so his popularity was a second broad issue that he had to deal with in government from 2001. From the start, Berlusconi was aware that he had won the 2001 election on an essentially anti-political ticket and the promise of immediate success, but that to achieve success he would have to engage in political mediation (Orsina, 2013: 184–5). His first move then was to try to ensure that the government drove the parliamentary majority rather than the other way around by including in the cabinet the leaders of the parties he was allied with (Annual Register, 2001: 73).6 He was aware, too, that his continued popularity would depend on his capacity to deliver on the specific promise of tax reductions he had made when famously signing his ‘Contract with the Italian People’ during the course of a television programme on 8 May 2001, five days before the elections. This meant that the achievement of substantial renewed economic growth would be unusually important for him, as without it the tax cuts would only be possible through reduced levels of spending given that public debt stood at 108 per cent of GDP. If these were the challenges, then there were a series of contingent events and circumstances working in his favour during his period in office. One was ongoing division among his opponents on the centre left where the radical left, together with former Mani pulite public prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro (now in politics as



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the leader of the small Italia dei Valori, IdV), sought to make headway by highlighting Berlusconi’s conflict of interests at every conceivable opportunity, only to find that any additional support they acquired came almost exclusively from centre-left voters disillusioned with the more moderate parties’ softer approach to the entrepreneur, so that the size of the reservoir of centre-left support as a whole remained essentially the same. On the other hand, the more moderate parties on the same side of the left–right divide found it impossible to be too closely associated with the tough anti-Berlusconi stance of those such as Di Pietro, aware, as they were, that this would damage their chances of extending the reach of the coalition as a whole towards the parties of the centre. Additionally, Berlusconi was able to claim a number of legislative successes for his government including a substantial education reform in 2003 as well as a reform of the pensions system in the same year. On the other hand, he had a number of liabilities. First, his need to manage conflict within his coalition naturally disappointed those voters who had been persuaded to support him on the basis of his promise to provide strong and effective leadership. The Northern League required radical reforms in the area of the Constitution in order to justify to its voters its decision to abandon its previous strongly ‘anti-establishment’ stance and to rejoin Berlusconi first in coalition and now in government. And in order to satisfy the northern economic interests it represented, it wanted cuts in social and welfare spending, which disproportionately benefited the south. Conversely, AN and the UDC, whose support lay predominantly in the south, wanted precisely the opposite, and for much the same reason they were opposed to any decentralising institutional reforms that looked as though they might weaken institutions at the national level. Consequently, the two camps spent a not insignificant proportion of the government’s term in office seeking to undermine each other, forcing Berlusconi’s hand in a number of instances. Most notably, in July 2004, in the aftermath of the abovementioned European elections, he was forced to sacrifice his economics and finance minister, Giulio Tremonti – whose sympathy for northern interests and frugality on spending matters gave him a key role in keeping alive Berlusconi’s alliance with the League – to the demands of AN and the UDC for greater influence over the budget. Against this background, the fact that so much parliamentary time seemed to be taken up by Berlusconi’s attempts to defend himself from the judiciary added to the impression of a prime minister who, essentially, was not especially interested in incisive reforms unless his own personal interests happened to be at stake. More fundamentally, a lack of reform, at least in economic and social areas, was due to the failure of the hoped-for economic growth to materialise, which was necessary given the constraints of the public debt and the EU’s Growth and Stability Pact. All this added grist to the mill of critics who found Berlusconi’s leadership wanting – as well as supplying an additional reason for the entrepreneur to attempt to shore up his decreasingly convincing claims in this area by complaining that not only the ‘communist’ opposition but also his allies were obstructing his efforts to govern the country as voters had mandated him to.

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By the autumn of 2004, falling opinion poll ratings and the failure to achieve the promised tax cuts forced Berlusconi to call his allies’ bluff: he would call early elections and would reject alliances with any but those parties willing to support his tax-cutting programme. This enabled him to force through fiscal adjustments just sizeable enough to enable him, without completely losing credibility, to claim to have done what he said he was going to do – though the impact was diminished in terms of the effect on poll ratings by the fact that it proved impossible to avoid simultaneous spending cuts, including the loss of 75,000 jobs in the public sector. Consequently, by the end of the legislature, a widely held view among informed political and media commentators was that the revolution in government that Berlusconi’s election had seemed to presage had essentially failed to materialise and that the most likely outcome of the elections due in 2006 was a victory for the entrepreneur’s centre-left opponents. Once again, Berlusconi resorted to institutional subterfuge in the search for a way out of a difficult situation. The final months of 2005 saw the passage of a new electoral law that was partisan in the sense that it was voted through Parliament on the strength of the governing parties alone, and that would minimise Berlusconi’s chances of losing while maximising, in the event that he did lose, the chances that the centre left would find it difficult if not impossible to govern. In the first place, there was to be a closed-list system of proportional representation which, by denying electors a preference vote, would allow Berlusconi (and the other party leaders) to retain decisive influence over who, precisely, sat with them in Parliament. Second, it would allow (and indeed, through its provision for variable minimum vote thresholds, encourage) apparentment or the specification, among parties, of electoral alliances. And finally, it provided for a majority premium to go to the coalition that won the most votes. These features would enable voters who might be dissatisfied with Berlusconi’s performance to express their dissatisfaction by voting against him – while relieving them of the burden of having to do so by voting for a party whose support might lead to the defeat of the coalition as a whole. And it would overcome what, from Berlusconi’s point of view, had been a drawback of the previous electoral system, namely, the tendency of centre-right voters generally to be less willing than their centre-left counterparts to line up behind their coalition’s candidate in the former single-member constituencies when that specific candidate happened to have been chosen from a party other than their preferred one. On the other hand, by encouraging the construction of the broadest electoral coalitions possible (this as the means of maximising the chances of winning the majority premium), it would damage the centre left as the more fragmented of the two coalitions: the centre left might be able to assemble a coalition sufficiently broad to enable it to win an election, but would a broad coalition have sufficient cohesiveness to enable it to govern for any length of time? Berlusconi calculated that it would not and history, as it turned out, proved him right. Indeed the electoral law he came up with was even more ingenious than that: since every vote counted for the purposes of assigning of the majority premium – even those cast for parties remaining below the representation thresholds – the



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law in the run-up to 2006 encouraged a proliferation of lists as each political actor sought to cultivate a ‘niche market’ and then to trade his or her support for a place in the relevant coalition of the centre left or centre right. Moreover, as voters knew that every vote cast for a party of their preferred coalition would count, regardless of the party they chose to support, the system encouraged a loss of votes from the larger, more ‘responsible’ parties – required to offer policies capable of appealing to a broad spectrum – to the smaller, ‘niche’ parties, more capable of appealing to specific groups of voters on the issues these groups felt most strongly about (Floridia, 2008). With this electoral law in place, Berlusconi now set about attempting actually to win the election, an enterprise in which he was almost successful in that he failed to take the majority premium by just 24,755 votes. Widely credited with having staged a comeback during the campaign – a view which, in my opinion, is mistaken: his opponents were never as far ahead of him as observers imagined (Newell, 2006b) – he was able to add to his stature as an effective campaigner – the more so because of the contrast with his opponents, widely perceived as having almost snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and who therefore laboured under the image that they were, essentially, ineffectual.

In opposition, 2006–08 The backdrop, then, against which the next phase of Berlusconi’s political career was played out was that of a centre-left government which, though it could actually claim to have a not insignificant number of achievements to its credit (Paolucci and Newell, 2008), was never able to benefit from them because of its fragmentation and the slenderness of its majority: in the Senate, where the majority premium was calculated and distributed region by region, it had a majority over all other forces of just one of the 315 elected seats. This meant that to get legislation passed, the prime minister, Romano Prodi, was involved in a constant and exhausting search for compromises – not just between the parties forming his coalition, but even between individual parliamentarians. And this meant, in turn, that he was unable to devote his energies to shoring up his government’s position in the way that all governments seek to do, namely, by engaging in permanent campaigning, that is, using governing as a means of support mobilisation, while using support mobilisation as an instrument of governing. Meanwhile, the governing parties were unable to prevent themselves from undermining the government by virtue of the fact that though allies, they were also electoral competitors. Being an effective competitor meant having to seek visibility and giving reassurances to supporters, especially in the case of the more radical parties, that participation in government did not mean that they had ‘sold out’. Therefore, despite themselves, they were obliged constantly to indulge in a game of reciprocal blackmail on issues, with the result that it was widely understood from the start of the government’s life that it was very likely to be short lived. Against this background, Berlusconi was aware that his task was simply to wait until the administration collapsed under the weight of its own internal contradictions

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(which it did in January 2008), while seeking to aggravate those contradictions at every available opportunity. In this Berlusconi was helped by the fact that in order to sustain itself in office, the government had to rely on the sustenance of a small number of groups and individuals whose support for the centre left, and opposition to Berlusconi, had never been consistent in the first place and who therefore, under the right circumstances, might be persuaded to bring the government down and thus pave the way for Berlusconi to take office again. This was the case of Clemente Mastella and his small band of followers in UDEUR, who were the incumbent prime minister’s actual political assassins. Mastella, in fact, had been minister of labour in Berlusconi’s first government and with him in opposition following the 1996 general election. But after the first centre-left government following that election had lost its majority and fallen in October 1998, Mastella had been one of those on the centre right who had ‘gone to the rescue’, enabling a second centre-left government to take office under Massimo D’Alema. Now, in January 2008, he forced the government’s resignation through a confidence vote, essentially as a means of escaping a dilemma. On the one hand, continuing to sustain the government in office carried with it the danger of success in the efforts at electoral law reform then being made, to the disadvantage of smaller parties, in light of the fragmenting effects of the one passed in 2005. On the other hand, bringing the government down would mean loss of office (Mastella was justice minister) and might ultimately fail to obstruct electoral law reform in the longer term anyway (Newell, 2009). But it would at least buy time and might conceivably allow a rapprochement with a newly victorious Berlusconi.7 During the months prior to this, Berlusconi had been busy doing everything he could to undermine the government’s legitimacy and so weaken it. Ably assisted by the press and broadcasting media, over which he exercised great sway, he constantly drew attention to the government’s internal conflicts and feuds, framing it as ‘catastrophic’ and unfit to hold office, thereby setting in motion a self-­ generating downward spiral: the more the government declined in the opinion polls, the more its component parties were inclined to save themselves from unpopularity by taking their distance from it, thus reinforcing its fragility, with a further decline in the polls and so on. In some respects, Berlusconi could be depicted as a puppeteer manipulating the government from behind the scenes. Shortly after its election, for example, the government found that it needed to do something quickly to reduce the population of Italy’s overcrowded prisons, and therefore brought on to the statute books law no. 241/2006. Essentially the law reduced by three years the penalties handed down to those convicted of crimes committed before 2 May 2006 (with the exclusion of certain specific offences, such as terrorism, money laundering and drug trafficking). The problem was that, in accordance with a constitutional amendment passed in 1992, legislation of this kind required two-thirds majorities and therefore, in this case, the support of Berlusconi and the parties of opposition. Thus Berlusconi was able to specify certain conditions for his support – for example, that those convicted of so-called white-collar crimes such as bribery



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or fraud would also be able to benefit from the law – knowing full well that this would provoke considerable conflict within the governing majority – which it duly did – not least because it meant that one of Berlusconi’s own, most highprofile associates – the lawyer Cesare Previti, who on 4 May had been sentenced by the Court of Cassation to six years in prison in the Imi-Sir case – would benefit. Berlusconi was also aware that the fragility of the government shielded him from the risk that the centre left would effectively deliver on pre-election promises in the area of conflicts of interest: the sheer fragmentation of the majority meant that it would be unable to find the necessary cohesion to pass legislation. Those such as Mastella would have no interest in burning their bridges with Berlusconi,8 while the coalition as a whole would fight shy of legislation which it knew in advance would be roundly condemned by the entrepreneur as an undemocratic attack on him personally and therefore as evidence that in the hands of the centre left democracy itself was at risk. Thus it was that while legislation was prepared, it was not pursued with the degree of alacrity necessary to get it passed and so failed to complete its parliamentary passage. In the run-up to the election of 2008, then, Berlusconi’s victory was widely perceived as a foregone conclusion, and this perception informed the alliance strategies of both the entrepreneur himself and his centre-left competitors. The latter needed a ‘coalition maker’ (i.e. a party able to impose cohesion and discipline on allies by virtue of the power to dictate the terms on which alliance negotiations would take place) able to match the role Berlusconi and FI played on the centre right. The largest among them, the Democratici di Sinistra (Left Democrats, DS) and the Margherita (the ‘Daisy’), had in 2007 merged to form the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, PD) whose leader, Walter Veltroni, now announced that the party would contest the election alone, without allies (a promise partially kept insofar as the PD in the end ran in harness with di Pietro’s IdV but no others). The decision made sense: the election outcome seemed a foregone conclusion, and without an alliance with the PD, other parties on the centre left would probably fail to clear the 4 per cent exclusion threshold. Better, then, to run alone: while Berlusconi would take the 55 per cent majority premium, the remaining 45 per cent of the seats would be taken by the PD and IdV and would not have to be shared with any minor parties. This determined Berlusconi’s own strategy: knowing that the centre right was favourite to win, and knowing that the PD’s strategy made such an outcome even more likely, he too could dispense with allies; and so on the centre right the election was likewise fought by a coalition consisting of just two lists: the Popolo della libertà, which brought together Berlusconi’s FI and Gianfranco Fini’s AN, and the Northern League under Umberto Bossi. Thanks to these decisions, when on 8 May 2008 Berlusconi found himself being sworn in as the head of his fourth government, he was aware that he was becoming the head of an executive that was once again unprecedented in the history of republican Italy in that it was a coalition consisting of just two components, one accountable to a Parliament that had likewise undergone an astonishing reduction in fragmentation: the number of groups in the Chamber of Deputies declined

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to six from the fourteen in existence at the end of the previous legislature, the effective number of groups from 6.04 to 3.11.9 Berlusconi was, in effect, being given a ‘second chance’ to bring about the ‘revolution’ promised in 2001: more effective and decisive government and the achievement for Italy of what he had achieved for himself.

The fourth Berlusconi government, 2008–11 When he became prime minister, Berlusconi had four judicial proceedings pending against him: the Mills and television rights cases referred to above, together with the so-called Saccà case and a related one based on allegations that he had attempted to corrupt certain senators who in 2006 had been elected for the centre left. The latter two cases had begun with investigations initiated the previous year by the public prosecutor in Naples into allegations, based on intercepted telephone conversations, that Berlusconi had corrupted Agostino Saccà, president of Rai Fiction, the sector of the state broadcaster responsible for soap operas and other fiction-based television programmes. It was alleged that Berlusconi had, among other things, asked Saccà to find work for certain actresses in exchange for a ‘helping hand’ in a future business adventure. In seeking to get these actresses placed, Berlusconi was for his part allegedly doing a favour for a centre-left senator in the hope of winning the senator’s sympathies as part of an attempt to bring down the then Prodi government. Other cases would be added to these during Berlusconi’s time as prime minister, including the so-called Mediatrade, Ruby, voli di stato and Trani cases. The latter two were (at least relatively) trivial and, following the obligatory initial investigations, the charges were soon dropped.10 The other two were more serious. The first was linked to the aforementioned television rights case and involved allegations of undeclared transfers of money to the Swiss bank accounts of a number of Mediaset associates and thus of embezzlement and tax evasion. The second involved charges of extortion for the purposes of covering up the prostitution of minors. They arose from allegations that on 27 May 2010 the prime minister had made a telephone call to the Milan police headquarters using threats to secure the release of Karima El Mahroug (nicknamed Ruby Rubacuori), a Moroccan girl who had been present at a number of’ ‘red-light parties’ at Berlusconi’s mansion, the Villa di Arcore. The cases overshadowed the fourth Berlusconi government in several ways. In the first place, they once again gave rise to efforts to (ab)use Parliament in order to obstruct proceedings, provoking massive controversy and keeping Berlusconi’s personal affairs at the forefront of media attention. The main attempts were essentially two in number. In June 2008 the government proposed that proceedings relating to all alleged offences committed before June 2002 be suspended for one year (except in cases of alleged crimes of exceptional gravity), on the pretext that this would allow the authorities to concentrate on more serious and more recent crimes while providing the time required for the consideration of measures to improve the efficiency of the notoriously inefficient judicial system. In the end the



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government was forced to back down in the face of the public controversy that was provoked by suggestions that the proposals were both unconstitutional and likely to give rise to judicial chaos. In particular, the High Council of the Judiciary persuaded many that the proposals offended against the principles of equality before the law and the reasonable duration of judicial proceedings – meanwhile pointing out that the administrative work involved in the suspension and subsequent resumption of tens of thousands of proceedings would unreasonably delay the conclusion of other trials and be unjust towards victims forced to wait longer for trials to be concluded. Consequently, an alternative measure was passed: law no. 124/2008 of 23 July, the so-called lodo Alfano. This, in attempting to meet the objections raised by the Constitutional Court to the earlier lodo Schifani, sought once again to achieve immunity from prosecution for the prime minister (this time along with the president of the Republic and the presidents of the two chambers) for the duration of their mandates. The law remained in force until it was struck down by the Constitutional Court in October 2009. In the second place, these attempts at obstruction served to reinforce already deep-seated public impressions that corruption and sleaze were rife among the  political class of which Berlusconi was the most high-profile representative. The laws described above sat alongside several others that had been passed over the years apparently with the intent of furthering Berlusconi’s private interests in other ways besides obstructing the judicial proceedings against him; and they were now followed, in quick succession, by revelations of inappropriate conduct on the part of several centre-right politicians, beginning with Berlusconi himself. From May 2009 newspaper headlines were dominated by revelations concerning Berlusconi’s sexual conduct, beginning with claims by his wife that he had been consorting with minors, and her announcement that she would be suing for divorce. This was followed by claims on the part a 42-year-old retired actress, Patrizia d’Adario, that she had on two occasions been paid by a businessman in Bari to spend the night with the premier. In August there was controversy surrounding an article in the newspaper il Giornale, of which Berlusconi was the proprietor, concerning charges of sexual molestation taken out against Dino Boffa, editor of Avvenire, a Catholic newspaper that had been especially critical of Berlusconi’s conduct. High-profile newspaper gossip, which seemed to undermine the prime minister’s authority, continued on into 2010, reaching a high point with the abovementioned Ruby allegations, and after that into 2011. In February 2010 a corruption scandal erupted around the head of the Civil Protection Department, Guido Bertolaso, a Berlusconi confidant who had played in a key role in the government’s response to the 2009 earthquake in Acquila. On 4 May Claudio Scajola, the minister for economic development, was forced to resign when questions were raised over the source of €1 million he had used to purchase a flat in Rome; and his was followed by the resignations of the minister without portfolio, Aldo Brancher, in connection with charges of embezzlement, and of Nicola Cosentino, undersecretary of state at the Ministry for the Economy, following a range of allegations including criminal conspiracy.

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Against this background, Berlusconi’s hold on power, which had seemed so secure at the start of the legislature, was further weakened in July 2010 by the decision of Gianfranco Fini, former AN leader, to break away from the Pdl, taking with him 10 per cent of its parliamentarians and so depriving it of its former capacity to command a majority with the sole support of the Northern League. The divorce was the result of a range of specific disagreements concerning both policy and procedure, together with Fini’s aspiration to succeed Berlusconi as centre-right leader: as Hine and Vampa (2011: 70) point out, Berlusconi had always, when in office, been challenged at various turns by one or more of his allies keen to limit his power. But beneath all this, at the ideological level, it is probable that Fini’s decision reflected the belief that experience of Berlusconi at the helm had by then amply demonstrated that he was not going to be the man to give Italy the powerful conservative party – committed to the strong state and solid defence of the rule of law – it had always lacked and that Fini himself aspired to. Such aspiration was apparent from the position he publicly took immediately following the break, namely, that his new formation, Futuro e libertà per l’Italia (A Future and Freedom for Italy, Fli), would remain faithful to the programme on which the Pdl had been elected in 2008, but that if in the pursuit of further ad hoc, ad personam measures the government were to fall as a result of losing a confidence vote, then Fli would not take responsibility for its demise (Hine and Vampa, 2011: 71). The divorce also weakened, somewhat, Berlusconi’s position within the Pdl because it raised the degree of internal factionalism. On the one hand, it made another dent in the image of a man who liked to project the aura of a decisive leader able to command the loyalty of his followers. On the other hand, it left behind, in charge of the Pdl, one who was content for it to remain yet another ‘personal party’, deprived of a distinct ideological profile clearly separate from the supposedly extraordinary personal qualities of Berlusconi himself; and therefore, it left behind a party with few alternative means of retaining voter loyalty in the event that some external difficulty began to tarnish the leader’s image. Consequently, it reinforced the aspirations of those with alternative visions, such as Fini, who wanted to succeed him, knowing that Berlusconi was already well into his seventies. Factionalism, in turn, helped to perpetuate both indiscipline and the organisational weakness of the Pdl on the ground – which in turn made more likely the kinds of financial irregularity referred to above. Finally, the government’s policy-making activity disappointed commentators on both the left and the right.11 The government was perceived as somewhat inactive in important areas12 thanks to a prime minister whose priorities were focused on areas (such as the administration of justice) more directly related to his own financial and legal interests. The government’s response to the growing economic crisis highlighted the divisions within it – notably between the prime minister himself, concerned to restore declining popularity through public spending, and the finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, who wanted spending cuts – and thereby conveyed the message that the executive was unable to take decisive action.



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Together, these sets of circumstances set the stage for Berlusconi’s fall from power, which was essentially precipitated by the Eurozone crisis. Directly linked to the global financial meltdown, which started with the US subprime mortgage affair, the Eurozone crisis had its initial impact on countries such as Greece which faced spiralling debts as the slowdown in growth lowered tax receipts and increased demands on public expenditure as a result of unemployment, as well as demands from investors for higher interest rates as compensation for servicing increasingly risky levels of debt. As it became clear that even the bailouts of May 2010 (€110 billion) and July 2011 (€109 billion) would not solve the problem, investors began to worry about other Eurozone countries including Italy, whose public debt in 2011 stood at €1.9 trillion, representing about 120 per cent of GDP and second in size only to that of Greece. With fears beginning to spread that Italy too might be unable to sustain its debt, in the summer of 2011 interest rates on Italian bonds began to rise. And with the prospect that rising interest rates might bring about that very un-sustainability that was driving rates up in the first place, so the possibility that Italy might follow the road taken by Greece came to seem increasingly real. Berlusconi reacted to the pressures initially by insisting that Italy’s position was fundamentally sound;13 but this brought him into conflict with Giulio Tremonti, who called for spending cuts, now secure in the knowledge that he could afford to defy the prime minister: he could claim the support both of President Giorgio Napolitano and the ratings agencies and the markets, which seemed as though they might threaten financial disaster in the event of the finance minister’s forced resignation (Walston, 2011). In July 2011 Parliament passed a budget involving cuts of €47 billion aimed at eliminating the budget deficit by 2014, while (in what was a watered-down version of more severe proposals that had been presented by Tremonti the previous month) postponing most of the cuts to 2013 and 2014. The budget was a sign both of the inability of the executive to pass decisive measures and of a yet further decline in Berlusconi’s authority which thereby created space for an enhanced role for the president of the Republic, able to draw on formal powers not very precisely circumscribed in the Constitution to call for national cohesion while reportedly setting up an unofficial committee of senior politicians and treasury officials (Moody, 2011) and urging government and opposition to take concerted action to deal with the crisis. In the event, therefore, the budget passed without obstruction from the opposition; and most importantly, the manner of the budget’s passage revealed that Berlusconi had effectively been sidelined by the president. With the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, making strong hints from August that a solution to the Italian debt crisis required a change of government, followers of Berlusconi began to look for new political homes. Thus it was that Berlusconi was forced out, caught between opposing pressures deriving from his followers on the one hand and the EU and European leaders on the other. With yields on ten-year Italian bonds again rising towards the 6 per cent level they had topped in early August, in mid-September Parliament approved a supplementary budget designed to eliminate the deficit in 2013, a year earlier

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than originally planned. However, the bill’s passage exposed once again the government’s internal divisions as well as sparking street protests. Doubts therefore remained about its will to follow through on the measures (Babington, 2011) and on 26 October the prime minister was obliged to pledge further measures in a letter to EU leaders meeting for debt crisis talks. Meanwhile, on 10 October, the government lost a vote to approve the previous year’s public accounts thanks to numerous absences among the ranks of its own MPs and was obliged to hold it again on 8 November. The vote was important because without it, Parliament would have been unable to pass the measures pledged to the EU. In the event, the vote was won – but with 308 votes, which was eight votes short of an absolute majority in the 630-member Chamber of Deputies. Eight of Berlusconi’s followers had sided with the opposition parties, which had agreed, in the national interest, not to oppose the measure but also not to participate in the vote in order that it could be used as a means to reveal how much support the government could actually muster. By the time the answer came, an increasing number of party loyalists had been calling for Berlusconi to step aside for the good of the country and the vote effectively sealed his fate. It was to have been followed up by a confidence vote sponsored by the opposition parties, but Berlusconi outmanoeuvred them by promising to resign once the package of measures agreed with the EU had been passed. It was a last-ditch attempt to retain office: there could be no confidence vote while the measures were being discussed, and the promise might calm the markets. In the meantime, the prime minister might salvage his majority and avoid, in the end, actually having to deliver on the promise. However, the markets were not calmed, and on 9 November President Napolitano issued a statement reiterating Berlusconi’s promise (thus effectively locking him into it); clarifying that, on the basis of agreements with the presidents of the Chamber and Senate, the measures would be passed within days; and declaring that presidential consultations for a solution to the government crisis consequential upon Berlusconi’s resignation would begin immediately. It was a highly curious event politically and constitutionally: in effect, Berlusconi had been dismissed by the president.

Conclusion At the time of his resignation, commentators seemed disinclined to chance their arms by asserting too forcefully that Berlusconi’s political career had now come to an end. His history seemed to caution against this, for it suggested that here was a man capable of achieving extraordinary material success (the construction of his media empire), of delivering astonishing political results (the unification of the centre right around his own personality) and of overcoming seemingly impossible odds (his surviving, unscathed, the numerous sexual and financial scandals to which his activities gave rise). As he was a man who had at the time of his resignation just passed his seventy-fifth birthday, it seemed reasonable to assume, purely as a matter of biometrics, that he could not look forward to a very lengthy political future; but it seemed safest to conclude that he was down, but not



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necessarily out; for despite the fact that he had been defeated – or perhaps because of that – he remained a colourful personality with an undiminished capacity to arouse curiosity. For foreign observers who were steeped in the politics of Italy’s immediate neighbours and closest allies such as Germany and the UK, the curiosity was powered by a single, fundamental question: How was it possible that a man with Berlusconi’s background, profile and credentials could so dominate, for so long, the politics of an advanced industrial democracy? The answers to this question, to be explored in the following chapters, are necessarily multiple, concerning as they do a range of more specific issues. Foremost among these is Berlusconi’s role as one of Italy’s most powerful economic actors, and how it was that a man with unresolved conflicts of interest as significant as his was able to occupy, so securely, the position of prime minister in the first place – but even more extraordinarily, to take steps to exploit his position for private ends and to achieve a not insignificant degree of success in so doing. Yes, these steps provoked controversy as much in Italy as they did abroad. But his actions in this area never once directly created pressures powerful enough to enforce his resignation, something that in the context of other advanced democracies they probably would have done. In order to understand how, despite his conflict of interests, Berlusconi was able to survive, and indeed to thrive as a prime minister, we have to explore what his career tells us about the interface between the public and the private in Italy, a task to which we turn in the chapter that follows. Exploring how this interface operates, and how it compares with other countries, enables us to answer the bluntly expressed question, ‘How was he able to get away with it?’

Notes  1 At the previous election, in 1996, the incoming government had not, strictly speaking, taken office as the result of the victory of a single coalition, since the Ulivo (‘Olive Tree’) had in a number of constituencies refrained from fielding candidates. Ulivo supporters in these constituencies were instead invited to vote for Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation) whose candidates were thus given a ‘free run’ and who, for the election, adopted the label ‘Progressisti’.  2 FI’s vote declined from the 29.5 per cent it had won in 2001 to 21 per cent, while both the UDC and the League saw their vote shares rise (to 5 and 5.9 per cent respectively). Meanwhile, the parties of the centre left made only modest gains to take 46.1 per cent in 2004.  3 These were just the most pressing cases from Berlusconi’s point of view: others were on their way to being resolved, such as the case in which he had been accused of bribing Guardia di Finanza officials who had been investigating the tax affairs of four of his companies in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Having been discharged in 2000 thanks to the trial having been timed out under the statute of limitations, Berlusconi had his lawyers appeal, in October 2001, to the Court of Cassation for a conversion of the finding into a full ‘not guilty’ verdict (an appeal that was successful) (la Repubblica, 2001). Others were being investigated but had not at that point resulted in formal charges. They included the so-called Consolidato Fininvest case in which Berlusconi was accused of having used false accounting illicitly to shift 1,550 billion lire overseas

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in order to advance his media interests, manipulate the stock market and facilitate the payment of bribes to various people.  4 Justice is administered in Italy on a territorial basis. Consequently, each court has jurisdiction over a defined geographical area in deference to the defendant’s right to be tried by a ‘natural judge’, that is, one nominated before the event to try all cases of the kind in question, not one appointed ad hoc to try the specific case. Conversely, of course, it also responds to the need to avoid the risk of defendants being able to manipulate the outcome of trials by choosing who their judges are to be.  5 In the All Iberian 1 case, the allegations were that Berlusconi had used offshore accounts illegally to finance Bettino Craxi’s Socialist Party, and proceedings resulted in the entrepreneur being discharged by the Court of Cassation on 22 November 2000 as the charges were by then statute barred. For the Guardia di Finanza case, see above, n. 3.  6 Thus breaking with the traditional tendency of the party leaders to remain outside the government, the better to control it.  7 A hope that was in the end dashed when, in the run-up to the 2008 general election, Berlusconi, certain of victory and without need of Mastella’s support, refused to have him as part of his electoral coalition. As I wrote at the time, ‘in the political situation that emerged following the Government’s fall, [Mastella’s] bargaining power collapsed. As negotiations with Berlusconi became increasingly difficult, he was abandoned by his followers and his party rapidly disintegrated. Mastella being unable to find a home for himself or his few remaining followers anywhere, it was claimed that he was betrayed by a Berlusconi who had promised him a number of places in his lists and then reneged on the promise in the face of polls suggesting that it would lose him votes (Milella, 2008: 9). In the end, therefore, Mastella was forced to acknowledge  complete defeat, announcing that neither he nor his party would contest the election at all. Mastella’s must, surely, count as one of the most spectacular and picturesque of political miscalculations in the history of post-war Italian politics’ (Newell, 2009: 19).  8 On 3 September 2006 he allegedly remarked: ‘A conflict-of-interests law? It’s a mistake; let’s forget it. I guarantee, Mediaset will not be penalised. I am putting myself forward as a force of intervention [in the standoff] between the majority and Mediaset’ (quoted by Travaglio, 2010: 434–5, my translation).  9 Calculated, using the Laasko and Taagepera (1979) formula, as N = 1/ ∑ pi2, where N is the number of groups and pi is the fraction of seats of the ith group. 10 In the voli di stato case the allegation was that Berlusconi had used official aircraft for personal reasons; in the Trani case that he had brought undue pressure to bear on Agcom (Autorità per le garanzie nelle comunicazioni), the independent telecommunications authority, to stop the broadcasting of certain talk shows critical of him and was therefore guilty of abuse of office. 11 See, for example, the comment by E. Galli della Loggia in Corriere della Sera on 28 June 2010, quoted by Gualmini and Pasotti (2011: 47). 12 Examples were such fields as support for families and improving the position of the south: see the series of reports on the government’s legislative activity by Francesco Marangoni published in the Bulletin of Italian Politics, 2.1 (2010), 121–36; 2.2 (2010), 95–110; 3.1 (2011), 127–35; 3.2 (2011), 357–70, www.gla.ac.uk/bip (accessed 20 April 2018). 13 In a speech to Parliament on 3 August designed to reassure markets, Berlusconi pointed out that Italy’s banks were ‘liquid, solvent, and [had] easily passed the European stress tests’; that the country had ‘also seen significant signs of recovery despite the



Berlusconi in office111 ­uncertainty of the economic situation’; and that ‘the crisis and emergency [the government had] had to deal with in recent weeks [were] the direct consequence of a crisis of ­confidence affecting international markets … thanks both to uncertainties surrounding the euro and to financial speculation’. ‘Resoconto stenografico dell’Assemblea Seduta no. 512 di mercoledì 3 agosto 2011’, p. 14, http://leg16.camera.it/410?idSeduta =0512&tipo=stenografico#sed0512.stenografico.tit00050 (accessed 26 May 2018).

6

Berlusconi’s relations with the political class

In office as prime minister from 2001, Berlusconi was also head of a media empire, Mediaset, which was one of the largest both domestically and globally. In 2003, for instance, its share of total earnings from TV broadcasting in Italy was 33.6 per cent; its share of the earnings from television advertising, 59 per cent.1 By 2007 it reached 27th among the world’s most sizeable media companies in terms of turnover.2 So Berlusconi clearly had a conflict of interests as the term is commonly understood, namely, a situation in which his impartiality seemed likely to be undermined by the clash between his personal interests and his obligation to further the interests of the public. And there appeared to be no way of dealing with it that was acceptable to all concerned. As Giovanni Sartori (2002: 22) argued shortly after the second Berlusconi government took office, the problem was less the sheer size of his wealth than its nature and its strategic placement: the fact that he could use it to influence or control the means of mass communication and therefore manipulate the very public opinion to which he should be responsive. The setting up of a blind trust offered no solution in that the wealth was concentrated in companies of which Berlusconi was the owner rather than dispersed across a number of companies in a diversified share portfolio. Therefore it could not be managed blindly. The only effective solution would have been to force him to choose between holding government office and selling his assets. Moreover, having assumed office, Berlusconi proceeded to pass laws designed to benefit him personally. The issue of media pluralism had remained on the agenda of Italian politics since the Maccanico law of 1997 had enabled broadcasters occupying more than 20 per cent of the available terrestrial frequencies to continue broadcasting on a temporary basis, but without establishing in specific terms how long this period would be, thus giving rise, in 2002, to an unfavourable judgement on the part of the Constitutional Court. This found the law to be partially unconstitutional on the grounds that it perpetuated a situation already stated to be unconstitutional in the Court’s 1994 judgement. In the meantime, the Regulatory Authority, Agcom, had indicated that the measures necessary to enable programmes in excess of the 20 per cent limit to be broadcast via satellite or cable could be completed by 31 December 2003. In consequence, Berlusconi would be obliged to transfer the broadcasting of one of his channels to those media by that date. The government reacted by attempting, in the period leading



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up to 31 December, to pass a law extending the deadline. Initially frustrated by the president who exercised his suspensive veto, the government was able to circumvent this and enforce the extension by having recourse to a decree law issued on 24 December. In the meantime, it proceeded with the passage of legislation, eventually approved on 29 April the following year, which established the notion of an ‘integrated communications system’ (SIC) encompassing television, radio and internet broadcasting as well as the cinema and the publication of newspapers and periodicals. The 20 per cent limit would apply to the total earnings attributable to the SIC, as a consequence of which Berlusconi’s position of dominance in the field of television broadcasting would be left unaffected. Foreign observers were astonished by what they saw. Already, during the 2001 election campaign, the Economist magazine had published its (in)famous editorial suggesting that Berlusconi was unfit to be prime minister at all. Noting that ‘many Italians [were] unswayed by the case for keeping Mr Berlusconi out of high office’ as they apparently believed claims that he had been persecuted by left-wing magistrates, it concluded that ‘If the judiciary [was] indeed politically motivated, that [was] a terrible condemnation of the Italian state. If, on the other hand, the judiciary [was] independent, the public’s acquittal [was] a terrible condemnation of the electorate.’ Either way, the election of Berlusconi ‘would mark a dark day for Italian democracy’ (Economist, 2001). In January 2003 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a report on ‘Freedom of expression in the media in Europe’ in which it noted that ‘In Italy, the conflict of interest between the holding of political office by Mr Berlusconi and his private economic and media interests is a threat to media pluralism and sets a poor example for young democracies.’3 For former Economist journalist David Lane (2004: 173), ‘Berlusconi’s money, media muscle and political power made an alarming combination’. In an interview with Lane, Graham Watson, leader of the British Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament, expressed the view that ‘Berlusconi [did] not follow the rules of democracy’ and that Europe would have to ‘take steps to intervene through European-wide regulations’ (quoted by Lane, 2004: 170). In 2009 the Reporters without Borders secretary-general, Jean-François Julliard, ‘warned that Berlusconi was very close to being added to the Reporters without Borders list of Predators of Press Freedom’.4 From the point of view of the foreign observers, the reason for their astonishment was obvious. As the Economist (2001) had put it in its editorial, ‘in any normal country the voters – and probably the law – would not have given Mr Berlusconi his chance at the polls without first obliging him to divest himself of many of his wide-reaching assets’. On the other hand, it was equally obvious to observers that as an example of collusion between business and politics, of the violation of principles of pluralism, Berlusconi’s case was by no means unique in the history, remote or recent, of democratic countries – which provided the force behind the rejoinder of his defenders: ‘He was no worse than anyone else – only cleverer, and a bigger target. Why pick on the man who has the vision, flair and courage to offer his services so magnanimously to the nation?’ (Economist, 2001). Leaving aside the normative point implicit in the question, the empirical query,

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also implicit in it, needs to be addressed if we are to understand the Berlusconi phenomenon. That is, why did his situation – his conflict of interests and his penchant for ad personam legislation – arouse the ire that it did? Or better put: how are we to make sense of it? And if Berlusconi was able to acquire, retain and apparently abuse office because Italy really was other than a ‘normal country’, what was it about its abnormality that made this state of affairs possible? The answers to the two questions are very much related, being, in the second case, institutional and cultural, as I shall suggest in the third section – while the answer to the first, as I shall now argue, is that the criticisms themselves – and Berlusconi’s replies to them – reflected a fundamental normative conflict arising from management of the public and the private.

The public and the private The first point that needs to be made is that, from the perspective of human history as a whole, the distinction between the public and the private spheres, and the idea of their rigid separation, is of relatively recent origin. Machiavelli, for instance, would have struggled to understand such notions as the abuse of public office for private gain. In seeking to teach the prince how to acquire and retain power, he would have asked (understandably) why else would a person seek to hold a position if not to use it to further their interests and ensure their security? In the feudal era (which was still in full sway in most of Europe when Machiavelli was alive) everything belonged to the king, who secured his position by granting leasehold (time-limited) or freehold (indefinite, heritable) rights to use land in exchange for oaths of loyalty and material assistance from his vassals. Over the course of time, vassals were able to use this need for assistance to put an end to the arbitrary quality of royal powers by establishing the principle of the rule of law, beginning, in the British case, with Magna Carta in 1215. As the principle became ever more firmly entrenched over the succeeding centuries, so too did its corollary, namely, that the king and his representatives ruled with their subjects’ consent. Thanks to this notion, by the eighteenth century and the writings of thinkers such as Hobbes and Locke, it had become more or less a matter of consensus that, while ‘the state [had to] have a monopoly of coercive power to provide a secure basis upon which “free trade”, business and family life [could] prosper, its coercive and regulatory capability [had to] be contained so that its agents [did] not interfere with the … freedoms of individual citizens’ (Held, 1996:  75). Individuals, in other words, were to be conceived of as inhabiting a private sphere independent of the state; within this sphere they were to be left free to pursue their own interests without interference. The separation of public and private became even more firmly entrenched with the spread of industrialisation in later centuries, for then there emerged a type of society whose management was an altogether more complex affair than the management of the rural societies that had gone before – a type of society requiring legislation in vast quantities covering everything from the regulation of factories



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and transport, public health, education and more besides. And crucially, if this legislation were to be successfully implemented, if it were to achieve the compliance of those whose behaviour it aimed to address, it had to embody, and be seen to have been passed in accordance with, the fundamental principles of universalism and equality, that is, the principle that rules apply with the same force to everyone regardless of their economic or any other extraneous circumstances. Otherwise, at a time when older forms of authority – the traditional and charismatic forms identified by Max Weber – were losing their force, they would have lacked legitimacy. This required, as a necessary prerequisite, the development of rules that would outlaw the pursuit of public office for private gain, prevent conflicts of interest, criminalise bribery and extortion – rules, in short, that would guarantee universalism and equality and so ensure a more widespread and more rigid application of the rule of separation of public and private. Thus it was that with industrialisation came the emergence of the modern public administration, organised along bureaucratic lines – an administration that was capable of managing the complexities of a modern industrial society, and in which the principle of the separation of public and private reached its apogee. But not everywhere has this ideal typical mode of managing the public–­private boundary been equally successfully applied. Its management is problematic, subject to continuous negotiation, and outside a restricted number of wealthy democracies, imperfect separation lies at the root of a wide range of high-profile political problems – meaning that, on a world scale, Berlusconi’s case was by no means unusual, and was perhaps the rule rather than the exception. At one end of the spectrum are the wealthy democracies of Scandinavia and northern Europe, for example, where state institutions effectively enforce, and are subject to, rule-of-law principles of transparency, accountability, checks and balances and so on, and are therefore strong. The pursuit of wealth and power takes place through legitimate and effective channels ‘that protect and restrain activities in these arenas while maintaining boundaries and paths of access between them’ (Johnston, 2005: 7). Public power is rarely exercised in ways that depart from formal rules, inviting questions about the integrity of the officials involved; and when departures do take place they are driven by the search for specific advantages through established institutions rather than through attempts to circumvent them altogether. Then there are other market democracies, of which Italy is an example, where public institutions are weaker and where therefore the connections between economic and political elites that exist in every society often take the form of informal, collusive networks that bridge the public–private gap. Through such networks, political and economic elites provide mutual assistance, in ways both legitimate and illegitimate, in pursuit of the advantages of both. In other societies, such as Russia, the public–private boundary is more permeable still – rapid and thoroughgoing economic and political change having led to a scramble among contending elites seeking to exploit whatever political, economic and social resources they have for the purposes of acquiring and accumulating power and wealth. The weakness of judicial and representative institutions, as

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well as of civil society and the media, render any gains insecure, resulting in often routine attempts to achieve the desired security through recourse to bribery and sometimes the threat of violence. The existence of competing clans sometimes makes it difficult to know who is an entrepreneur and who a public official or representative. Finally, there are societies, such as some of the sub-Saharan African states, where the boundary between public and private all but collapses in practice. These are countries, highly dependent on agricultural or raw-materials exports, where channels of access to wealth outside the state are virtually non-existent; where widespread poverty often or almost always makes adherence to formal rules a luxury that few can afford; where principles of universalism can hardly compete with surviving patrimonial and kinship norms; and where entire state machines therefore become privatised in all but name. Aided and abetted by Western financial institutions, corrupt rulers are able to siphon off vast sums deriving from their countries’ export earnings and so perpetuate a vicious circle of poverty, lawlessness and underdevelopment. Here, the pursuit of wealth and power become completely overlapping, their security guaranteed through political oppression and violence. In every society, therefore, the security of wealth and power – or what can otherwise be referred to as the classic Hobbesian problem of order – poses a challenge that must somehow be met if the society is to continue to exist as such. In the wealthy market democracies, a solution has been found in the hegemony of rational-legal authority, underpinning a forceful public–private distinction, and so providing the necessary security through the force of legitimacy. But what is ‘public’, what is ‘private’, what is an ‘abuse’ and so on are by no means obvious, but are matters of contention. To call something an ‘abuse’, for example, is to make a value judgement; consequently, it is impossible to define the term in such a way as to eliminate all reasonable grounds for contention that any given action is covered by it. Therefore, the location of the boundary between public and private is always open to challenge, and on a day-to-day basis is constantly being challenged and hence must be continuously negotiated and managed. For example, there is hardly anything intrinsically different in the action of a member of the US House of Representatives who accepts from a friend a gift with a value of $250, and the action of another member who accepts a gift of $250.01. But whereas the first would be allowed under the House ethics rules, the second (unless written permission had been obtained from the Standards Committee) would not.5 The purpose of such rules is to enable the boundary between the public and the private to be precisely located – to enable everyone to know when it has been crossed and when it has not – and therefore to uphold the boundary itself. And of course the specification of an alternative dollar amount – say, $300 – would serve this purpose equally well. And yet ‘[t]his is not to say that the dollar amount is random or that it could be any amount and still retain its practical function’ (Bratsis, 2003: 23); for to be of any value, the limit must be credible. A larger figure – say, $1,000 – would be less effective as a tool for providing assurances that the boundary was in fact



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secure and therefore for upholding the House’s reputation. The British House of Commons recognises the difficulties that are involved here and places much more of the burden of maintaining the boundary on the judgement of its individual members. Thus, gifts of over 1 per cent of an MP’s salary ‘which in any way relates to membership of the House or to the Member’s political activity’6 must be recorded in the register of members’ interests. However, there is no actual limit to the size of the gifts that may be accepted, and the MPs’ Code of Conduct explicitly requires members to use their judgement as to whether a gift relates to their membership or political activity and therefore requires registering or not. MPs, in short, are expected to be proactive in maintaining a public–private distinction and its associated institutions, whose robustness enables power and wealth to be pursued legitimately and therefore securely. As the MPs’ Code of Conduct puts it: ‘Members shall at all times conduct themselves in a manner which will tend to maintain and strengthen the public’s trust and confidence in the integrity of Parliament and never undertake any action which would bring the House of Commons, or its Members generally, into disrepute.’7 It is not surprising, then, that British political and economic elites – the British ruling classes – are absolutely ruthless with any members who (are perceived to) step out of line. Not for them the tolerance of tax evasion, the ad personam legislation and the amnesties that make such regular appearances on the Italian political stage; for abuses, real or perceived, are disastrous from the point of view of maintaining public confidence, as they blatantly contradict those principles of legality, due process and formal equality on which the power and authority of the ruling class as a whole depends. They are a form of free riding that threatens the class collectively. So Berlusconi’s sin, then, was that he conducted himself in such a way as to undermine an important distinction, the upholding of which, his critics recognised, was essential to the maintenance of the institutions that underpinned the established order. And in an era in which, thanks to technological advances, an increasingly integrated world was shrinking and coming to resemble a global village, the significance of Berlusconi’s conduct for elites beyond Italy was correspondingly magnified. The point can be made another way. Institutions ensure human survival, for, by existing over and above the individual, constraining and challenging his or her actions, they render the actions of others predictable. However, they are also inherently fragile, as they have no existence independently of the actions of individuals collectively, but rather exist only in virtue of humans’ ongoing interaction – making them vulnerable to altered patterns of interaction. This, in turn, creates a problem of compliance and therefore of legitimation – the solution to which relies, in part at least, on the fact that the institutions themselves, by definition, embody shared knowledge about ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ forms of behaviour. Consequently, the individual’s social world becomes, for him or her, the world tout court, and what is taken for granted as knowledge in his or her ­particular society comes to provide ‘the framework within which anything not yet known will come to be known in the future’ (Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 75). It is in this light, too, that foreign observers’ criticisms of Berlusconi

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and suggestions that he was the reflection of an Italian ‘abnormality’ must be understood: The appearance of an alternative symbolic universe poses a threat because its very existence demonstrates empirically that one’s own universe is less than inevitable. As anyone can see now, it is possible to live in this world without the institution of cousinhood after all. And it is possible to deny or even mock the gods of cousinhood without at once causing the downfall of the heavens. This shocking fact must be accounted for theoretically, if nothing more. (Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 126)

Now, when a person is accused of a sin, they can react in one of two ways. They can confess and repent; or they can resist the pressure for confession and ­repentance – either by denying that they have committed a sin at all or by seeking to ‘normalise’ their actions. Reactions of the latter kind are very common. T. Dan Smith, the charismatic leader of Newcastle City Council jailed in the 1970s for taking bribes from the architect John Poulson, observed that the implication of so many … authors … was that I was a crooked councillor … Nothing could be further from the truth … I think [Poulson] behaved in a way … common to most businesses, of offering holidays, entertainment. If that is corrupt … the boxes at Ascot and Wimbledon are full of the recipients of the same kind of inducements. I’m not condoning it, but it’s a matter of how you interpret business ethics … what Poulson did was typically common of business practices then and now. (quoted by Garrard, 2006: 16)

Sergio Moroni, the Socialist deputy who killed himself having become caught up in Tangentopoli, wrote in his suicide note, An enormous veil of hypocrisy (shared by all) has for many years shrouded the mode of functioning of the parties and the means whereby they have been financed. The establishment of regulations and laws that one knows cannot be respected is a typically Italian way of doing things – one that is inspired by the tacit assumption that at the same time it will be possible to agree upon the establishment of procedures and behaviours which, however … violate the very same regulations … I began my political activity in the PSI when I was very young, only 17 years of age. I still remember passionately many ideological and political battles, but I made a mistake in accepting the ‘system’, believing that accepting contributions and help for the party was justified in a context in which this was the normal practice. (quoted by Colaprico, 1996: 31–2, my translation)

A member of staff of the European Bank in Brussels, interviewed by David Nelken for a study of EU fraud, observed that When there is a goose which lays golden eggs anyone who can help themselves does so … The Ministers for Agriculture, the Ministers for ‘the South’ (Mezzogiorno), Under-secretaries, regional presidents, everyone, some to a



Berlusconi’s relations with the political class119 greater some to a lesser extent, have taken eggs from this goose … not just organized crime … And then who is really ‘honest’ in this system? And what does honesty even mean nowadays? Nothing more than a pretty word… (quoted by Nelken, 2003: 229–30)

In all these cases, the proffered justification is essentially ‘Everyone is doing it, so I cannot be considered blameworthy.’ An alternative – such as the one offered by an inspector associated with the Italian Ministry of Agriculture Intervention Agency, AIMA, in connection with the abovementioned EU fraud study – is, ‘I had no choice’: Whether it was this or some other job it would always be the same story … We are not living in the North here. Here you have to bend to those in command if you want to eat … I do what I do to please ‘the friends’ who have helped me get a secure job for life. (quoted by Nelken, 2003: 231)

The general explanation as to why people seek to justify themselves in these ways has been provided by Leon Festinger (1957) and his theory of cognitive dissonance. According to this, the performance of an action that contradicts beliefs, ideas or values that the person holds will create for him or her a state of ­psychological discomfort that he or she will seek to overcome, if not by changing his behaviour, then by justifying the behaviour, or by ignoring or denying the contradictory beliefs as means of overcoming dissonance. In the case of behaviour deemed ethically dubious, then, the person is likely to adopt these strategies as a means of reconciling their knowledge of what they have done with their desire to hold fast to a conception of themselves as a person who is ethically upright. Berlusconi has been no exception to this. When confronted with suggestions that the June 2008 proposals concerning the suspension of judicial proceedings were driven by his own legal difficulties, he responded, in an angry letter to the president of the Senate, with a strategy of denial: once again, according to the opposition, the amendment presented by the two rapporteurs – a measure in the interests of the entire community that will make it possible to provide for citizens an effective response to the most serious and most recently committed crimes – should not be approved simply because it would also apply to proceedings in which I have incredibly and unjustifiably found myself embroiled. This is a state of affairs that is absolutely without equal in the Western world. I am therefore absolutely convinced, having been dragged into an infinite number of proceedings and thousands of hearings that  have burdened me with enormous human and financial costs, that it is essential to introduce in our country, in the interests of civility and order, a measure that will protect the high offices of state and the constitutional ­framework, by suspending any proceedings, together with the relevant time limits, for the duration of their mandates. (quoted by Travaglio, 2010: 472, my translation)

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Likewise, with regard to his conflict of interests, he suggested: ‘If I, taking care of everyone’s interests, also take care of my own, you can’t talk about a conflict of interests.’8 Sometimes, when he felt placed on the defensive, he responded with counterallegations, as, for example, in 2004 when the Economist published a spoof report on the affairs of the Mafia outlining, among other things, the ways in which his government’s measures had supposedly assisted the organisation’s activities (Economist, 2004). In that case he sued for defamation, an action that could be understood as an expression of the power struggle that is always initiated when allegations of improper behaviour are made against public figures: allegations of impropriety threaten a person’s reputation and therefore one of their most valuable power resources. And of course, his often repeated allegation, when one of his legal cases hit the headlines, that he was the victim of a judicial witch hunt (amounting to a denial of wrongdoing) belongs to the same category. But beyond these specific instances, Berlusconi seems, in relation to the general issue of his conflict of interests, to have felt little need to respond. This, I would suggest, is because he felt able to justify his behaviour in terms of a belief that his critics were essentially hypocritical. That is, he knew that rules of probity, while essential for the legitimate pursuit of power and wealth, were neutral with respect to the distribution of these resources. Thereby, he was able to tap a deep vein of popular cynicism driven by the belief that beneath – for example – the rhetoric of equality before the law everyone is not equal: that the wealthy can afford expensive lawyers to help them conquer positions of power inaccessible to the majority of the population (Berardi, 2011); that beneath the rhetoric of political equality, elites by definition remain more influential than non-elites; that thereby rules on the separation of public and private can ensure that influence is exercised legally but can never ensure that it is exercised equally – and so on. In a sense, the various ways in which Berlusconi flouted established rules and protocols drew strength from such popular perceptions of official hypocrisy, so that his violation of official taboos was part of his popular appeal. The belief that his critics were hypocritical would have seemed the more persuasive to Berlusconi by virtue of the fact that, in Italy, the gap between the legal separation of public and private, and the reality of private influence, has traditionally been (perceived to be) wider than in some other Western democracies. This throws a spotlight on the second of the questions posed at the outset of this chapter; for Berluconi’s conflict of interests arose in a context in which the relationship between public and private has often been managed in ways that would seem odd, not to say inappropriate, elsewhere, but which ‘make sense’ in the Italian context.

Public and private in Italy In essence, the weakness of public institutions and the hegemonic role of the political parties in the state and civil society in post-war Italy has meant that, for much of the period, individual businesses have operated in a context of considerable potential uncertainty. Uncertainty is anathema to business, as it makes



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difficult, if not impossible, the rational planning of investment. Deprived of the legislative and public administrative certainty needed for sound investment decisions, entrepreneurs were for long dependent on politicians for a range of routine business matters – from town-planning decisions to those concerning the award of public works contracts – a situation that they often sought to deal with by ­cultivating the support of individual politicians who would seek to further their clients’ interests in exchange for financial support that was not infrequently corrupt. Berlusconi’s association with Bettino Craxi, as we have seen in earlier chapters, was a key factor in the growth of his media empire in the 1980s and, from the perspective of relations between businesses and individual politicians generally, the association was not much more than a particularly high-profile example of relations that were not uncommon. Patrick McCarthy (1995) uses the term ‘clan’ in this connection. A clan is a group or fraternity of people who are related, either by ties of kinship or, colloquially, by a strong common interest; and if Berlusconi was a member of Craxi’s clan, then there were others he could have joined. For example, seven-times prime minister Giulio Andreotti had a clan comprising the chemicals industrialist Nino Rovelli, the building contractors of the Caltagirone family, parts of the Catholic banking sector and numerous politicians such as Vittorio Sbardella (responsible for Rome) and Salvo Lima (responsible for Sicily). Seen from this perspective, Berlusconi’s entry into politics – driven by the disgrace of former politicians who had been so useful to him and the fear that his financial interests might be irremediably damaged by their fall – represented less the subordination of political to economic power that is implied by his conflict of interests, but rather, as McCarthy argues, the attempt to create a new clan. In other words, the conflict of interests arose essentially from an overlap between the state and markets, between political and economic power, that was already considerable. In order to understand why this was the case we have to look back to the fall of the Fascist regime in 1943; for the effect of this was to create a power vacuum in which, with no authority to turn to other than the Nazis and Fascists, ordinary Italians took as points of reference the Church and the Resistance movement, dominated as they were by the re-emergent political parties, notably the Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democrats) – formed in 1942 as a revival of the earlier Italian People’s Party – and the Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party) – whose origins went back to the Bolshevik Revolution and a split in the Partito Socialista Italiano (Italian Socialist Party, PSI) in 1921. Under these circumstances the parties were able to penetrate the interstices of civil society and the state, becoming the main channel for the transmission of resources from centre to periphery. On the one hand, popular backing for the Resistance movement gave the parties significant influence over the reconstruction of social organisations and interest groups, enabling the DC and the PCI to establish territorially based political subcultures: the Catholic one in the north-eastern regions of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige (where under the Austrian Empire before Italian unification, the local clergy had defended Italian nationalism) and

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the Marxist one in the central regions of Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria and Marche (where oppressive rule under the Papal States meant that the movement for unification had been driven by anti-clerical sentiments, thus favouring the subsequent rise of socialism). On the other hand, since interest-group ties and subcultures shored up popular support for the parties, these became a favoured channel through which some of the most influential groups sought to ­communicate with decision makers. Consequently, instead of aggregating demands, the parties often acted as instruments of the groups, transmitting to government sectional demands – and thus helping to sustain a tendency for power to be managed in clientelistic ways. Clientelism had roots that went back to the failure of the 1861 unification to produce an effective nationally integrating ideology, and the consequent difficulties of the state in asserting its authority against unofficial power centres and local elites, which sought to manipulate public institutions to their own advantage. In the post-war period, southern poverty – by sustaining mistrust and thus undermining the potential for collective action – also played a role, as did the dependence of southern economic activity on the state for its implantation and development. By enhancing their rivalry, the new institutions of representative democracy ensured that politicians would retain power only to the degree that they successfully responded to the clientelistic favours their voters sought. Against this background, business and politics became increasingly intertwined, for two interlinked sets of reasons. One had to do with the characteristics of the post-war party system which considerably strengthened the parties’ penetration of civil society and the state; for the development of the Cold War led to the emergence of the conventio ad excludendum, the refusal of the DC or any of the other parties from the PSI rightwards to be involved in any kind of alliance with the Communists. Excluded, thereby from any possibility of joining the government, the PCI was joined in permanent opposition by the neofascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement) – formed in 1946 by former junior officials of the Republica di Salò – also regarded as a pariah party. Under these circumstances, the DC emerged at every election until 1994 as the largest party, able to attract votes from both sides of the political spectrum as the main bulwark against the extremes of left and right. It was, therefore, the mainstay of all feasible governing coalitions; and as the exclusion of left and right rendered impossible bipolar party competition – and as, in the context of a proportional electoral system, governing coalitions were decided only after election results were known – the DC found itself permanently in office, governing in coalition with shifting combinations of the parties – Social Democrats, Republicans, Liberals and (from 1963) Socialists – to its immediate left and right. This placed significant clientelistic barriers, which were self-reinforcing, in the way of coherent legislative programmes and effective policy making. On the one hand, coherent legislation was hardly required, as electoral competition was intensely ideological: voters were mobilised by the governing parties’ roles as bulwarks against the ‘anti-system’ oppositions rather than by their policy performance as such. Hence the parties found it difficult to maintain the ­cohesion



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and discipline of parliamentary followers that would have been required to make coherent policy making possible in the first place. On the other hand, they used their colonisation of the public sector to cultivate ‘niche markets’ among the electorate through a politics of patronage that encouraged the emergence of party factions, and within them lengthy clientele chains, from centre to periphery, through which politicians traded power and influence. Consequently, whenever circumstances required an authoritative policy response, the instincts of faction members would be to prioritise defending the interests of their specific groups of electors and to block measures if necessary. And they were effectively able to do this because the DC always only had a relative majority. This meant that Italy was governed by unstable, frequently changing coalitions whose formation was said to take place, according to popular mythology, by reference to precepts laid down in the so-called Manuale Cencelli. This was attributed to a DC functionary, Massimiliano Cencelli, who is supposed to have set out formulae for the distribution of government and other posts among factions and parties according to their relative political weights by analogy with the distribution among shareholders of seats on a company board. In such a context, the economy in effect became politicised. As the governing parties were brokerage parties, constellations of factions, their power came from their ability to satisfy a wide range of particularistic interests. And the largest of them, the DC, could only continue to play its bulwark role to the extent that it was successful in mobilising support on a cross-class basis – which in turn meant that it had to avoid relations of dependence on large industry. It achieved this, from 1954, through the systematic colonisation of the state sector of the economy, which was the largest outside the Communist bloc. The acquisition, for party placemen, of positions on the boards of state holding companies and the boards of agencies and companies they in turn controlled were used ‘to provide jobs for party supporters (especially in the south), votes for the parties (through “welfarist” policies to protect employment and wages), and money for parties and individuals (through obtaining bribes for awarding public works contracts)’ (Bull and Newell, 2005: 175). Entrepreneurs, for their part, were often able to do little but to bend to politicians’ demands. Italian capitalism had developed in such a way that, compared to the EU average, far larger proportions of production and employment were accounted for by small rather than large firms (Bull and Newell, 2005: Table 10.3). Consequently, with the spread of corruption from around the mid-1970s (Hine, 1995, 185–6; Rhodes, 1997: 56; Della Porta and Vannucci, 1999a), the average businessperson was vulnerable to the imposition of ‘informal ”taxes” paid in anticipation of the protection the parties could afford’ (Johnston, 2005: 95). The Italian capital market was underdeveloped, making businesses unusually dependent for corporate finance on lending by the banks, the most significant of which were part of the system of state holding companies and therefore heavily influenced, if not controlled, by the parties. Even large firms – such as FIAT, Olivetti, Pirelli, Ferruzzi, Benetton and so on – tended to be family-owned entities and as such in need of good political connections (to ensure, for example, the provision

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of regulations and practices concerning shareholding and the stock exchange that would protect the interests of family dynasties against those of minority shareholders). The interlinking of clientelism and corruption at the interface between politics and the economy is starkly illustrated by Della Porta and Vannucci, who note that public prosecutors involved in the 1990s Mani pulite investigations had become aware that ‘the decision as to which firm should be awarded the tender was determined by an assessment of which of those firms would likely generate the highest degree of political support (and thus clientele) in carrying out the work requirements of the tender’. Luigi Bosso, for example, managing director of Napoletanagas, hired persons according to the importance of the politician seeking to place them: ‘When I take on personnel I choose the persons indicated by all the parties with whom I have relations. For the higher level politicians, the faction chiefs of the majority parties, the general rule is to keep them happy … in order to have their support. They can influence those within their party who occupy administrative positions.’ (1997: 241–2)

The mass media, public and private, were part of the same system and never truly autonomous from politics. In the initial decades of the twentieth century, limited sales made it difficult for newspapers to turn a profit and they therefore tended to be subsidised either by political parties or large industrialists, who bought them – Agnelli’s purchase of La Stampa being the classic example – in order to exercise a voice in Italian politics. This situation persisted after the Second World War: as journalists and editors were recruited more for their political commitments than anything else, their writing reflected the desire of elites to speak to other elites and was therefore uninspiring and of little interest to the mass public. Notions of ‘objectivity’ in reporting tended to be rejected as an unrealisable ideal and codes of journalistic ethics only appeared towards the 1990s. Long before the growth of Berlusconi’s media empire, the public service broadcaster, RAI, had been since its inception ‘subject to political interference of varying intensity’ (Hanretty, 2010: 85). It was, until the 1960s, largely controlled by the DC (later in conjunction with its allies) and it is noteworthy that this was justified in precisely the same terms that Berlusconi used to justify his own control of significant media resources, ‘the situation in which [he found himself having] been well known to the 18 million Italians who voted for [him]’ (quoted by Travaglio, 2010: 302). As a minister said towards the end of the 1950s: ‘Naturally, the board of RAI decides [shouts from the left]. Well, if you don’t like that, then the DC decides. You don’t like that either? Do you mind that Italians have given the DC a majority? It is the Italian people that decide to elect men inspired by the principles of the Christian Democracy [applause from the left].’ (quoted by Hanretty, 2010: 91)

I earlier suggested that politics and business were closely intertwined in the early post-war decades for another set of reasons besides the party system and the



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power of the parties. These reasons were cultural. The failure, mentioned above, of the unification process to produce an effective nationally integrating ideology, the traumatic experience of Fascism and the identities of the main political parties all left Italians, in the war’s immediate aftermath, without a positive sense of national identity or confidence in the institutions of government. Neither the DC nor the PCI were able effectively to inculcate among their followers values of democratic patriotism and public spiritedness due to the fact that the c­ ommunities of reference of both parties were ones other than the national community. For the PCI it was the international working class; for the DC it was the world-wide Catholic Church. For these reasons, it was anti-fascism, not national identity, that underpinned the restoration of democracy in Italy; and yet neither party was able to afford, to the other, unconditional recognition as a fully legitimate actor. Consequently, the allegiance to democracy and the Constitution inculcated by the parties could only ever be an indirect one, through the parties themselves. In other words, citizens’ primary loyalties were party-political, not ‘national’, in nature. In turn, the missing sense of ‘nation’ meant that there was a scarcity of social capital as indicated by the proportion of people who accorded legitimacy to public institutions, who showed a sense of belonging to a community, respect for rules, interpersonal trust, membership of voluntary associations and other social networks, and so forth. In such a context, clientelistic and other behaviour indicative of an imperfect separation of public and private seemed normal. This explains why, in denouncing investigations into allegations against him as the work of communist sympathisers who had been using the judicial system ‘to eliminate political adversaries … by means of contrived allegations … and monstrous sentences’ (quoted by Della Porta and Vannucci, 1999b: 56), Berlusconi, as mentioned at the end of the previous section, met a certain popular echo. On the one hand, he drew on widespread popular perceptions that justice not infrequently was delivered in ways that fell short of ensuring equality before the law, as well as the widely adhered-to norm (exemplified by Moroni’s note cited earlier) that law and its enforcement were to be considered as something negotiable (LaPalombara, 1987: 50). On the other hand, he drew on the social norm of reciprocity, which enjoins that the recipient of a favour will himself be willing to do something similar when asked. Under such circumstances, opposition to his more self-serving activities could appear to break the norm of reciprocity, for it would prompt the question on the part of his supporters: since everyone behaves in a similar fashion or is prepared to do so if necessary, why target him rather than someone else (Varese, 2000: 12)? Lined up against him and his supporters were ‘those who [saw] themselves as the guardians of a civic morality embodying ideals about what an anti-Fascist, democratic republic should be like’ (Newell, 2004: 259). They included the public prosecutors of the Mani pulite investigations. They included many of the politicians on the centre left. They included those involved in the so-called girotondi. These were a series of anti-Berlusconi demonstrations organised by a loose network of intellectuals in the early months of 2002. Finding their supporters mainly from among white-collar employees, teachers and the better educated – people

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more likely to vote for the centre left than the centre right (ITANES, 2001) – the girotondi gave expression to the fears of an ‘informed middle class’. The interests of this class were much threatened by the attitudes expressed by the likes of Berlusconi and by his apparent success in using his public position in pursuit of his private interests. In undermining the norm that laws should embody principles of impartiality and universalism, his activities were subversive of principles whose inflexible application was essential if members of this class were to be able to engage in the practices of ‘social closure’ (Parkin, 1979) that enabled them to claim for themselves larger shares of material resources than those available to people lower down the class structure. The cultural conflict we are implying here thus expressed a real, material conflict between categories of people with different interests.

Conclusion Berlusconi’s situation and the antagonism that it aroused were thus the expression of a cultural conflict beneath which a power struggle was going on. On the one side were those seeking to defend rules concerning the competitive pursuit of private gain. One of these rules is that it is illegitimate to seek advantage over others by attempting to drag public officials into the competition through, for example, bribery. Another is that those who make the laws concerning the pursuit of private gain should not be the same people as those to whom the laws apply. To undermine these rules in the way that Berlusconi appeared to do is to threaten the legitimacy of the existing distribution of power and wealth. To condemn one who infringes them is to provide reassurances that the rules themselves remain intact. On the other side were Berlusconi and his supporters, who could point out that they were acting in a context in which these rules were weakly applied, and who seem to have been driven by the awareness that from the point of view of the larger issue of the subordination of political to economic power, the rule stipulating that the lawmaker must be someone other than the person subject to the law is not necessarily of much relevance; that if the point of the rule is to ensure that laws are free of any arbitrary quality, it is a failure, since economic power – distributed according to market not normative criteria, and therefore itself arbitrary – confers political power; that conversely, there are no substantive consequences that inevitably follow from situations in which the lawmaker is the same person as the one to whom the law applies. It was as if he were saying, ‘Judge me not by the actions I take to help myself, but by the results I achieve for you.’ A rule is a criterion of behaviour that indicates right and wrong ways of doing things and whose infringement is to some greater or lesser degree morally condemned in the group whose social existence gives rise to it. So from the perspective of those viewing Berlusconi from contexts in which infringement of the rules separating public and private was heavily condemned, the consternation aroused by his tenure made sense. But so too did the point of view of Berlusconi; for he was simply reflecting the social and political context in which he grew up and made his fortune, a context in which infringement of the rules was less heavily



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condemned. He was, in that sense, no novelty, but merely a man of his time. Like everyone else, he was a product of his circumstances. And yet he made his political debut at a time of rapid and fundamental change and hopes for improvement in the enforcement of rules; so it is perhaps also because his conduct seemed if anything to have negative implications in this regard that his career has aroused so much curiosity. This raises the question of his legacy. It is often argued that Berlusconi’s reaction to the legal difficulties arising out of his business career, particularly in terms of the ad personam laws introduced from 2001, has had negative consequences for the quality of Italian democracy, but the claim so far lacks a secure empirical foundation. It is a claim we shall seek to explore in some detail in chapter 10 once we have considered, in the following three chapters, his impact in the areas of popular culture, voting behaviour and public policy.

Notes 1 Agcom, Relazione annuale sull’attività svolta e sui programmi di lavoro 2004, p. 113, https://www.agcom.it/relazioni-annuali (accessed 26 May 2018). 2 Digital News, ‘Mediaset precede Rai e RCS nella classifica del mercato mondiale dei media’, 17 May 2008, http://www.digital-news.it/news.php?id=14138 (accessed 20 April 2018). 3 http://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/X2H-Xref-ViewHTML.asp?FileID=9940&lang= EN (accessed 20 April 2018). 4 https://rsf.org/en/news/reporters-without-borders-rome-defend-press-freedom (acc­es­ sed 20 April 2018). 5 http://ethics.house.gov/gifts/gift-exceptions-0/gifts-given-basis-personal-friendship (accessed 18 April 2018). 6 ‘The Code of Conduct together with The Guide to the Rules relating to the Conduct of Members’, p. 10, https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmcode/735/ 735.pdf (accessed 20 April 2018). 7 Ibid., p. 5. 8 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15642201 (accessed 20 April 2018).

Part IV

Berlusconi’s legacy

7

Berlusconi and cultural change in Italy

In order to understand why Berlusconi has been able to wield such power for such a considerable length of time, we have to understand the effect he has had on the minds of his collaborators and supporters, and of the Italian public generally. In other words, we have to understand his impact on popular culture, meaning here the thoughts and actions that are indicative of the way in which ordinary people interpret social and political reality and represent it to themselves. Culture clearly doesn’t fully explain phenomena such as those commonly associated with Silvio Berlusconi, for culture is inherent in what we understand by action. ‘Action’ is behaviour that an actor controls in the sense of being able to act differently if he or she chooses. Therefore, we cannot identify a piece of behaviour as an action of this or that type without implicitly committing ourselves to the existence of certain desires or beliefs that produced it. In other words, ‘we cannot describe an action’ – carrying an umbrella, for example – ‘without thereby committing ourselves to the existence of desires and beliefs that contain descriptions of that action’. Conversely, we cannot describe a set of beliefs and desires – for example, the belief that carrying an umbrella will help keep me dry today – without referring to the actions that are supposedly their effects – carrying an umbrella – because ‘description of the belief makes reference to the action itself’ (Rosenberg, 1988: 38). Therefore, actions on the one hand and desires and beliefs on the other are logically, not contingently, connected; and because they are not contingently connected, they cannot be causally connected.1 Culture is embodied in the desires and beliefs of individuals, and it has no existence apart from these desires and beliefs. The fact that cultures are objectified in works of art etc. does not change this. Hence culture cannot explain the behaviour or characteristics of a group, since it is already a defining feature of the behaviour and characteristics themselves – meaning that cultural ‘explanations’ are tautological,2 and overlook the crucial role of factors or variables that can be genuinely identified and measured independently of the phenomena to be explained. Gianpasquale Santomassino puts this very well when he notes Giulio Bollati’s (1972) point that ‘there was nothing in Fascism quod prius non fuerit in Italian society, culture and politics, except fascism itself’ – meaning that ‘all the elements that would come together to constitute Fascism were already present in Italy, but that what was decisive was the existence of a catalyst that would aggregate and fuse them, in a very particular

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situation’ (Santomassino, 2011: 3). So as Enrica Asquer notes, the cultural phenomena linked with Berlusconi and his history cannot, for example, explain directly and in a mechanical way the behaviour of those who have voted for the centre right in recent years. There is no automatic link between our reading habits or our television viewing habits and the parties we vote for. The connection, if it exists, remains to be demonstrated and is undoubtedly more complex than we think. (2011: 106)

Culture is nevertheless important in helping us to understand phenomena such as those commonly associated with Silvio Berlusconi because it renders them intelligible: it renders them meaningful and therefore helps us to make sense of them. It helps us to appreciate why, for example, support for Berlusconi could seem reasonable – as Orsina recognises when he notes that Berlusconismo can only be understood if one is willing to make the effort to look at the world from the point of view of one who has voted for it. Berlusconi’s is a Ptolemaic universe which has hitherto been studied almost exclusively by very faithful – indeed, often intransigent and bad-tempered – followers of Copernicus. (2013: 13)

If this serves as a reminder that people act in the light of their taken-for-granted cultural assumptions, then the fact that they do so reveals that culture is extraordinarily powerful, making possible the exercise of hegemony in the Gramscian sense, that is, in the sense of the imposition on citizens of norms and values that they view as inevitable, and take for granted, so that they behave in ways functional to the maintenance and development of the (current, hierarchical) social and political order. The questions we are concerned with in this chapter, then, are threefold. Among the cultural changes that coincided with the growth and consolidation of Berlusconi’s power, which are the most significant? To what extent was Berlusconi responsible for them? To what extent did they assist him?

Cultural change: growing individualism Berlusconi’s rise to power really began to take off in earnest in 1980, a year widely recognised as marking the start of a period of wide-ranging and incisive cultural change based on growing material prosperity, the emergence or accentuation of individualistic values of various kinds and a series of concomitant political developments. Widespread prosperity meant a growth in consumption, which coincided with a decline in the political and social tensions of the 1970s and their associated activism and ideological debates, giving rise to what became known as the ‘retreat to the private sphere’. If the tensions of the 1970s had revolved around the themes of equality and the collective – especially as expressed in the protests of far-left political organisations, in industrial militancy, and in the



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(not infrequently subversive) activity of groups on the far right – then the 1980s’ ‘retreat’ was associated with the rise of new aspirations of an individualistic kind expressed in a myriad of ways: the emergence of ‘identity politics’; significant trade union defeats; the disappearance, from the collective imaginary, of the bluecollar worker cultural stereotype; the spread of share ownership and other forms of ‘popular finance’; and the growth and consolidation of self-employment and of the so-called ‘Third Italy’, based on small and very small enterprises with the associated phenomena of tax evasion and the ‘submerged’ or underground economy. Concomitantly, neoliberal ideas and opposition to state intervention became hegemonic, as part of an international trend spearheaded in the United States by Ronald Reagan and in Europe by Margaret Thatcher, with her belief that ‘there is no such thing as society’ only ‘individual men and women’. The informal ties linking politicians and business people described in chapter 6 gained in solidity, along with the illegal funding of political parties. The Italian Socialist Party lost touch with its traditional ideals and became a party of the aspirational, not to say a party of opportunists, for whom membership was essentially part of a search for avenues of upward mobility. Indispensable to processes of government formation from 1983, the party was able to exploit its power to entrench itself ever more firmly in the interstices of the state for the purposes of patronage and to win a high profile for its leader, Bettino Craxi, whose watchwords were modernizazione and decisionismo, not ‘equality’ or ‘the working class’. Meanwhile, the Italian Communist Party, in decline after its high point of 1976 when it took over a third of the vote, found its ideology and position as a mass party of workers under pressure as never before. Its denunciation of ‘the moral question’, arising from illegitimate public–private links and associated instances of corruption, helped to nourish the spread of anti-political sentiments. It found itself and its Resistance symbols under virulent attack from a Socialist Party keen to avoid being cannibalised by the Christian Democrats to its right and the Communists to its left. With the collapse of the Berlin Wall and its aftermath, the Communists’ commitment to ideas of political and social transformation, already fading, was finally extinguished, its ability to sustain any real counter-culture – around the values of social solidarity in opposition to the prevailing values of individual aspiration and material acquisition – long gone. Berlusconi was a leading protagonist of these processes of cultural change. In 1980 he launched Canale 5, the first of the television stations that would revolutionise TV broadcasting in Italy and eventually enable him to emerge as a duopolist in the television market thanks to his control of the lion’s share of the private broadcasting sector. Berlusconi’s television was almost completely new in that it was entirely geared to selling: its mission was to produce programmes that would maximise audiences and thereby maximise sales of advertising space. In order to achieve this he had to ensure that both programmes and advertising were enjoyable to watch, meaning that he had to be well-informed about the outlooks, attitudes and lifestyles of the audiences his programmes were aimed at. He was able to accomplish all of this thanks to his intuition that the effective use of advertising could help him to grow enormously. Legislation limited the

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amount of advertising the state television network could carry while demand for it was increasing by leaps and bounds. Berlusconi’s private-sector rivals viewed advertising as an intrusion that would drive away audiences if done to excess. Berlusconi understood that if inserted at the right moments during broadcasts, and if done effectively, large quantities of advertising could, by bringing in revenues to allow his broadcasting companies to grow and develop, attract audiences in a virtuous circle. The kind of television that resulted from this has been described by Paul Ginsborg, who reflects a view of Berlusconi as the emblem of a process of cultural decay, and offers a dark and depressing portrayal of Italian television tout court: since the state broadcasters were rivals of Berlusconi in the television duopoly that came to be created in the 1980s, their programming came to reflect that pioneered by the entrepreneur. It was a television that engendered conformity, conservative values and material aspiration; its advertising presented viewers not just with products, their qualities and benefits, but with desirable and enticing lifestyles. Advertisements, variety shows and drama provided a constant stream of images of the ideal family described in chapter 10 – inward looking, surrounded by consumer goods, with female members in traditional roles (Ginsborg, 2003: 31). Programming was generally bland and insipid and eschewed the more innovative and radical forms that the state broadcaster had been experimenting with at the time of Berlusconi’s stations’ emergence, but which it was now forced to abandon thanks to the competitive pressures of the new stations (Santomassino, 2011: 8). The messages conveyed by Berlusconi’s broadcast media were, then, fully consonant with the neoliberal values that gained an increasing hold from the 1980s, and that were in turn fully consonant with Berlusconismo as outlined chapter 2. In this context it may be suggested that Berlusconi’s media empire assisted him politically in several ways. First, if the raison d’être of Berlusconi’s broadcasting was the provision of entertainment as a means of maximising advertising revenue, then political perspectives and outlooks were embedded in the entertainment. While there is, perhaps, a tendency to assume that politics is confined to news and current affairs broadcasts, political views are conveyed and reinforced by entertainment as well. For example, ‘Curran and Sparks … take two stories, each apparently devoid of political content. The first tells how an Irish international footballer punched a taxi driver; the second is about a 39-year old woman who leaves the family home and has an affair with a 19-year old man’ (Street, 2001: 62). The significance of ‘human interest’ stories such as these is that they reinforce society-wide norms and thereby arguably promote an image of society as socially integrated, ‘in which the existence of fundamental differences of interest is tacitly denied and a commonality of interest and identity is regularly affirmed’ (Street, 2001: 62). Satire, conspiracy movies, soap operas, game shows, situation comedies: critics and social scientists have interpreted all of them at one time or another as purveyors of political messages. Second, the emphasis on entertainment in the mission statements of large, privately owned media corporations such as Berlusconi’s Mediaset means that



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the boundary between news and politics on the one hand, and entertainment on the other, has become increasingly blurred as the broadcasters have sought to provide news in increasingly entertaining ways – as the provision of news has itself become a form of entertainment.3 This in turn has had two effects. First, in combination with the growing importance of the broadcast media for campaigning, it has meant that parties and politicians have had to adapt their communication styles to media imperatives in ways in which Berlusconi, of all politicians, has been very well placed to do. Second, while policy-making is of necessity dull and impersonal and requires time, effective television requires the dramatic, the personal and compressed time frames. The divergence between the two and the attempt to present the former within the frameworks of the latter arguably contributes to that popular sense of frustration and lack of confidence in politicians and the political process that populist politicians such as Berlusconi typically exploit to good effect. Third, Berlusconi has, over the years, often claimed that Italian television, both his own and the public television he was in a position to influence as prime minister, has reflected principles of pluralism and free expression that belie accusations about the construction of a political consensus favouring him or anyone else particularly. Figures showing the relative amounts of exposure gained by alternative politicians might cast doubt on this. Dissenting voices among TV personalities have from time to time provoked punitive measures on the part of politicians, including Berlusconi himself.4 ‘Power does not lie in the hands of those who appear on television. It lies in the hands of those who allow them to appear on television’ (Maurizio Costanzo, 28 August 2001, quoted by Ginsborg, 2003: 37). Fourth, television has traditionally been very important to the average Italian. Significantly, the emergence of the commercial television pioneered by Berlusconi, and his political debut, coincided with a considerable increase in television ­watching – up from a daily average of two hours and fifty-three minutes in 1988 to three hours and thirty-five minutes in 1995 (quoted by Ginsborg, 2003: 28): an increase of 24 per cent in seven years. These figures imply vast proportions of leisure time being spent watching the television.5 In 1996 the veteran quiz-show host Mike Bongiorno commented that ‘in Italy we live, we think – perhaps I’m exaggerating slightly … but I think it’s true – as a function of what’s on television. Whatever we do, we do it thinking about the television’ (quoted by Ginsborg, 2003: 29). Television viewing is greatest among the less well educated, that is, those with fewer of the intellectual resources needed to enable them to engage critically with the media messages they are in receipt of. All this is not to prejudge the issue of whether or not these factors make a difference to political attitudes and actions, though the following points can be made. The evidence suggests that large amounts of time spent at home in front of the television discourages engagement in more social forms of entertainment and involvement in the life of the community beyond the home (through, for example, membership of voluntary organisations) (Putnam, 2000: ch. 13). It therefore arguably encourages passivity while restricting access to alternative points of view. Second, whatever the reality of media impacts, those with political

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projects to pursue clearly believe that the media are influential.6 Third, whether it is through framing or some other device, news is not just conveyed by the media but in a very real sense manufactured by them (the quintessential example here being scandal: Thompson, 2000); we are persuaded to take it seriously as ‘reality’, and though it has to be consistent with whatever items of direct knowledge we have available, we often, if not most of the time, have no corroborative evidence available. From this perspective, broadcast and other media are our only channels of access to the world beyond our immediate vicinity, so in that sense they cannot but be of overwhelming influence. But for precisely this reason it becomes difficult to establish whether, and if so to what extent, media control enables political beliefs and outlooks to be influenced in specific ways: something that explains everything, explains nothing. Individuals are not just passive recipients of media messages, but active interpreters of them. Moreover, even if the case for the effect of mass-media messages could be confidently made, then one might have to presume a decline in recent years in the capacity of powerful individuals to direct behaviour through the media – this thanks to the multiplication of media channels; the increase in the volume and variety of content available; the fragmentation of audiences; the greater scope for selective exposure; and the scope for individuals to be active participants rather than passive spectators (Vaccari, 2015: 26). To summarise, the period during which Berlusconi established himself as an influential commercial figure coincided with a shift of values in the direction of heightened levels of individualism and acquisitiveness, and these found expression through his media. It is reasonable to think that this will have created, for his political project, a favourable climate, though it is difficult to establish the significance of the latter in precise, quantitative terms.

Cultural change: new conceptions of citizenship The period we have considered also coincided with important changes in the ways Italians viewed themselves as citizens. To be a citizen means to enjoy a certain status and associated rights (such as the right to vote), and implies having certain obligations and duties towards the community such that the ‘good citizen’ is one who participates in political life on terms of formal equality, accepting the rule of law and respecting the rights of others. To be a good citizen, then, implies perceiving oneself as belonging to a community whose members have ties and obligations that are more important than the party-political issues and allegiances dividing them. Political parties typically generate and sustain such perceptions by teaching followers democratic norms and patterns of behaviour, in the process fostering allegiance to the community (or the nation in the case of state-wide parties). As we have seen, the Italian political parties after the war found it difficult to inculcate such perspectives, and the allegiance to democracy and the Constitution inculcated by the parties was not ‘national’ in nature, but was founded on the antifascist agreement that was the fundamental politico-cultural ideal informing the



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work of those who were drafting a new Constitution. Anti-fascism provided for a degree of mutual acceptance between the parties – and thus for peaceful interaction between them, despite the depth of the ideological divide running through society (Nevola, 2003: 149). Therefore, to be a good Italian citizen in the initial post-war years meant to be committed to the ideals of anti-fascism, and was not associated with much, if any, sense of national pride. The reasons for this are also to be found in the lived experience of the fall of Fascism and its aftermath. Mussolini had been popular as long as people had believed the regime’s claims that it could harmonise interests and bind the people together as one; that the war would win for Italy a place at the table ‘together with those nations that counted in the world’ (Florenza, forthcoming); that wartime sacrifices were therefore worth making; and that the Duce would protect them. When, as the war progressed, it became apparent that he could not protect them, when it seemed that the purposes for which the wartime sacrifices were being asked were better pursued by abandoning the war altogether, love for the Duce turned to hatred. And yet when he was suddenly removed from power in July 1943, emotions were mixed: yes, there was a feeling of liberation – but this was bound up with feelings of loss – loss of the man who had given people their sense of nationhood and whose story was their story – and of shame – shame that they had actually believed the regime’s bombastic claims to have created a new Italy ready to meet the challenges of modernity. So the events of 25 July 1943 created a genuinely emotional and existential crisis for many Italians, a crisis that was deepened by 8 September (when the fatherland – or patria – disintegrated), and that was now joined by feelings of real confusion: on the one hand, the fatherland’s disintegration meant the destruction of the source of useless pain and suffering; on the other hand, it meant the loss of the supreme value for which people had struggled for many years. All of a sudden there was a lack of clarity as to the locus of power and authority and extreme uncertainty about what would happen next. In this context, ordinary Italians were forced, each day, to make crucial choices with potentially devastating consequences. They were faced with the Kingdom of the South, the Allied Military Government, the Fascist puppet government, the Germans, the Vatican and the partisans. War was an everyday reality; they had to feed themselves; they had to decide how to respond to the demands of political authorities between which power was constantly shifting; they had to make moral choices (e.g. with regard to fugitives). Choices were not driven by sophisticated ideological commitments and processes of reasoning (which were the preserve of intellectuals), but were nonetheless complex. Some, having invested, psychologically, so heavily in the Duce and his promises, concluded that the fatherland was represented by the Repubblica di Salò and Fascism, which was not to be dismissed as a foolish mistake; others that the partisans offered redemption and the only fatherland worth having. Still others identified with neither, for it was entirely unclear where the loyalties of the patriotic Italian were now supposed to lie. Was it with Mussolini, who had been betrayed by the king? Or was it with the king, who predated Mussolini as a symbol of unity and national integration and

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who had freed Italy from the Duce who had brought devastation and ruin? How could it be with the king, who had betrayed his people in his flight from Rome on 8 September – an act that not only abandoned ordinary Italians to their fate, but in doing so reminded them first of the monarchy’s previous feeble resistance to Fascism and then its collaboration with it? The upshot was twofold. On the one hand, the ‘official ideology’ of post-war republican Italy was both anti-fascist and anti-national. The two were inextricably interlinked: if you were anti-national, then you were anti-fascist almost by definition; following the fall of Mussolini and the events of 8 September, none of the main parties were prepared to campaign for that other great symbol of nationhood – the monarchy – in the 1946 referendum. If anti-fascism in the context of the 1940s implied, given the devastation it had brought, opposition to war, then inclusion of this principle in article 11 of the 1948 Constitution in  effect represented a turning away from the idea that the nation was worth fighting for. On the other hand, beneath the official ideology, outlooks were less clear cut, reflecting the complexity and confusion described above; and with the passage of time, initial cultural taboos on expressions of patriotism grew weaker. Aside from the obvious expressions of persisting commitment to the idea of nation – the close result in the 1946 referendum on the monarchy (54 per cent to 46 per cent), and the modest but not insignificant results regularly obtained by monarchist and neo-fascist parties in post-war elections – ordinary Italians’ attitudes to the representatives and symbols of nation were full of ambiguity: though many were angry with the king in 1943, from a certain point of view this was little more than the expression of an age-old attitude, prevalent especially in the south. People here saw the king as the representative of an unjust order; but he was also viewed as a protector against whom rioting was sometimes necessary when patronage and largesse were not forthcoming, but who could count on loyalty and devotion when they were (Hobsbawm, 1959: 108–25). When people ran through the streets in the aftermath of 25 July tearing down the insignia of the regime, it was the busts of Mussolini, the man, they destroyed; representations of the regime in general, or aesthetic representations of Fascism remained intact (Arthurs, 2010:  119).7 Rejection of the Duce as a reference point in the relationship between the individual and authority was as often an expression of loyalty to the king as of loyalty to anti-fascism and the political parties of the Resistance movement. Among intellectuals, these parties were the object of some anxiety – would their new institutions of government bring endless discussion and inefficiency? – among ordinary people, they were the object of anti-political sentiments that were expressed by the likes of the Fronte dell’Uomo Qualunque (Common Man’s Front) and that had been at the root of the emergence of Fascism itself. In the initial post-war years, then, there was considerable private ambiguity, while public displays of patriotism, such as singing the national anthem and waving the national flag, were things people tended to turn away from, embarrassed; for to identify oneself as a patriotic Italian inevitably evoked the painful memories of 1943.8 The anti-fascist parties, with their emphasis on the heroic deeds



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of the Resistance movement, on the war of liberation from Nazism and Fascism, and on the advanced ethical principles enshrined in the democratic Constitution, offered the prospect of redemption and relief from painful memories. Yet the anti-fascist agreement of the parties of the so-called ‘constitutional arch’ (those who had been responsible for writing the 1948 Constitution) inevitably excluded the parties outside the arch and those among ordinary Italians who looked back on the Fascist experience with a sense of nostalgia. They were esuli in patria – or exiles in their own country, to borrow from the title of a well-known book (Tarchi, 1995) – ­morally responsible, according to the dominant narrative, for the crimes of Fascism and the death and destruction it had brought to the country. But as time passed, memories of the past inevitably faded: by the 1980s those who had barely reached adulthood at the fall of Fascism were already in their sixties; those who had been any older at the time had already begun to die off in significant numbers. A sense of membership of a national community requires a shared historical memory, so the dominant narrative began to be challenged. Historians began to emphasise that if the Repubblica di Salò had committed atrocities, then the partisans were not free of guilt either. According to the interpretation of the historian Renzo de Felice (1995), those who actively collaborated with the German occupation and those who actively resisted it had been small minorities: the vast majority of Italians had occupied a grey zone in which – he argued – they did nothing and were prepared to wait and see. Events such as the 1985 Sigonella crisis, which involved a stand-off with the United States, were significant: the Americans had always been viewed with a mixture of desire and resentment: they had liberated the country, and they provided the nuclear umbrella under which Italy was able to shelter; but in doing so they emphasised the dependence and subordination of the country on the international stage. So when, over the major diplomatic incident that was Sigonella, Prime Minister Bettino Craxi successfully forced US President Ronald Reagan to back down, the sense of delight was palpable: he was, according to the press, ‘the only politician who ha[d] had the balls to stand up to the United States!’9 As the world became increasingly globalised, there was an increasing realisation of the importance of the ‘made in Italy’ brand as a tool for the exercise of soft power – John Lloyd (2013) in the Financial Times argued that thanks to ‘its food, its fashion, its music, its cultural history, its natural beauty’, ‘Italy [was] a nation that arguably project[ed] more soft power than any other in the world’ – and with the end of the Cold War the country was obliged to take more responsibility for its security and so play a more assertive role on the world stage. All of this had an impact on people’s understandings of what being Italian meant; how they evaluated it and what they were willing to do, in public, to express it. Of course, it did not mean that people suddenly became without qualification proud to be Italian – continuing media discussion of the so-called ‘brain drain’ stood as testimony to the persistence of negative views of the Italian homeland among opinion leaders (Conti, 2012) – but there was no doubt that there had been a definite cultural shift, one that was appropriately captured by the title of a 2003 Newsweek article, ‘Italy’s new patriotism’ (Nadeau, 2003).

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There is no doubt either that Berlusconi contributed significantly to this shift. His populist outlook, discussed in detail in chapter 2, necessarily posits the people, if not as a homogeneous, nevertheless as a single entity; and he also posits the people as such precisely by the construction of a shared historical memory: With faith in these values, with this clear idea of the Italy we aim to build, with these people and with these programmes, we shall seek for Italy a new miracle. After a period much worse than the present one, after the war, Italy astonished the world with what was known, then, as the ‘Italian miracle’.10

The construction of a shared historical memory inevitably involves, in the Italian case, having to grapple with arguments about the moral equivalence or otherwise of the two sides in the civil war, an issue that Berlusconi has always sought to deal with by taking his cue from the revisionist historians of the period and highlighting the role of ordinary Italians. ‘Among those on the wrong side’, he was reported to have said in 2009, there were people of good faith, just as, on the right side, among the partisans, there were those who were guilty and made mistakes: ‘To remember, with respect, all the fallen, including those who fought on the wrong side, sacrificing their lives for a cause that was already lost is neither neutrality nor indifference’ (la Repubblica, 2009). Here Berlusconi was clearly attempting to construct a shared memory without exposing himself to accusations of being an apologist for Fascism, a project that has always been difficult and delicate, requiring a range of initiatives, most of which have been unsuccessful. Declarations along the lines of the one above have always represented the boundary marking the farthest extent to which he has been able to go, related initiatives having failed. For example, the civil war inevitably comes up every year, on 25 April, with the Festa della Liberazione, commemorating the liberation of Italy; consequently, Berlusconi has on a number of occasions proposed renaming the day, asking that it be called instead Festa della Libertà: ‘64 years after the liberation and 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall’, he argued in 2009, ‘the time has come to build a sentiment of national unity’ and ‘to do it all together independently of political affiliations’ (la Repubblica, 2009). From the point of view of Berlusconi’s designs the proposal makes perfect sense; the date of the Festa was chosen because it was the day, in 1945, when the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale Alta Italia (Committee of National Liberation in Northern Italy, CLNAI) declared a general insurrection and a seizure of power in all the areas then remaining in the hands of German and Fascist forces. But for precisely the same reason, the proposal has always encountered the implacable hostility of the entrepreneur’s opponents, for it goes to the heart of the founding myth of the Republic itself. Even greater outcries have been prompted, needless to say, whenever Berlusconi has, for the same purposes, put his head above the parapet and invited a moral re-evaluation of the Fascist regime itself (see, e.g., Hooper, 2013). In relation to the questions posed at the outset, then, Berlusconi can be described, as before, as a protagonist of cultural change; but his actions have been neither necessary nor sufficient for change. He has been an innovator but not a deus ex



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machina. Other actors and other forces have also been required. Crucially, however, cultural change has been essential to his acquisition of power, especially in the case of his political debut. In the autumn of 1993 the centre left had found unity against the forces of a divided centre right which seemed doomed to defeat in the forthcoming general election unless the Movimento Sociale Italiano could acquire the status of a legitimate contender for government, and therefore a viable coalition partner. As is well known, Berlusconi was thought to have conferred this status when he was asked by journalists, on 23 November 1993, who he would vote for in the upcoming municipal elections in Rome, the centre left’s Francesco Rutelli, or the MSI leader Gianfranco Fini. He replied: ‘I think you know the answer already. Certainly Gianfranco Fini.’ The incident was remarkable because it represented, for the first time, the legitimation by a major public figure (Fini went on almost to win the election) of a party whose roots lay in Fascism and the Repubblica di Salò. Thirty-three years earlier, in 1960, a similar attempt to bring the party in from the cold – through the DC’s reliance on MSI votes to enable it to form a government – provoked rioting in the streets, several deaths and the collapse of the government shortly thereafter. There is no doubt, then, that Berlusconi’s initiative would have been impossible in the absence of the profound cultural change that had taken place in the interim and to which he himself was a contributor.

The emergence and growth of celebrity culture Finally, Berlusconi’s media empire has helped to further, in Italy, the growth of celebrity culture, an international phenomenon long predating his emergence as a significant economic and political figure. A celebrity culture exists where, thanks to the attention given to individuals and groups by the media – thanks therefore to their fame – people are interested in and want contact with the individuals or groups – the celebrities – and the celebrities’ names become associated with products and services available for purchase. By being so associated, the names increase sales as the purchases enable consumers to feel a sense of greater closeness to the celebrities with whom they identify and desire contact. Because celebrity status can thus be used for commercial gain, it becomes a commodity the celebrities themselves are able to sell, and on which they expect a return. A celebrity is, therefore, not just a famous person, but rather a famous person in whom others are interested; who is therefore talked about; whose presumed qualities others want to emulate; with whom others want contact; in whom people can see a reflection of themselves; who are, in short, celebrated or feted. So popes and kings will be famous but may or may not be celebrities; and individuals may be celebrities in some circles but not in others where they might be quite unknown. What is essential to celebrity status is publicity, and therefore the status, if it is to exist beyond the locality, requires the mass media.11 In a very real sense, celebrities are constructs of the media without whose activity the acquisition of celebrity status on any scale would be impossible: as Lucy Riall (2007) has argued, the first modern celebrity was Giuseppe Garibaldi. His status would not have been possible without the books, magazines and, above all, printed portraits which only then

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were becoming increasingly available; they enabled him to achieve international fame and created and satisfied new demands for entertainment and stories of romantic heroes. Since celebrities entertain, the expansion of celebrity culture has gone hand in hand, on the supply side, with the growing significance, in social life, of the mass media; first the print media, then cinema and radio, and then, in the post-war period, television. The emergence of reality TV in the 1990s, which made it possible for anyone to become a celebrity, illustrated the extent to which celebrity status is dependent on media exposure and discussion, and is independent of any actual, or pre-existing, unusual qualities of the person concerned.12 The advent of the internet has made it easier to access details of the lives of celebrities, that is, it has increased supply; and if supply has to some extent stimulated its own demand, then the latter has also been stimulated by broader processes of economic and social change – in the Italian case, the ‘economic miracle’ of the 1950s and 1960s; growing disposable incomes; increasing geographical mobility; and the declining hold over attitudes and outlooks of traditional, conservative institutions such as the Catholic Church. Berlusconi’s contribution to these processes can be illustrated by focusing, as Asquer has done, on the contents of one of his gossip magazines, significantly entitled Chi (‘Who’). Asquer’s analysis of the (changing) content of the weekly magazine13 is eloquent about the significance of celebrity culture for a politician such as Berlusconi. It was initially sold under a different name – Noi (‘Us’) – whose very title echoed the ‘nation-building’ project described in the previous section: its subtitle was Il settimanale degli italiani (‘Italy’s weekly’); its mission, according to the first editorial, was to bring about ‘a reawakening of pride in being Italian, but among those who are law-abiding, those who go to sleep at night with a clean conscience’ (the publication was launched at the height of Tangentopoli). Very cleverly, its first edition included an interview with Umberto Bossi entitled, ‘Intervista a Umberto Bossi. Tutto pizza e panettone’ (‘Interview with Umberto Bossi. All pizza and panettone’) as if to suggest that the ‘terrifying’ secessionist leader, whom Berlusconi was about to court, was actually a good-natured person who would inject a few Lombard virtues into the national culture, symbolised by the references to pizza (Asquer, 2011: 105). But the main point, for present purposes, is that, while the intention was to provide more or less serious discussion of more or less weighty aspects of public life, all this was done within the framework of stories about individual people: everything becomes personalised, even the discussion of religion, through an article about Pope John Paul II and his ‘angels’, the nuns who looked after him and took care of his daily needs (Asquer, 2011: 105). From 1995, when the magazine took its current name, the focus on celebrities and the intimate details of their lives (echoed by the publication’s very title) became even greater, and again, the significance for Berlusconi’s political project is transparent. The reader is treated to a wealth of detail about how, for example, the great, the good and the glitterati choose to furnish their homes, about what they wear, about their culinary choices and so on. The likely effect is twofold. On the one hand, it serves a pedagogical function: people identify with other



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people, so that endorsement by a personality with a strong emotional valence is immensely more powerful than merely presenting the details of the thing or the course of action being endorsed. On the other hand, it allows people both to participate in the world of the rich and famous (by allowing them to buy the things endorsed by them) while creating and sustaining aspirations to the objects and lifestyles endorsed by the celebrities that remain currently (just) out of reach. In this way it generates conformity and a conservative outlook: people whose main preoccupations are with home ownership, with expending their energies and resources on furnishing their homes to look like those associated with celebrities they feel drawn to, acquire a material stake in the preservation of the existing order. Consumption, conservation and material security are their concerns. They are not obvious candidates for critical, radical outlooks and causes. After the turn of the century, the focus shifted yet again, more space being given to entrepreneurs – among whom celebrity and iconic status is common in Italy – and to the exploits of ordinary people such as reality TV stars and the winners of game shows. The underlying message appears to be that life is a battle, a competition, the outcome of which is a function of individual effort and optimism. Game shows seem especially effective here: winning or losing depends on how many answers the contestant gets right; and even though many more lose than win, the fact remains that they could have won – if only they had given the right answers. In this way, ambitions focused on the acquisition of domestic comfort and ease could be experienced as the adventurous pursuit of material security whose results depended entirely on the entrepreneurial capacities of the individual, a theme with very strong roots in Italian culture given such historical experiences as those of the period from 1943 to 1945. And it echoed, of course, the image Berlusconi sought to project of himself: one who was just like the man next door; one who, through his own striving and ambition, had come from nowhere, been eternally optimistic and won the battle of life. In the context of a world financial crisis, individualistic optimism was, from a conservative perspective, an important message to try to sell. Against this background, Berlusconi was, thanks to the mediatisation and the personalisation of politics, able to build his own celebrity status as a vehicle for pursuing his political career. For example, Chi has often carried stories about the private life of the entrepreneur and his family;14 Una storia italiana (‘An Italian story’), the Berlusconi biography distributed to households in 2001, was a centrepiece of that year’s election. While we can debate the impact, in explaining Berlusconi’s electoral performances, of the success he has had in establishing and maintaining celebrity status for himself, there is no doubt that it has been extraordinarily powerful. He has understood that ordinary citizens are driven far more forcefully by emotion and curiosity than by reasoning and intellect; that if a politician can become a celebrity, he or she can establish a fan base – and with it a much more powerful link with followers than that provided by mere supporters. He has understood that essential to celebrity status is media attention and the maintenance of public interest. Hence the ‘buffoonery’ and (certainly not accidental) public ‘gaffes’ for which he is famous. It is against this background that

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the revelations, from 2009, of his sexual indiscretions must be interpreted. The fact that he has been able to survive these is revealing of the fact that crucial to the maintenance of celebrity status is public interest and therefore behaviour that to a degree challenges conventions and pushes the boundaries of established norms. As long as scandals do not lead to the permanent cancellation of advertising and other contracts, celebrities can often survive them and in some cases in the longer term thrive from them. It is in part thanks to all of this that for twenty years after his political debut in 1994, Berlusconi and his role in public life was the single most important theme underlying party competition itself.

Conclusion We explored in chapter 2 the themes of Berlusconi’s ideology, and in response to the question of how successful he has been in ‘selling’ them we are induced, in the light of our discussion in this chapter, to reply, ‘Very successful’. Individualism, a national pride of sorts based on the presumed goodness of civil society and ordinary Italians,15 celebrity: these are all cultural themes central to the Berlusconi credo, themes with strong historical roots, themes that he has sought to draw upon and in so doing has strengthened. As we have repeatedly stressed, this does not mean that Berlusconi’s electoral successes can be explained mechanically in these terms: individual voters are not pieces on a chess board, moveable at will through the cultural messages of politician players. What we do claim is that Berlusconi’s successes in this area would almost certainly have been much more difficult to obtain had he not had the extraordinary cultural supports we have described, and to which he contributed. They helped to sustain an interpretation of political and social reality that was powerful for at least two reasons: it provided what for many will have been the basic, if not the only, concepts with which to think about reality; and by virtue of its power it contributed – in relation to opposing outlooks, unfavourable to Berlusconi – to those spirals of silence (Noelle-Neumann, 1984) by which certain opinions, perceived as unpopular, fail to find expression, and so continue to be thought unpopular and to be weakly expressed in a vicious circle. A more detailed exploration of Berlusconi’s electoral following and his performances is the focus of the chapter that follows.

Notes  1 One deludes oneself if one thinks that it is possible to obtain direct access to people’s desires and beliefs without having to rely on any inferences from their behaviour. Imagine asking John to confirm the correctness of one’s assumptions about the desires and beliefs responsible for some particular gesture on his part. Imagine also that John replies ‘Yes’. In order to be able to interpret this behaviour as an answer to our question, rather than (say) an involuntary grunt, we have to assume the existence of a large number of further beliefs on the part of John. For example, we have to assume that John wants to answer our question, that he believes that the emission of the grunt we interpret as signalling assent is an appropriate way to do this in the English language, and so forth. And the only way in which we could test these further



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assumptions would be by asking additional questions, that is, by making further inferences from behaviour.  2 To appreciate this, consider the following example. Almond and Verba (1963) ask about the cultural preconditions for stable democracy, and they suggest that stability pertains when the political culture of a polity is ‘congruent’ with its political structures. A political culture is then ‘congruent’ when there is a high frequency of awareness of the structures, and where affect and evaluation in relation to them tend to be favourable. Now, leaving aside the problem of knowing exactly how many citizens’ orientations have to be congruent in order for there to be ‘democratic stability’, one wants to ask whether this concept not already implied in the authors’ notion of a ‘congruent culture’ itself. In what sense would we want to define a democratic system as ‘stable’ if not in terms of its citizens’ orientations to it?  3 One of the ways in which this has happened is, as Giuseppe Fiori (1995: 157) notes, though the ‘coming up’ device. News broadcasts are often interrupted by commercial breaks, with the broadcast itself being crafted in such a way as to keep viewers ­watching – this so that it can perform its function of delivering an audience to the buyers of advertising space. This is then achieved by whetting viewers’ appetites through previews of what they can expect to be ‘coming up after the break’.  4 A well-known example occurred in 2002 when Berlusconi forced off the air, at least temporarily, the commentators Enzo Biagi, Michele Santoro and Daniele Lutazzi; and long before them, the comedian Beppe Grillo suffered the same fate when he dared, on the state television network, to make satirical jokes at the expense of the Socialist Party leader, Bettino Craxi.  5 If we assume that the average person might normally have six hours of leisure time per day, then these figures suggest that he or she is spending almost 60 per cent of the available time watching television.  6 The examples are too numerous to list, but the belief here referred to is revealed by, among other things, the periodic moral panics (arising out of beliefs concerning the potentially degenerative impact on public morals of various forms of entertainment) that have become a permanent feature of life in modern and post-modern societies. Such panics have a rich history stretching back at least as far as invention, in the early twentieth century, of the term ‘mass media’ itself, and before that to the Puritan crusades against the theatre.  7 ‘Rather than direct their ire against an entire system – one closely entwined in the daily lives of most Italians – they staged a symbolic ritual murder of the man whose very person had come to embody the experience of the past twenty years, foreshadowing the very real desecration of the Duce’s corpse two years later at Piazzale Loreto. Still, the initial popular reaction to 25 July should be seen primarily as a spontaneous emotional release, a venting of frustrations and resentments rather than a coordinated political response’ (Arthurs, 2010: 119).  8 ‘A student who had witnessed the happiness and lively atmosphere in Milan the days after the end of Fascism and hoped that Italy would redeem itself from its past, wrote downheartedly in his diary: ‘Italian means traitor, coward, buffoon … It is completely dishonourable to be called Italians’ (Florenza, forthcoming).  9 ‘Su Bettino Craxi si può dire di tutto, ma nella nostra Storia è stato l’unico politico che ha avuto le palle di farsi rispettare dagli Stati Uniti!’ (One can say all one wants about Bettino Craxi, but he is the only politician in the history of Italy to have had the balls to stand up to the United States!) http://www.direttanews24.com/30-anni-la-nottesigonella-bettino-craxi-si-puo-dire-nella-nostra-storia-lunico-politico-avuto-le-pallefarsi-rispettare/ (accessed 20 April 2018). The crisis arose after four armed Palestinians

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took the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro hostage on 7 October 1985, and culminated, on 11 October, in an armed stand-off between US and Italian military personnel at the Sigonella NATO base in Sicily. For a detailed chronology, see (among others) the Historum discussion forum, http://historum.com/european-history/72171-crisissigonella.html (accessed 26 May 2018). 10 From the speech given on 6 February 1994 at the Palafiera di Roma, quoted by Benedetti (2004: 56). 11 True, there are plenty of historical examples of individuals who were celebrated, far and wide, before the rise of the modern mass media: St Thomas Becket and other saints would be early examples. However, celebrity status is in the eye of the beholder, meaning that with the rise of the modern print and broadcast media, the status is relatively independent of any extraordinary qualities that the celebrated person may actually possess. Moreover, modern celebrities and celebrity culture provide a distinctive kind of entertainment, namely mediated entertainment. 12 In the process, this confirms that the celebrity is a recent phenomenon, and that it may perhaps be most succinctly defined as ‘a person who is known for his well-knownness’ (Boorstin, 1962: 57). 13 Among the most popular in Italy with 2.8 million readers, exceeded only by TV Sorrisi e Canzoni, another Berlusconi publication with 3 million: Audipress, ‘Pubblicati i dati Audipress 2014/III’, 20 March 2015, http://audipress.it/?s=Chi (accessed 20 April 2018). 14 For example, the feeling of sheer curiosity aroused by the title of an interview with one of Berlusconi’s sons in a 1995 edition of Chi, ‘Vi svelo i segreti di mio padre’ (‘I’ll tell you my father’s secrets’), is palpable. 15 Italiani, brava gente (‘Italians [are] good people’) is the title of a 1965 film, directed by Giuseppe de Santis, which recounts the story of Italian soldiers on the eastern front in the Second World War, who among other things save a Russian from being shot by the Germans. Produced in cooperation with the Soviet Union, the film was intended to help the PCI differentiate itself from eastern European communist parties by conveying an idea of Italians as basically kind, humane and open to other cultures. As such it reflected and sustained a popular cultural stereotype – the film’s title is now a widely used cliché – from which Berlusconi’s notion of Italian civil society draws strength.

8

Berlusconi’s electoral impact

Central to Berlusconi’s success, materially and in terms of power, has been his electoral success, without which his achievements in other areas would hardly have been possible. And there is no doubt that his electoral performances have been quite remarkable, even in defeat. As Albertazzi and McDonnell noted of the 2006 election (which Berlusconi lost by just 24,755 votes), ‘There are few political leaders in Europe who could afford to lose a second general election to the same opponent and still survive to lead their party into another contest [i.e. the contest of 2008]. But, then, there are few contemporary leaders comparable to Silvio Berlusconi’ (2009: 102). Thanks to the mediatisation and personalisation of politics, leaders are thought of as having become more important for the electoral fortunes of their parties in recent decades than they were in an earlier era. Meanwhile, voters – as research in a number of countries, including Italy, suggests – have become more volatile. More are undecided; more leave their voting decisions until the last minute. Consequently vote switching is more common, and an increasing amount, with regard to election outcomes, is thought to hinge on which party leaders run the best campaigns. So we are concerned in this chapter to consider how much of the electoral success of the centre-right coalitions that Berlusconi has led can be attributed to the style of his election campaigns. We begin by considering the electoral data that describe his success in order to quantify it more or less precisely. We then consider the case for the widely held view that the centre-right coalition Berlusconi has led for so long owes its relative success in recent years to the personalised style of campaign leadership that he has offered it. We then consider arguments and evidence which, by emphasising the role of long-term factors, would considerably downplay the significance of Berlusconi’s role as we have just described it.

The dimensions of Berlusconi’s success In 1994 Berlusconi built from scratch a party, Forza Italia, which, in March that year, came from nowhere to take 21 per cent of the vote and emerge from the election as the largest party. This vote share for a new party at its first outing was a record that stood for almost twenty years until 2013 when the Five-star Movement (M5S) – which, significantly, had similar populist and anti-political

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traits as Berlusconi’s party – took 26 per cent at its first general election outing. The 1994 coalition led by Berlusconi, the Freedom Alliance/Alliance for Good Government, took 46.2 per cent of the vote, enabling it to form a government backed by a secure majority of 51 in the Chamber of Deputies and a near majority, with 156 seats, in the Senate. At the 1996 election, Berlusconi’s party and his coalition took 20.6 and 40.5 per cent respectively, leaving them 69 seats short of a majority in the Chamber and 41 seats short in the Senate. But this time they had been obliged to run without the alliance with the Northern League that they had had in 1994, a Northern League that in 1996 took 10.8 per cent of the vote. The seats the League won in the Chamber (59) and the Senate (27) would have reduced, though not eliminated, the deficit that was separating Berlusconi and a second prime ministerial mandate.1 In 2001 Berlusconi’s party and his coalition – now the House of Freedoms, which included the League – took 29.4 and 45.4 per cent of the vote, giving them majorities of 53 and 18 in the Chamber and Senate respectively. In 2006 Berlusconi’s coalition took 47.8 per cent of the vote, leaving it just a fraction of a per cent behind the vote total obtained by his centre-left adversaries; but because of the majority premium legislated for just a few months prior to the elections, Berlusconi, with 281 of the 630 seats, was automatically denied, in the Chamber, any kind of majority. In the Senate contest, Berlusconi’s coalition actually took 176,454 votes more than the centre left but because of the vagaries of the electoral system they ended up with only 156 of the 315 seats. In 2008 Berlusconi won handsomely, his party and coalition taking 37.2 and 46.3 per cent of the vote respectively, giving him a 29-seat majority in the Chamber and a 16-seat majority in the Senate. At the 2013 election, marked by the sudden explosion of the M5S, Berlusconi’s party and coalition suffered dramatic falls in their vote shares, down to 21.3 and 28.7 per cent respectively; but the centre left suffered similarly dramatic falls. Consequently, the centre right was only 0.9 per cent short of winning the majority premium and it found itself back in government as part of a grand coalition. In short, since his political debut in 1993/94, Berlusconi can be said to have won three elections decisively, to have narrowly failed to win two others and to have lost one; and having demonstrated, with the outcome of the 1994 election, his capacity and that of his party to bring victory to the centre right and its constituent parties, Berlusconi found that he had an essentially secure position as the coalition’s leader. The security of his position went through ups and downs, but it was certainly much more secure than the positions of any of the leaders of the centre left, as the relevant data clearly reveal (Table 8.1). What was striking about Berlusconi’s electoral success, and therefore his hold on his party and coalition, was its consistency and its sheer longevity. As Figure 8.1 shows, the centre-right vote share deviated very little from a few percentage points short of fifty in election after election over a twenty-year period until the earthquake election of 2013; and this meant that in most cases it enjoyed relatively secure vote and seat majorities. As a consequence, Berlusconi was able

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Table 8.1  Leaders of the two main coalitions, 2001–13 Election

Centre-right coalition leader

Centre-left coalition leader

1994 1996 2001 2006 2008 2013

Silvio Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi

Achille Ochetto Romano Prodi Francesco Rutelli Romano Prodi Walter Veltroni Pierluigi Bersani*

* Resulting prime minister shown in Italics. In 2013 neither of the leaders of the two main coalitions took the premiership, which went instead to a centre-left politician, Enrico Letta, rather than the coalition’s leader.

to serve as prime minister for nine years, making him the longest-serving chief executive in Republican Italy and the third longest-serving since Italian unification. Between the start of the twelfth legislature in 1994 and the start of the seventeenth in 2013, the centre right was in office for 3,314 days or 30 per cent more of the time than the centre left (in office for 2,538 days). How are we to explain this success? And what was Berlusconi’s part in it?

Explaining the centre right’s success As a campaigner, there is no doubt that Berlusconi excelled. In 1994 he was able, during the campaign, to concentrate media attention on himself thanks to his celebrity status, his control of a large chunk of the media and the novelty he represented (Brand and Mackie, 1995: 123). Consequently, the focus of media attention was more on him than on the party he led, and he was able to command more air time than other party leaders (Ignazi, 2014: 44). Observers noted that when he 60 40 20 0 –20

1994

1996

2001

2006

2008

2013

–40 Centre-right vote share %

Centre-right vote lead or deficit %

Centre-right seat lead or deficit %

Figure 8.1    Centre right’s electoral performance, 1994–2013 Source: Author’s elaboration of data showing party vote shares available from the Ministry of the Interior

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appeared on television, Berlusconi used a language that was much more accessible than that of professional politicians, that enabled him to give the impression of ordinariness, and that would make it much easier for voters to view him as ‘one of us’. A good example of this sort of thing came in a debate with the economist and centre-left politician Luigi Spaventa, during the course of which Berlusconi asked his opponent how many football trophies he had won and invited him to try winning a couple of Champions League titles before challenging him. However irrelevant to his political suitability, the observation had the air of an irrefutable truth; and it inverted the class relationships involved in the encounter, making his opponents seem like arid university professors and him, the multi-millionaire, seem like a winner with whom ordinary football supporters could identify (Stille,  2010: 190–1). Hence he was skilled at delivering messages in front of a camera and therefore much better able than other contenders to take full advantage of the growing interpenetration of political and entertainment broadcasts, represented by talk shows and guest-appearances by politicians on variety shows, partly promoted by his own networks. Since his party had little or no profile that was separate from his own, Berlusconi was able to speak directly to voters, without the mediation of party. Hence he and his personality had larger profiles than competitors who inevitably remained party representatives. He attracted the explicit endorsement of a wide range of the stars who appeared on his channels, and he complained bitterly when he was accused of acquiescing in media bias, claiming that he and his party were ‘the most excluded and ill-treated by the TV networks’ (quoted by Stille, 2010: 200). In this way he was able to establish a position for himself as the principal protagonist of the election campaign, with the other contenders as spectators, making policy announcements which, if they sometimes or often lacked credibility, nevertheless kept the spotlight on himself and forced his competitors to respond. The 2001 election was widely thought of as a sort of ‘referendum on Berlusconi’ (ITANES, 2001: 172). Once again, Berlusconi himself commanded the lion’s share of the time devoted to the campaign in the broadcast media – partly because his conflicts of interest and the concentration of media power in his hands meant that television itself became one of the most substantive issues in the campaign – which, naturally, ensured his continued salience. Since Berlusconi himself framed the issues at stake in the election as a choice of civilisations represented by himself and his centre-left opponent, Francesco Rutelli, talk-show hosts and political satirists duly responded by focusing on the various issues – the judicial inquiries, the conflicts of interest and so forth – that raised questions about Berlusconi’s suitability to be prime minister. The tendency culminated in the outcry generated by the famous Economist article, entitled, ‘Why Silvio Berlusconi is unfit to lead Italy’, published shortly before polling day. Finally, new political communications rules introduced in the wake of the 1994 election that restricted political advertising on television shifted the focus of campaign activity to more traditional communications vehicles – the poster and the mail shot – which enabled Berlusconi, given his resources, to occupy virtually all of the available off-air political space with his own image (Paolucci, 2002: 133). This both enabled him to pre-empt any effec-



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tive counter-move, and to minimise the threat from his adversaries: the focus on Berlusconi himself helped reduce the risk that tensions within the c­ oalition would acquire a profile; and, thanks to its simplicity, such a focus seemed likely to be effective in convincing the undecided and mobilising the decided. Consequently, it is likely that the 2001 campaign, when there was a risk of centre-right voters being demobilised thanks to the coalition’s clear opinion poll lead, will be remembered as one conducted in the style of an American presidential contest with an obsessive focus on Berlusconi. And if this attracted attempts to delegitimise him, it meant that the campaign was focused on him more than ever. In 2006 Berlusconi was inevitably at the centre of attention because, for the first time, he was presenting himself as an outgoing prime minister with a five-year record to defend. Again, he got more exposure than his adversary (Roncarolo, 2008: 169, Table 8.4). Again, he revealed his skills as a campaigner. Aware that there was not much, if anything, about his governing record to arouse enthusiasm, he insisted on donning the mantle of the much-maligned leader who would have been able to achieve more had he not been obstructed and attacked by allies and opponents alike. Thereby he assumed the appearance of an opposition leader whose dynamic qualities could still deliver (Newell, 2008: 6). He ran a colourful campaign with some notable outbursts, all of which helped keep the media spotlight shining on him, especially when, at a Confcommercio (General Federation of Italian Commerce and Tourism) gathering, he famously declared that he had ‘too much respect for the intelligence of ordinary Italians to believe that there are that many dickheads around willing to vote against their own interests [by choosing the centre left]’. And his reputation as a campaigner was reinforced by the fact that his coalition came so much closer to victory than had been expected, leading to suggestions that, through his communication strategies, he had managed to create a significant underdog effect (Roncarolo, 2008: 159). In 2008 Berlusconi was, yet again, the most visible candidate (Roncarolo, 2009: 161) in a campaign played out in the media in a way that was much less lively and engaging than the two previous campaigns had been: the election had not been anticipated so soon after the previous one, but thanks to the circumstances that had given rise to it, its outcome was widely thought to be a foregone conclusion. Berlusconi’s centre-left opponent, Walter Veltroni, faced various obstacles in the way of the creation of the kind of underdog effect that Berlusconi had seemingly managed in 2006, such as a lack of resources and of the necessary preparation time to create newsworthy events (Roncarolo, 2009: 163–4). Consequently, given the context of a gathering economic storm, Berlusconi was able to secure a relatively easy victory after a campaign that avoided the kinds of inflammatory language he had used in the past and instead created the image of a wise elder statesman (he was almost 72 by then) who did not promise too much. Berlusconi’s ability to command media attention, and having got it to use it to apparently good effect, have been thought crucial to the centre right’s electoral success over the years for three fundamental reasons. The first revolves around the basic change in the nature of party-political campaigning that is said to have taken place in liberal democracies generally in recent decades and that is

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captured by the notion of the personalisation of politics. Essentially, ‘personalisation’ refers to a growing focus on, and significance for, individual candidates and their ­characteristics in determing election outcomes, thanks to, among other things, the growing mediatisation of politics. This refers to the process whereby politics has become increasingly reliant on the media, which have thereby become increasingly integrated into the operation of political institutions, as a result of which politics is increasingly taking place via the media. Since entertainment is the dominant assumption driving both the work of media journalists and the expectations of their audiences, the focus in party campaigning must be on candidates and leaders and their qualities – they must become celebrities – rather than on policies and their respective merits. This has had two further interrelated consequences. First, there has been a strengthening – a presidentialisation – of the role of leaders vis-à-vis their parties and parliamentary followers: ‘by virtue of the alleged competitive advantage that s/he may bring to the party, the leader is able, supported by his/her personal staff, to acquire greater autonomy, becoming chiefly responsible for the issues and the substance of the campaigns and of the policies s/he intends to implement’ (Palladino, 2015: 108). Second, there has, according to Bernard Manin, been a shift from ‘party’ to ‘audience’ democracy. In ‘party democracy’, the citizen votes for someone ‘who bears the colors of a party’ (Manin, 1997: 206) and does so consistently because he or she sees in the party representatives of the interests of the community (the working class, for example) to which they feel they belong. In ‘audience democracy’, the citizen votes ‘for a person and no longer for a party or platform’; and given the individuality of candidates, ‘people vote differently from one election to another depending on the particular persons competing for their vote’ (Manin, 1997: 219). So in national elections where party leaders are candidates for the position of chief executive, outcomes depend on the trust and confidence these candidates are able to inspire in voters; and though ‘the vote is still an expression of the electorate’, ‘its reactive dimension becomes more important and more visible. Thus, the electorate appears, above all, as an audience which responds to the terms that have been presented on the political stage’ (Manin, 1997: 223). In short, Berlusconi is widely thought to have been essential to the success of the Italian centre right because he is seen as having been an especially effective prime ministerial candidate in a (general) context in which the attractiveness of such candidates has played an increasing role in electoral choice. In the Italian case, this increasing role was further encouraged and underpinned by the early 1990s party-system transformation to which Berlusconi himself was a significant contributor; for with the emergence of party-system bipolarity based on two large coalitions, each competing for overall majorities of legislative seats, the coalitions’ leaders were understood, by parties, voters and journalists, as candidates for the position of chief executive. The second reason why Berlusconi’s campaign performances were thought so crucial to the centre right’s success lies in the inability of his centre-left opponents to match them. In other words, centre-left leaders were, by and large, much less



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skilled than Berlusconi in grabbing attention and, having got it, in putting on a persuasive performance. We have noted that Berlusconi managed to attract more attention than his competitors (presence in the media being ‘paramount in the race to election: a candidate who is absent from the spotlight does not stand a chance’ (Coen, 2015: 4)), and though there were many reasons for this, an important one was that to a far greater extent than his opponents, Berlusconi was a larger-than-life character, doing and saying the sorts of things that would stimulate journalists’ interest. Temperamentally, his centre-left opponents were much less at ease in manipulating to their advantage the media’s requirement for coverage focused on the politician as a private individual. An early example of this sort of thing was offered during the 1994 campaign when Achille Ochetto allowed himself to be photographed passionately kissing his wife – an initiative that suggested some understanding of the need to personalise his campaign, but that came across as ham-fisted and awkward, ‘as the blatant attempt of a politician of the old school to toady a new reality’ (Stille, 2010: 195). Berlusconi understood the mechanisms of personalisation much more clearly, appreciating from advertisers that associating a product with a liked celebrity boosts sales as consumers transfer to the product the attractive qualities – likeability, trustworthiness, success and so on – they see in the celebrity. Consequently, Berlusconi’s campaigns reflected a much more ruthless commitment than did those of the centre left to the idea that winning required a focus on a leader whose attractive qualities would, as a consequence, persuade voters to buy (vote for) his product (his party). The difference between the two sides reflected a series of differences of political cultural background. Unlike Berlusconi, who did not have any career as a party politician behind him and who exercised a commanding position in his coalition, centre-left spokespersons (who exercised much less commanding positions in their coalition) were steeped in the traditions of ‘party democracy’ where leaders act in the service of their parties rather than the other way around. They were party bureaucrats who had risen to power ‘on the basis of specific qualities and talents, namely activism and organizational skill’ (Manin, 1997: 207) – where ‘activism’ meant, in a world characterised by relatively sharp, and relatively fixed, ideological divisions, campaigning on the basis of principles and policies, not individuals. Given such a world view, the mobilisation of voters was less about a leader performing for an audience than about exploiting long-standing social cleavages, and the mass parties and their flanking organisations built upon them, to encapsulate the voter.2 Hence the centre left’s leaders were simply less acculturated than Berlusconi to an end-of-century world in which old social identities had faded and the values of consumption, celebrity and individual assertion were more or less hegemonic. Moreover, and most importantly, the centre left was never able to overcome what, for Berlusconi – as the one who effectively introduced personalised campaigning to Italy3 – was a significant first-mover advantage. As the years passed, the centre left learned from Berlusconi’s campaign styles and techniques and attempted to imitate them, most notably in 2008 when its prime ministerial candidate, Walter Veltroni, was put into the ring against Berlusconi precisely

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because he was a match for the entrepreneur as an effective communicator. However, because he attempted to imitate Berlusconi, he ensured that, implicitly, the entrepreneur would remain the dominant presence in the election run-up. Commentators noted, for example, that throughout the campaign the centre-left leader refused to refer to Berlusconi by name, referring to him only as ‘my adversary’. Partly motivated by the desire to keep his own media profile high and drain the personalised dimensions of Berlusconi’s campaign of their power, Veltroni’s tactic failed for reasons that are explained by Lakoff’s (2004; 2008) theory of framing. Since the meaning of words is given by conceptual frameworks or frames, they carry implications that push us in one direction or another: they have normative implications for action, to use the terminology employed in chapter 2. For instance, if you say ‘revolt’, you are implying or assuming that there is a population, that this population is being ruled unfairly, that at the moment at which you speak they are throwing off their rulers, and that the entire process should be evaluated positively. That is a frame. (Campus and Cosenza, 2010: 4)

From this perspective, the task of effective campaigning is to break down the preferred frames of opponents – which implies avoiding the temptation simply to deny them, as this only reinforces them. Lakoff explains the basic principle at work: When I teach the study of framing at Berkeley, in Cognitive Science 101, the first thing I do is I give my students an exercise. The exercise is: Don’t think of an elephant! Whatever you do, do not think of an elephant. I’ve never found a student who is able to do this. Every word, like elephant, evokes a frame which can be an image or other kinds of knowledge: Elephants are large, have floppy ears and a trunk, are associated with circuses, and so on. The word is defined relative to that frame. When we negate a frame, we evoke the frame. Richard Nixon found that out the hard way. While under pressure to resign during the Watergate scandal, Nixon addressed the nation on TV. He stood before the nation and said, ‘I am not a crook’. And everybody thought about him as a crook. (Lakoff, 2004: 3)

In short, by adopting a tactic that aroused comment, and in so doing drew attention to an explicitly stated intention to avoid a focus on Berlusconi the private individual, Veltroni obtained an outcome that was the opposite, ensuring that Berlusconi continued to have a high profile in people’s awareness. This brings us to the third reason why Berlusconi’s personalised style of campaigning, his leadership, has been given special significance in accounting for his coalition’s success. If the first two had to do with changes in the circumstances surrounding election campaigning and how the parties had adapted to that, the third has to do with how electorates have responded to parties’ adaptations. It is the most important reason and it relies on survey data. It is the most important because, in the final analysis, the significance of Berlusconi to the centre right’s electoral success can only be assessed with any degree of confidence by referring directly to what voters tell us about how they make their electoral choices. Voters



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give us the information mainly through sample surveys, so the data deriving therefrom are inevitably a significant source of evidence. Unfortunately, the evidence is by no means unequivocal: in no sense do the data speak for themselves. The difficulties are multiple. In order to be influenced in their choice by a leader, the voter must be aware of the leader, must in some sense ‘like’ the leader more than (or dislike the leader less than) the leaders of other parties, and must associate the leader with a specific party. And in order for all of this to have an impact on the outcome of an election, it has to be the case that the distribution of leader preferences is decisively skewed in the direction of one leader rather than another. But even if we could show all this, we would still not be on totally solid ground. The survey evidence tells us that there is a positive correlation between liking a party’s leader and voting for the party (see, e.g., ITANES, 2001); but this, on its own, is not very informative because the correlation could be spurious: if the voter is positively disposed towards the party anyway, for reasons having nothing to do with its leader, then it is likely that this circumstance will produce both a liking for the leader and a vote for the party. This will be mainly responsible for the association between leader evaluation and vote, rather than there being much, if any, direct causal relationship between the two. This is an issue that has given rise to much controversy and considerable research cross-nationally (see, e.g., Holmberg and Oscarsson, 2011). On the one side are those who argue for the independent causal impact of party leaders; on the other, those who adhere to the classic, social-psychological model of voting set out in The American Voter (Campbell et al., 1960), a seminal study arguing that people’s voting choices are driven mainly by prior partisan identifications in terms of which other potential influences on voting behaviour, such as leaders, are perceived and evaluated. For these researchers, in short, the association between leader evaluations and vote is, indeed, spurious. Diego Garzia (2012) has explored the Italian case (along with Britain and Germany) using panel data, and has argued that to some extent partisan identification is itself shaped by leader evaluations and that when this is taken into account the latter can be shown to have a strong independent influence on voting. But we are still not out of the woods. It is one thing to provide evidence showing that the impact of leader evaluations is independent of this or that other variable; a question remains about how significant the impact is as compared to the impact of a host of other potentially significant variables, such as ideology, issue proximity, economic evaluations and so on. One way around this difficulty might appear to be to ask voters themselves how important leaders were in their voting decisions. This is what the ITANES (Italian National Election Study) researchers did in 2001 when they presented a random sample of Italian electors with a list of factors potentially significant for the voting decision and asked them to say which had been most important to them in deciding how to vote in that year’s election. Their finding was that ‘the role of the coalition leader would seem to have been significant for about a fifth of the electors who answered the question’ (ITANES, 2001: 135, my translation). The problem is that the answers given will depend on

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the list of alternatives that respondents are asked to choose from, and will in any case more than likely be post hoc rationalisations. Trying to resolve the question of Berlusconi’s importance beyond reasonable doubt, then, seems futile; but perhaps we can get somewhere by relying, instead, on the balance of probabilities. In order to win an election, a party or coalition must maximise its potential support, meaning that it must mobilise those already committed to it and convince those uncommitted. The uncommitted, who by definition are those uncertain whether to vote one way or another, can be operationally defined as those who switch their vote from one election to the next, and they are in a minority: of those who voted in both 1994 and 1996, and of those who voted in both 1996 and 2001, less than 20 per cent failed to support the same coalition on both occasions (ITANES, 2001: 93). The same was true of those who voted in both 2001 and 2006 (De Sio, 2006: 64), and of those who voted in both 2006 and 2008 (De Sio, 2008: 59). Despite their minority status, switchers can decide the outcome of an election if they move predominantly in one direction rather than another. Consequently, even if leaders are significant for only a minority of voters, if these are shifters then they can make a difference to outcomes. The characteristics of shifters make it seem likely that leaders will be more significant for them than for other voters. Shifters are likely to be uninterested in politics, to have little knowledge of politics, not to have clearly defined ideological beliefs, and to make their voting decisions at the last minute (ITANES, 2001: 95–102). In turn, voters with these characteristics are more likely than others to choose the coalition leader as the factor most important in helping them to decide how to vote (ITANES, 2001: 135–9). This is what one would expect: those uninterested in and uninformed about politics, though difficult to reach precisely because of their lack of interest, are for the same reason likely to have fewer of the intellectual and conceptual tools and abilities to enable them to take political stands, and thus they are more likely to be vulnerable to persuasion. They are especially likely to be persuaded by messages focused on leaders, as these have the interest and simplicity necessary actually to reach them. Other voters, those whose choices over time are stable, are easier to reach but less vulnerable: their greater interest and knowledge make it more likely that they will interpret political messages in a way that reinforces their existing convictions and partisanship. However, positive messages built around their coalition’s leader might by that token help to mobilise them, giving them additional reasons to turn out. So on the balance of probabilities, it is likely that the leadership of Berlusconi, who attracted slightly more positive ratings overall than his main rival, Francesco Rutelli (ITANES, 2001: 133), was significant to the outcome in 2001. True, the vast majority of voters were unmoved by the entrepreneur, so in that sense the idea that the election was a referendum on Berlusconi was mistaken (ITANES, 2001: 172); but still, given the difference in vote shares between the two main coalitions (1.7 per cent in the Chamber majoritarian arena), Berlusconi may have convinced a sufficiently large number of swing voters to make a difference to the overall outcome. It is possible, not to say probable, that Berlusconi played a significant role in



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the centre right’s performance that went beyond simply persuading swing voters because of his attractive personal qualities. For one thing, his persona was ­probably also significant in mobilising his convinced supporters and therefore helping him to avoid the potentially fatal problem of supporters failing to turn out in sufficient numbers to get him over the finishing line. Not surprisingly, survey evidence shows that centre-right and especially FI voters both tended to like Berlusconi more than centre-left voters liked their leader (Barisione and Catellani, 2008: 139), and were more inclined than centre-left voters to indicate the coalition leader as the most important factor involved in their voting choice (Barisione, 2006: 189). These pieces of evidence suggest that Berlusconi’s tendency to use his personal profile as the basis for colour and controversy in campaigning was advantageous to his cause. And it was most likely advantageous because of what it did to raise the emotional temperature of campaigns. People are much more likely to be mobilised by things that are the object of strong emotions rather than by things that are only weakly engaging on an emotive level. People are much more likely to arouse strong emotions than are abstract, hypothetical entities such as policies and programmes. And by polarising campaigns, by creating sharp divisions of opinion around his character, Berlusconi would ensure that while he lost the support of centre-left voters, who were difficult to win over in any event, he would succeed in the much less problematic task of mobilising his own. He was uniquely well placed to perform this task: he personalised campaigns to such a degree that he himself became the main issue over which the party political contest took place, along which the battle lines were drawn. The regulation of television, the rules governing campaigning and political advertising, conflict-of-interests legislation, reform of the judiciary, anti-corruption legislation, penal sanctions, the internal life of political parties, taxation: all of these high-profile issues and others besides arose and were inseparable from the one underlying issue of the propriety of Berlusconi’s role in politics. So in a sense, Berlusconi was almost always at the centre of attention, almost never away from the campaign limelight.

The case against Despite all this, it is also possible to explain recent election outcomes in Italy with little or no reference to the role of Berlusconi, and thus to suggest that recent electoral history would probably have been little different had he played another, or no role. The case rests on certain characteristics of the Italian electorate, and on the characteristics of recent election outcomes when viewed from the perspective of the post-war period as a whole. Voting, from this point of view, is thought to reflect, predominantly, the operation of long-term and social structural factors and thus, ultimately, the social-psychological model of voting mentioned earlier. This, as we have seen, assumes that while short-term leader evaluations may have some slight impact on partisanship, in the final analysis socially determined partisanship more or less overwhelmingly impacts on both leader evaluations and voting: this, not leader performances, is what counts. The distribution of voting support in Italy in recent years has tended to be rather stable. Over the decade and a half separating 1994 and 2008, the centre

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Table 8.2 Vote shares won by parties of the centre right and the centre left, 1994–2013 Election

1994

1996

2001

2006

2008

2013

Centre right Centre left Cr – cl

54.3 42.2 12.1

54.1 43.4 10.7

49.5 43.8 5.7

49.4 49.7 –0.3

54.4 42.6 11.8

28.7 29.6 –0.9

Note: percentages based on votes cast for parties in the Chamber of Deputies contests independently of the coalition affiliations of parties. Thus, the percentage for the centre right in 1996 is derived by summing the votes cast for the parties of the Freedom Alliance and for the Northern League. In 1994 the parties of the centre right and centre left were opposed by a significant centre grouping whose components split shortly thereafter, some joining the centre left, some the centre right. Consequently, for simplicity, its 15.7 per cent vote share has been divided in two and attributed equally to the two main party groupings. Source: Author’s elaboration of data showing party vote shares available from the Ministry of the Interior

right’s support varied by only five percentage points, while over the same period, only once did the centre left’s support deviate significantly from its median of 43.4 per cent. Voting has also been skewed in favour of the parties of the centre right which, even if we include the earthquake election of 2013, have never been significantly outperformed by their opponents (Table 8.2). These are not recent tendencies but rather stretch back to the beginning of the Republic: since 1948, ‘the sum of those who vote for the right wing and those who vote for the centre right has … always been higher than the sum of centre-left and left-wing voters’ (Mastropaolo, 2009: 27). If we perform the same calculations for the elections of 1948 to 1992 (Table 8.3) we see that the centre right consistently outperforms Table 8.3 Vote shares won by parties of the centre right and the centre left, 1948–92 Election

1948 1953 1958 1963 1968 1972 1976 1979 1983 1987 1992

Centre right 59.6 Centre left 38.1 Cr – cl 21.5

62.4 36.7 25.7

61.6 36.9 24.7

59.7 39.1 20.6

52.7 59.3 45.8 38.6 6.9 20.7

52.6 45.5 7.1

52.3 41.6 10.7

51.8 42.8 9.0

49.0 45.4 3.6

53.7 40.0 13.7

Note: Centre right = Italian Social Movement; Monarchists; National Block; National Democratic Alliance; Italian Liberal Party; Italian Republican Party; Christian Democrats; Italian Social Democratic Party; Northern League. Centre left = Democratic Popular Front; Socialist Unity; Independent Socialist Unity; Popular Unity; Italian Communist Party (PCI); Italian Socialist Party; Greens; la Rete (‘the Network’); small parties to the left of the PCI. The parties are divided into two categories according to the criterion that the main left–right cleavage in Italian politics until 1994 was represented by, on the one hand, the governing parties rightward, and on the other hand, the ‘excluded’ parties of the left, of which the PSI was closest to the centre. The PSI remained part of the left opposition until 1963. It then spent the period from then until 1980 erratically in and out of government, before settling, in the latter year, for a stable governing role. Sources: Corbetta, Parisi and Schadee, 1988: Tables B2 – B5; Cacciagli and Spreafico, 1990: Table 4; Newell, 2000: Table 2.1.



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the centre left. Aggregating the votes cast for the Christian Democrats with the votes cast for parties of the right is open to question: the DC’s raison d’être was ‘exclusion’ of the extremes on both sides of the political spectrum, while it was once described by Alcide De Gasperi as ‘a party of the centre looking towards its left’. But the point is that performing the calculations in this way reveals that Italy, along with most liberal democratic countries, is an essentially ‘conservative’ society, politically speaking: parties supporting the government rightwards consistently have more or less significant majorities. At the very least, then, we can suggest that whatever Berlusconi’s impact, it benefited from a favourable ideological terrain – which would accordingly tend to downplay the entrepreneur’s historical significance electorally speaking. During the fifty-year period that separated the end of the war from Berlusconi’s political debut, Italy had been an essentially traditional society.4 Devastated by the war and then experiencing the so-called ‘economic miracle’ of the 1950s and 1960s, it had been marked by all the attendant dramatic social changes, including growing economic and geographical mobility, rising levels of education, growing exposure to an increasing variety of media of communications, and declining deference to traditional institutions such as the Church. These changes had manifested themselves in the conflicts of the 1970s and the cultural changes of the 1980s. And they had of course manifested themselves in changed patterns of voting behaviour: turnouts had declined and there had been growing electoral volatility (Newell, 2000: 19–20). But such manifestations of discontent had essentially always taken place within the framework of the established parties and the established party system. In other words, people would express concerns by switching between existing parties or by abstaining, rather than by supporting novel formations. New parties, notably the Radicals, began to make a tepid appearance from the 1970s, but it was not really until the end of the 1980s with the explosive emergence and growth of the Northern League that new parties of any significance gained a real foothold. And it was not until the early 1990s with the coming together of two epoch-making events, the collapse of communism and the Tangentopoli revelations, that party political change became dramatic. Even then, as we shall see, voters did not suddenly revolutionise their behaviour but voted much as one would have expected given their political pasts and given the party line-ups on offer. One might object that, beneath such a picture of relative aggregate stability there was a greater degree of mobility and change at the individual level. However, such shifts tend to be self-cancelling and to involve very small numbers. Change at this level can manifest itself in several different ways. Between one election and the next, one might join or leave the electorate through coming of age or death; shift to and from abstention; shift between the two main coalitions; shift between one of the two main coalitions and a third force; or shift between the parties of the same coalition. Of these possibilities, the ones with the greatest potential significance for election outcomes are the shifts between coalitions. Imagine an electorate of 100 voters and three parties, A, B and C, with 40, 40 and 20 votes respectively at election E1. At the next election, E2, two voters shift from A to B and two from C to B so the parties end up with 38, 44 and 18 votes respectively.

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160

The shifts from C to B contribute relatively little to the gap between B and its nearest rival, A: they increase B’s vote by two while leaving A’s unchanged. The shifts from A to B have a much bigger impact because they simultaneously raise B’s vote tally by two and reduce A’s by the same amount, increasing the gap between them by four. But such shifts – which, if large, would suggest space for leaders to affect the behaviour of significant numbers of significantly placed voters – are not large: in 2006, for example, they amounted to just 4.9 per cent of those entitled to vote.5 The elections providing the greatest scope for a case that Berlusconi’s campaign leadership was significant to the outcome were arguably those of 1994  – when voters had been orphaned by the collapse of the traditional parties and were therefore unprecedentedly ‘available’ – and 2006 – when the actual outcome was ­compared by several commentators with pre-election polls to suggest that Berlusconi had managed to stage a surprise ‘comeback’ during the campaign. But whatever Berlusconi’s impact in these two cases, the data concerning voting shifts reveal that it was limited by the tendency of voters’ decisions to be heavily influenced by their past decisions. As we have argued elsewhere (Newell, 2000: 114–19), voters in 1994 behaved in ways that were entirely predictable given the choices they were presented with (see Table 8.4). For instance, [o]f the PDS voters, some three-quarters remained loyal to their party – a proportion well within the range that political scientists would expect for a large, established party. DC voters, too, showed loyalty of a kind, since, far from distributing their votes randomly after their party’s demise, some three-quarters opted for one of the three parties (the PPI, the Segni Pact and Forza Italia) which had direct affinities with the old DC, either in terms of their appeals – as in the case of Forza Italia which, among other things sought during the campaign to

Table 8.4  Electoral flows, 1992–94 Vote 1992 (%) Vote 1994 Greens League AD PPI PDS Network Forza Italia Patto Segni AN RC Pannella/others Total

DC

PDS

League

PSI

2.3 4.0 2.0 26.5 3.9 0.9 32.8 14.2 9.2 0.5 3.7 100

3.9 1.9 2.3 0.6 75.3 1.3 7.3 0.6 1.4 4.0 1.4 100

1.9 54.9 0.5 1.1 3.2 0.4 28.0 1.5 5.8 0.6 2.1 100

3.8 8.2 3.0 3.1 12.1 1.8 35.0 6.1 10.2 1.2 15.5 100

Source: Newell, 2000: 115, Table 6.1; data supplied by Directa srl, Milan.

Berlusconi’s electoral impact161



stress its ‘functional equivalence’ to the old DC by emphasizing the notion of anti-communism – or in terms of organization and personnel – the PPI and the Segni Pact. (Newell, 2000: 117)

In short, voters clearly do not make their decisions afresh every time; rather, ‘they arrive at the polling booths with already formed and deeply held attitudes that are the product of the ongoing influence of their social, cultural and ideological backgrounds’ (Newell, 2000: 117). Much the same can be said concerning the election of 2006. The suggestion that Berlusconi staged a comeback has to deal with the awkward fact that exit polls suggested an advantage for the centre left that was of the same dimensions as the one suggested by the earlier polls (Newell, 2008: 7–8). It has to deal with the fact that, as ever, voters behaved very much as expected in the light of their past decisions (see Table 8.5). It has to deal with the fact that the centre left had trailed the centre right in terms of votes at all three of the previous elections. So the actual outcome (the narrowest of centre-left wins) was the most that could be expected on the evidence of the past; and the suggestion of a comeback probably owes more to a problem with the polls generally as measuring instruments at this time than it does to an actual comeback in the last two weeks during the legally imposed blackout on the publication of poll results. Yes, Berlusconi ran a striking campaign; but while it seemed reasonable, in light of the outcome, to interpret the histrionic quality of his pronouncements as evidence of the effectiveness of his campaign (see, e.g., Berselli, 2006: 32–8), this seemed much less reasonable during the campaign itself when his pronouncements gave the impression of desperation rather than of a confidently executed campaign strategy. Table 8.5  Electoral flows 1996–2001 (Chamber plurality arena) and 2001–06 Vote in 1996

Column per cent Vote in 2001

Centre right

Centre left

Other

Abstention/ blank ballot

Too young

Centre right Centre left Other Abstention/blank ballot

84.7 4.9 1.5 9.0

9.0 80.7 1.4 8.8

40.4 17.3 28.8 13.5

29.3 15.3 1.3 54.1

34.2 27.6 4.8 33.4

Vote in 2001

Column per cent Vote in 2006

Centre right

Centre left

Other

Abstention

Too young

Centre right Centre left Abstention

77.2 8.1 14.4

7.2 80.7 11.8

32.0 40.5 25.4

26.9 25.6 47.3

34.6 42.1 23.3

Source: figures for 1996–2001 based on author’s elaboration of Italian National Election Study (ITANES) data available at http://csa.berkeley.edu: 7502/cattest.html; figures for 2001–06 taken from the results of an Swg survey published in la Repubblica, 13 April 2006, p. 13.

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Conclusion In summary, then, the case for Berlusconi’s significance as an election campaigner can be played both ways. On the one hand, voters still seemed mainly to be moved by tradition and long-term factors; whatever his precise impact, he found ­favourable ideological terrain for it; there was nothing really novel about his style of campaigning, which represented the rather late application to Italy of trends and tendencies already apparent elsewhere. On the other hand, there is no doubt that he was a more skilful exploiter than his opponents of these trends and tendencies; and there is some evidence that Berlusconi the individual may have made a difference to swing voters and in that sense been decisive for election outcomes. However this may be, because his political colleagues believed he was successful on the electoral plane, Berlusconi actually was successful – or rather, powerful – on the plane of inter-party negotiations within his coalition. These negotiations determined the line-ups that voters were presented with at elections – line-ups that themselves impacted on election outcomes insofar as they influenced choices and were more or less efficient in converting a given distribution of votes into a given distribution of seats. All of this underpinned Berlusconi’s power as a party leader intent on keeping his coalition united between elections – with the degree of success and the policy consequences that we shall consider in some detail in the chapter that follows.

Notes 1 All of this assumes that voters would have distributed their votes in the same way had the Northern League been contesting the election in alliance with Berlusconi rather than in opposition to him. 2 ‘Encapsulation’ is ‘the process through which parties and their collateral agencies create an external “closure” of their members from outside pressures (Bartolini and Mair 1990). This process tends to stabilize electoral loyalties and provide a close connection between organized groups in society, political parties, and policy making’ (Bellucci, Maraffi and Segatti, 2007: 171). 3 This is not entirely true: features of such a campaign style had already been apparent in the 1980s when party leaders such as the Republicans’ Giovanni Spadolini and the Socialists’ Bettino Craxi had departed from established traditions and run posters with full portraits of themselves and relatively small party symbols, suggesting, for more or less the first time, that voting was a choice between people, not just between ideologies or programmes (Campus and Cosenza, 2010). This provides the basis for the view that Berlusconi represented far less significant a novelty than is sometimes made out: he did not invent the campaign techniques he used, techniques that, moreover, had long been applied as standard in other democracies and were simply late in arriving in Italy. 4 That is, a society oriented to the past rather than the future, one in which social norms are heavily influenced by more or less deeply rooted customs and habits, where the division of labour is governed by ascribed rather than achieved characteristics (e.g. age and gender as opposed to demonstrated competence). 5 Those switching between the two main coalitions were 6.1 per cent of those casting valid votes (De Sio 2006: 64); those casting valid votes were 96.9 per cent of those who turned out, who in their turn were 83.6 per cent of those entitled to vote.

9

Berlusconi as head of government

In the previous chapter and in chapter 4 we considered Berlusconi the campaigner and Berlusconi the party leader. In this chapter our attention turns to Berlusconi the prime minister, and to evaluating his impact as head of the governments that held office from 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. Specifically, we ask how successful he was in exploiting the position of chief executive to bring about significant change and how his performance in this respect can be accounted for. In making his political debut in 1994, he had promised a ‘new Italian miracle’; so we start by considering the means – without which he could have achieved nothing – he had available to accomplish it. We then consider the policy objectives he set out – and the steps he took to secure them – in order to realise his aim. In light of his failure to do so – as measured in terms of social and economic outcomes – we reflect, in the penultimate section, on why this was the case, concluding that the answer lies in the force of circumstances which he had the power to influence but not to control.

Prime ministerial power resources As prime minister, Berlusconi faced far fewer structural constraints on his ability to get his way than Italian prime ministers had before him. They had been like constitutional monarchs: they reigned but did not rule. This was because of the fascist–anti-fascist and communist–anti-communist divides that had been bequeathed by the two wars – the Second World War and the Cold War – and the consequent ‘enforced cohabitation’, without alternation in government, of the parties that were both anti-fascist and anti-communist. Because of this, the governing parties’ leaders controlled both executives and prime ministers: the latter were creatures of the power-sharing agreements reached by the party leaders – in what were called vertici di maggioranza or ‘majority summits’ (Criscitiello, 1993) – as were their cabinet colleagues. Consequently, prime ministers came and went with their governments (Sartori, 1994), the latter being made and unmade according to the shifting distributions of power between parties (and party factions) as the result both of election outcomes and events in between elections. Berlusconi’s premierships, from this point of view, reflected a significant novelty. He took office as the head of coalitions that had been agreed prior to elections and he controlled what was their largest party. His, therefore, was the final say in

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negotiations concerning the composition of the cabinet. So although not as strong as the average British prime minister, he was stronger than the average Italian one before his debut – but also following it (with the possible exception of Matteo Renzi): when Romano Prodi was elected in 1996, he was not a party leader and therefore owed his position as ‘prime minister designate’ entirely to the agreement of those of his coalition colleagues who were party leaders that he should take on the role. So he was in a position rather similar to that of prime ministers before Berlusconi in being dependent on others; and the same can be said, with the appropriate qualifications and caveats, of his successors. Two further changes added to Berlusconi’s strength. Law no. 400 of 1988 added to the institutional tools available to prime ministers to perform their constitutionally prescribed role, as set out in article 95, of coordinating the activity of ministerial colleagues in the interests of coherent policy making. Prior to 1988, the available tools had been woefully inadequate, not to say non-existent: there was no legislation spelling out how the coordination role was to be performed, and prime ministers also lacked all of the informal levers, most obviously the power to hire and fire, with which to influence the conduct of ministers. Law no. 400 allows prime ministers, in cases of conflicts of competence between ministers, to suspend the administrative or political actions of the latter pending a ruling by cabinet; and it insists that prime ministers should be able ‘to agree with ministers concerned on the public statements that they plan to give whenever they wish to involve the general politics of the government, beyond their normal ministerial responsibility’ (quoted by Barrera, 1990: 10–11). It gives the Prime Minister’s Office (Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, PCM) ‘its own permanent staffing, and the capacity to hire either full- or part-time outside advisors paid directly out of its own budget’ (Hine, 1993: 214). Hitherto, the PCM had had no budget of its own, and its senior advisors had come and gone with the prime ministers by whom they had been chosen, to the detriment of continuity and institutional memory (Hine and Finocchi, 1991). Second, Berlusconi’s position was reinforced by the awareness of his interlocutors that not only had his incumbency been politically – if not constitutionally (Pasquino, 2002: 167) – decreed by election outcomes, and not only was he backed by a powerful party, but the votes he attracted for his party and coalition were thought to be largely personal, the expression of support at least as much for him as an individual as for anything else. In other words, he brought votes to his party and coalition, not they to him. His coalition allies were therefore to an extent dependent on Berlusconi as an individual for their own political fortunes. The extent to which this was so was not unvarying: Berlusconi’s power fluctuated over time and there are many celebrated instances of his being forced to bow to the will of his coalition allies. One was his decision to replace his finance minister in the wake of the outcome of the 2004 European elections; another was the brief resignation and cabinet reshuffle forced upon him by the UCD in 2005, mentioned in chapter 5. Such episodes illustrated that what Italian prime ministers are able to achieve depends to a significant degree on political circumstances and on what they are able to make of a role the limits of whose powers



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are imprecisely defined in formal terms. They showed too, ‘in reverse’, his and his c­ olleagues’ awareness that there was considerable potential in the office for permanent campaigning: using governing and the pursuit of legislation for the purposes of support mobilisation, as other Italian prime ministers of recent times have been wont to do.1 In fact, for prime ministers who want to ensure the continuing security of their positions, such activity is essential thanks to the potential emergence of ‘a vicious circle between leadership and popularity’ (Palladino, 2015: 109), the avoidance of which requires prime ministers to play off the interests of their allies against one another in the constant effort to enlarge their spheres of autonomy. Berlusconi’s mentor, Bettino Craxi, had given the entrepreneur a lesson in the possibilities here. Thanks to the outcome of the 1983 election which had increased the numerical dependence of the DC in Parliament on its allies, Craxi had managed to secure the premiership for his own party (only the second time it had gone to a non-DC representative) and, unusually for a party leader at this time, had decided to take the position himself, gambling that the DC’s electoral difficulties would dissuade it from attempts to remove him at an early date. This had then given Craxi some scope to lead from the front and take independent policy initiatives; enabling him, in short, to attempt to build a reputation for vigorous and effective leadership that would tighten his grip on the office. And in fact, he set a new post-war record for longevity, his first government holding office from 4 August 1983 to 27 June 1986, for a total of 1,058 days. Having run in 1983 what for Italy at that time was an unprecedentedly personalised campaign, Craxi’s term of office revealed him using his fund of personal support as a political resource in the service of strong leadership and the attempt to sustain a virtuous circle between leadership and popularity. So, relatively speaking at least, Berlusconi had both the means and the incentive to be a decisive leader. And there was an additional incentive stemming from the heightened dependency of the popularity of his party and coalition on his own actions and thus his personal popularity – stemming in turn from the personalised style of campaigning he had pioneered and thus from the growing tendency of voters to attribute to prime ministers the main responsibility for the actions of their governments (Calise, 2006, 2010, 2016; Palladino, 2015). So what did Berlusconi want to achieve as prime minister? And how successful was he?

Berlusconi’s aims and objectives There is a widely held view according to which the answer to the first question is ‘very little’ and the answer to the second is ‘not very, or not at all’. According to this account, as a ‘personal party’, Forza Italia was nothing more than a vehicle for Berlusconi’s personal political ambitions, the pronouncements of its leader thus being not much more than demagogy aimed at the acquisition of popular support in pursuit of his private interests. This would explain his lack of interest in institutional reform (Campus, 2006: 145–6; Calise, 2016: 41–2); and it would explain his gradual shift away from the clear neoliberal programme of the 1994 election,

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to less clear positions as soon as it became apparent from the election results that his party was in fact a ‘container’ for a range of more-or-less conservative causes, some of which (such as those of the northern industrial districts) would welcome an incisive agenda of public spending cuts and deregulation, others of which (such as those associated with the more state-reliant south) would not. If there was one ambition Berlusconi held to consistently – the account goes on – it was to reduce the tax burden; but against this he faced the fundamental obstacle of low growth, making tax cuts without potentially unpopular spending cuts almost impossible to envisage. Getting towards the end of his 2001 term and having still failed to fulfil the tax-cutting promise he had made at the 2001 election, he had to struggle mightily to pass some face-saving reductions, against the resistance of his southern-based governing allies whose own electoral support was put at risk by the spending consequences of the measures. The event was emblematic of a fundamental obstacle in the way of any attempt to steer government in a clearly defined direction: the simple fact that he was the leader of a coalition. He took steps to enlarge the space for autonomous action by including in cabinet five technocrats of his own choosing (Campus, 2006: 156) together with the leaders of his main coalition partners (to bind them as closely as possible to the government’s programme). But he was never able to avoid the need for bargaining and compromise in pursuit of what he wanted, with parties having different support bases – parties willing to soft-pedal their differences during election campaigns but which also faced electoral imperatives obliging them to take a much more assertive role after the elections. And, as it became apparent that perceived government shortcomings would damage FI to the benefit not of the opposition but of FI’s allies, this encouraged them to be even more assertive, undermining still further Berlusconi’s capacity to impose his authority in a vicious circle. A similar reading is provided, by the standard account, of the 2008 ­government – viewed as one overshadowed by sexual scandal; allegations of corruption; Berlusconi’s preoccupation, most of the time, with legislation designed to further his own financial and legal interests; and his inability to provide effective leadership in helping to manage the global financial crisis, as a result of which he was eventually removed from office at the hands of Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and the president of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano. All of this took place against the background of the constant imperative of having to manage the conflicting demands of government colleagues whose assertiveness undermined his authority and ability to manage and therefore his personal popularity in a downward spiral traced by declining prime ministerial popularity ratings and a decline in the number of legislative initiatives launched by the cabinet (Palladino, 2015: 111–16). Let us return to what he wanted to achieve. In emphasising the instrumental purpose of Berlusconi’s pronouncements (and therefore the suggestion that he had few concerns beyond the protection of his private interests), the standard account clashes with the fact that his pronouncements did reflect the presence of certain recurring themes which, as argued in chapter 2, had sufficient coherence to merit being called an ‘ideology’. This implies that, at whatever level of



Berlusconi as head of government167

a­ bstraction, Berlusconi had a political project; that whatever his penchant for demagogy in pursuit of his private interests, this was not its only purpose: there were other objectives involved as well. What were these objectives? Generically, they were to apply to the business of government the criteria of managerial efficiency typical of the world of business; Berlusconi believed that good government required not so much institutional change or an ideological revolution as a change in the way problems were approached (Campus, 2006: 29). He did want a reinforcement of executive power – which would reduce the number of veto-players in the political system and broaden the sphere of prime ministerial autonomy – but as a means to the end of managerial efficiency. If this could be achieved – by placing in office a capable leader allowed to ‘get on with the job’ – then it would be possible to realise the ‘new Italian miracle’, understood as economic prosperity, he had spoken of on 26 January 1994. In 2001 Italy had undergone a shift away from a model of government ­formation that had privileged negotiation over the distribution of offices as the basis for a subsequent programmatic agreement, towards one focused on the fulfilment of an agreement reached in advance. During the campaign, Berlusconi issued three policy documents whose content influenced the programmatic statement which he made to the Senate on 18 June. Unlike in the past, such statements are now of some weight, forming the basis on which governments ask for the support of Parliament in the confirmatory confidence votes that must take place within ten days of their appointment. Of the campaign documents, the ‘weightiest’, at 84 pages, was the Piano di governo per un’intera legislatura. Hardly a manifesto to inform campaign debate – it was issued just six days before the vote, to the derision of Berlusconi’s opponents (la Repubblica, 2001) – it nevertheless reflected the changed reality: from one in which the public did not really invest prime ministers, as weak mediators, with responsibility for the country’s fortunes, to one in which, having obtained their positions on the basis of claims about their capacities to bring improvement, prime ministers designate were expected to spearhead policies that would deliver it. And Berlusconi was nothing if not ambitious. The Piano’s ‘five missions to change Italy’ foregrounded the theme of managerial efficiency insofar as they focused on administrative reorganisation, institutional overhaul and regulatory reform, besides infrastructural projects and a plan for southern development; and were presented in the programmatic statement as the criteria on which Berlusconi asked to be judged.2 They would, he suggested, inform the government’s activity on a day-to-day basis and a minister would be appointed to oversee implementation of the programme through not-more-precisely-specified activities of coordination and encouragement.3 Though ambitious, the plans for economic prosperity, a classic valence issue, were not for the most part especially radical: they were not ones that mainstream politicians would by and large have had much difficulty signing up to; for they reflected the more or less consensually held view among Italy’s political elites concerning the most pressing problem – namely, the failure to achieve economic

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growth, the sine qua non for addressing most other policy problems – and the required remedies. The average rate of growth for the 1970s had been 3.9 per cent and for the 1980s 2.4 per cent, but in the 1990s it had gone down to 1.4 per cent (Newell, 2010).4 Whereas until 1990 growth rates generally speaking had equalled or exceeded those of the other large European countries and the United States, since then they had been below the growth rates of these countries.5 While the issues causing the problem were several, the problem itself was understood to require the addressing of shortcomings in public services and regulation (which increased firms’ transaction costs; resulted in a relatively uneducated, and thus a relatively immobile, inflexible labour force; and restricted competition in some markets), along with measures to raise southern productivity and bring down the public debt (whose servicing requirements had diverted public resources from other, more productive uses). Crucially, governments were now severely limited, by membership of the Eurozone, in what they could do to kick-start growth directly using the traditional macroeconomic levers of budgetary and monetary policy (control of which had been transferred to the EU). They would have to rely, instead, on the full range of micro-economic instruments to raise the competitiveness of Italian industry in world markets and attract higher levels of inward investment. So the connection between the issues to be addressed, and Berlusconi’s ambition of pursuing a politics of ‘managerial efficiency’, is obvious; and in the programmatic statement he started out by making clear that this would amount to a veritable ‘new way of doing politics’ (Berlusconi, 2013: 96): ‘We will do it, peacefully’ and legally, respecting the Constitution, he said, ‘but we will do it’ (Berlusconi, 2013: 95) – thereby making the obligatory professions of allegiance to established politics while at the same time implying that this was an obstacle to be overcome. He then spent some time attempting to expand his room for manoeuvre as much as possible by emphasising the way in which the election result had made his government the ‘direct expression of popular sovereignty’ with ‘the right and the duty’ to implement its programme (Berlusconi, 2013: 97). The latter was a programme ‘to modernise the state, its institutional arrangements, its laws, its infrastructure and finally to allow the South to take off … by bringing the activity of government into line with the requirements of a “can-do culture”’ (Berlusconi, 2013: 101). By exploiting the combined potential of information technology, reorganisation and the retraining of the workforce, the public administration was to be transformed from ‘a handicap into a source of strength for [Italy’s] competitiveness in the world economy’ (Berlusconi, 2013: 104). To the same end the government would, he suggested, undertake a process of regulatory and legislative simplification and introduce education reforms, all of which would create the economic headroom necessary to enable tax reductions and pensions increases which would serve the same end through their contribution to social cohesion. Hence, much of what Berlusconi had to say was pretty much motherhood and apple pie. More likely to create controversy were the hints that measures to assist the south would involve an end to national-level collective bargaining (to allow wages to reflect the lower levels of productivity in that area), and



Berlusconi as head of government169

the attempts to dampen expectations of early public-debt reductions (by alleging that the outgoing government had been misleading concerning the real size of the problem). In short, the message was that, provided he could overcome attempts at obstruction deriving from trade unions, the opposition and dubious constitutional restrictions, then by applying business principles to government he could achieve great things. The remainder of the statement dealt with the position issues, where his stances reflected the need to satisfy the range of more-or-less conservative groups that supported him. For the League there was to be federalism; for AN, presidentialism; for the centrist, former Christian Democrats, there was the ritual commitment to reinforcing the institution of the family, and support for privately funded education. In addressing the position issues, he showed himself to be an accomplished communicator: ‘We have’, he said, ‘always avoided linking the issue of domestic security with the problem of receiving and integrating growing numbers of immigrants’ (Berlusconi, 2013: 110) – thus evoking a link between the issues of immigration and security precisely by denying it. And in arguing that reform of the administration of justice was justified by the ‘legislative sovereignty’ of Parliament, and that his potential conflict of interests ‘was well known to the more than eighteen million Italians who [had] voted for [him]’ (Berlusconi, 2013: 116), he revealed that, as a leader backed by a secure majority, he would be unwilling to brook many constraints on his freedom of action. Back in Parliament, on 13 May 2008, to give another programmatic statement as ‘prime minister elect’, he was this time briefer. Once again, he began with an interpretation of the election result, developing three leitmotifs in the speech: the imperative of decisive action in place of the ‘teatrino’ of conventional politics, the numerous benefits of the economic growth that would derive from it, and the potential contribution to it of a loyal opposition that avoided ‘useless quarrels’ and ‘that sense of monotonous repetition that delegitimises politics in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of Italians’ (Berlusconi, 2013: 136). What Berlusconi seemed to be implying was that if the opposition were to refrain from making an issue out of his conflict of interests and his attempts to use Parliament to overcome his legal difficulties, then it could expect to be part of a project of renewal, led by Berlusconi, from which all would benefit. In this, as in other respects, the speech reflected the immediate circumstances in which it was made: it followed a low-key election campaign during which Walter Veltroni had seemed to reject, as a campaign tool, criticism of Berlusconi for his personal circumstances; several of his legal proceedings, outlined in chapters 3 and 5, were reaching critical stages; and the reduction in party-system fragmentation and the apparent relative cohesion of majority and opposition seemed to have heightened the prospects for the cross-party pursuit of institutional reform. The speech was made against the background of a widespread sense of insecurity deriving from the initial rumblings of the international financial crisis. So while it provided reassurances of decisive action on specific, immediate issues, such as the Naples refuse crisis,6 it carefully avoided anything that might generate expectations of any short-term ­achievement of ‘the new Italian miracle’.

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Berlusconi’s legacy

How successful was he? Ultimately, then, what Berlusconi hoped to achieve, like most of those occupying similar positions to his own, was an improvement in the capacity of the political system effectively to formulate and implement policies, in the hope and expectation that this would bring improvement in the condition of the people. In order to achieve these aims, he had to increase his own capacity to steer the executive, and the capacity of the executive to get measures approved once agreed upon. Taking office in 2001, he took serious steps to achieve these objectives. Besides the inclusion in cabinet of the leaders of allied parties and technocrats, he was able to ensure that ten cabinet places went to members of his party (thus, with the five technocrats, giving him direct leverage over fifteen of the twenty-five cabinet places). The technocratic appointments would ensure that in carrying out their remits, the appointees would be relatively protected from the pressures of coalition politics (Cotta and Verzichelli, 2007: 123). He took advantage of the power to appoint ministers without portfolio: with responsibility for policy areas directly related to the prime minister’s ambitions (such as the public administration and information and technology), they were directly dependent for administrative support on the PCM as they were without ministries. Through law no. 137 of 2002, he obtained for the government delegated powers to reorganise the PCM. He issued to cabinet colleagues periodic directives concerning strategic planning and what he saw as the government’s priorities. When conflicts erupted between coalition partners he drew on the power of popular opinion to remind the disputants publicly of the undertaking given by the whole of the government to realise its programme. In what was a novelty for Italian prime ministers (Campus, 2006), he drew on the power of television to help him steer government by holding periodic press conferences, which would enable him to build public support around potentially divisive issues. Like his predecessors, Berlusconi had to pursue his agenda through a legislature which, thanks to its well-known capacity to resist attempts by the executive to dominate (Di Palma, 1977; Cotta, 1994), made correspondingly problematic attempts to marginalise it through proposals to alter its standing orders; but as measured by the success rate of government bills, and, conversely, government defeats in parliamentary votes, Berlusconi’s record in managing Parliament compared favourably with those of his predecessors (Capano and Giuliani, 2003), 60 per cent of the government measures initiated during the first two years having been approved by the end of that period, as compared to 35 per cent for the corresponding period of the previous government under Romano Prodi (CIRCaP, 2005: 47). Meanwhile, by the end of the four years of the Berlusconi II government, the cabinet could claim to have introduced to Parliament proposed measures wholly or partly implementing 80 per cent of the ‘most important’ programmatic commitments (CIRCaP, 2005: 45). Thus it was that a number of significant reforms were realised, including a plan for the reorganisation of the public administration, legislative simplification, labour-market reform and e­ ducation reform.



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All of these had significant implications for the economy. The schools reform, for instance, sought to gear the education system much more closely to the needs of the country’s productive system than had hitherto been the case, by placing heavy emphasis on information technology, providing for a gradual increase in the school leaving age, making provision for improvements in teacher training, and introducing a new system for the periodic evaluation of teaching quality (Newell, 2010). Meanwhile, there was framework legislation designed to encourage public-private partnerships in, and to streamline the administrative procedures surrounding, the execution of infrastructure projects (Onofri, 2003: 160). There was legislation introducing a range of new types of flexible employment contract (Baccaro and Simoni, 2004: 218–22) aimed at raising rates of employment. This in turn was seen as important for the contribution it could make to the future financial sustainability of the pensions system in view of Italy’s ageing population. And the pensions system was reformed directly through legislation designed to bring a gradual increase in retirement ages and to continue the shift, begun in the 1990s, from the apportionment to the capitalisation method of funding pensions (Natali and Rhodes, 2005; Capriati, 2009). Expected further to close the gap between contributions and payments, the reform was as a consequence also expected to ensure that the proportion of GDP having to be spent on pensions would remain in line with EU averages. On the other hand, over the five years of their existence, the Berlusconi II and III governments were unable to bring much, if any, significant improvement on the ground. Partly this was a matter of perceptions, in that by so considerably heightening expectations of what he would be able to achieve, Berlusconi fed, despite himself, perceptions of the state of the economy and standards of living that were so pessimistic as at times to be much worse than official data warranted (Guarnieri and Newell, 2005). But perceptions were by no means entirely divorced from reality. For example, the proportion of individuals living in relative poverty remained virtually unchanged;7 and while there was some ­improvement in the growth of real household incomes,8 the growth of real GDP per capita showed no change.9 Unemployment went down from 9.1 per  cent in 2001 to 6.8 per cent in 2006,10 but there was a sharp increase in inequality, with ­households headed by manual workers seeing a significant decline in their positions as compared to families headed by senior managers.11 As Marco Albertini (2004) has pointed out, individuals’ economic well-being is significantly influenced by the nature of the relationships within the family. From this perspective, the position of women in particular worsened thanks to the persistence of a relatively entrenched gender division of labour in the household combined with a relative scarcity of social services for the elderly; an ageing population, and an increasing tendency for younger women to enter paid employment rather than remaining at home, meant that growing numbers of women could look forward  to a longer period of old age with fewer family resources to rely on than had been the case for their mothers (Saraceno, 2004: 55). Meanwhile, the persistence of youth unemployment at rates that exceeded 20 per cent meant that ‘increasing n ­ umbers of well-qualified adult children [were] r­emaining

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e­ conomically and ­residentially dependent on their parents long into their middle years’ (Parker, 2007: 3). The 2008–11 government was also marked at its outset by definite steps taken by Berlusconi ‘to drive forward the process of decision making according to a definite set of priorities’ (Marangoni, 2013: 73). As he stood at the head of a coalition with a secure parliamentary majority, composed essentially of only one party other than his own, he was able to ensure the appointment of a number of ministers loyal to him personally; he was able to include, in high-profile positions in the cabinet, the leaders of his allied parties, the more closely to tie them, in the interests of cohesion, to government decisions; he sought to reinforce his position by drawing on public expectations of decisive leadership to make reference, in forming his government, to his responsibility to coordinate policy making, promising close monitoring of the activities of the executive (Marangoni, 2009: 143); and he sought to retain control of the political agenda through a series of public announcements of the initiatives his government would take (Baldini and Cento Bull, 2009: 54).12 Consequently, the potential for prime ministerial rather than cabinet government, in which direction from the apex would predominate over activities of mediation, appeared even greater than before. Berlusconi sought, as previous government leaders had done, to circumvent the parliamentary obstacles in the way of the pursuit of his agenda – obstacles deriving from a lack of cohesion in, and the consequent presence of veto players within, the parliamentary parties – by having ample recourse to decree laws and laws of delegation,13 as well as confidence votes (Marangoni, 2011; 2013). Consequently, by the time his government left office, ‘[it had] managed to “bring home” over 75 per cent of the proposals presented to the Chamber and Senate (a rather high rate of success if one considers that the corresponding figure at the premature end of the second Prodi government was a little over 44 per cent)’ (Marangoni, 2011: 366). Of these proposals, three stood out in terms of the amount of public discussion they attracted. The first was the so-called Brunetta reform, named after the minister who sponsored it, which aimed to continue a process of modernisation of the public administration, begun in the 1990s, on the basis of the principles of ‘new public management’ (Marra, 2010); another was a further reform (or, rather, series of reforms) of education aiming to improve the organisation and functioning of primary schools and to give the principles of merit and evaluation a greater role in decisions concerning the distribution of resources in the university sector (Capano, 2011); a third was a law of delegation and associated legislative decrees designed to give greater fiscal autonomy to the regions, with the aim, among other things, of giving those with the power to make regional spending decisions greater responsibility for the tax consequences of such decisions, and thus compel them to exercise greater vigilance over the levels and effectiveness of public spending in total (Massetti, 2012). Again, the potential implications of the reforms for the economy and the economic well-being of citizens were straightforward. Given that the fundamental purpose of any public administration is to provide services that are relied on by enterprises, as well as individuals, on a routine basis,



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it could be taken as given that any measure that effectively improved the quality of ­administration could be expected to bring some degree of economic improvement. All governments seek to ensure the quality of human capital available to the private sector through their control of education policy. And likewise, all governments seek to ensure that public resources contribute to economic well-being by virtue of being spent efficiently and effectively. Once again, however, the government’s actions failed to be reflected by much in the way of significant improvement on the ground. GDP per capita declined by an average of 1.5 per cent per annum over the four-year period of the government’s term,14 while the decline in household disposable income (which went down by an average of 1.3 per cent per year) and the growth in household debt (up from 82 to 90 as a percentage of disposable income between 2008 and 2011) were further indicators of the government’s inability to counter the effects of the recession.15 There was a slight improvement in terms of the incidence of relative poverty – but this merely reflected the fact that everyone was becoming less welloff in absolute terms.16 And as before, the burdens of the recession were borne unequally: the concentration of income and wealth continued17 and there was growing inequality in the labour market; thus, while the rate of unemployment rose by 1.7 per cent (from 6.7 to 8.4) overall between 2008 and 2011, among those aged 15 to 24 it rose by 7.8 per cent (from 21.3 to 29.1).18

Explanations If, as a prime minister, Berlusconi was broadly unsuccessful in achieving his aims  and objectives, then in principle there are three possible explanations that can be given: either he failed to pursue reform with sufficient enthusiasm; or, though he pursued reform, it was ineffective – thanks to mistaken ideas or unforeseen circumstances – in realising the outcomes envisaged for it; or, though attempting to pursue potentially effective reform, he lacked sufficient power actually to secure it. It is obvious that the most likely explanation is that all three had a part to play.

A lack of enthusiasm? The case for the first, which we alluded to above, would appear to owe much to the realisation that, as described in chapter 3, Berlusconi had specific financial motives for launching his attempt to take a front-line role in politics in the first place, and that he subsequently made several high-profile attempts to pursue legislation that would have obvious benefits for him personally. And as such attempts occupied a place in public discussion that tended to overshadow much of whatever else he did while in office, it was natural to draw the conclusion that here was a man whose ambitions did not really extend much beyond securing his own interests as a private citizen. This perception was underpinned by the juxtaposition between what observers saw as the paucity of the results he achieved while in office (as compared to the promised ‘new Italian miracle’) and

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the e­ normous power he appeared to wield in terms of his impact on public opinion and cultural values. For Massimo Giannini, deputy editor of Italy’s secondlargest circulation daily, la Repubblica, for instance, Berlusconismo was ‘another biography of the nation’ (2008: 12) – a suggestion that recalled a famous expression used by the early twentieth-century journalist Piero Gobetti, for whom Fascism had been ‘the autobiography of a nation’, meaning that there was a close connection between Mussolini’s successful seizure of power and the deepest cultural traits of Italians. Similarly, the historian Antonio Gibelli spoke for many when he argued that it was possible to speak of a ‘Berlusconi age’, a period during which the entrepreneur’s control of power and his exercise of political hegemony had enabled him to set his mark on it (2010: 7). However, the best – in the sense of most direct – test of Berlusconi’s interest or otherwise in a genuine project of reform comes from the quality of the leadership he displayed on those occasions when change was either possible or (assumed to be) required. And perhaps the best instances of these are given by the project for constitutional reform that was voted on in the referendum of 2006, and the stance he took as his government sought to grapple with the implications of the global financial crisis when he was in office from 2008. In the first case, reform centred on a series of changes to the institutional geography of the Republic that included a considerable reinforcement of the powers of the prime minister. The president would lose all discretion in the appointment of the premier and be obliged to appoint the leader of the winning coalition. The latter would have the power to appoint, and revoke the appointment of, ministers. His resignation would bring the automatic dissolution of Parliament and fresh elections. He would also have the power to bring about such an outcome by being defeated in a vote on a legislative proposal which he had made a matter of confidence. Deputies would be able to bring about a change of prime minister without an intervening dissolution and fresh elections only by presenting a no-confidence motion accompanied by the designation of an alternative premier – and only if, in the event of the motion being passed, the votes of the opposition had not been decisive. In the event of no-confidence motions being defeated, Deputies would be able to avoid consequent prime ministerial resignations and dissolutions again only if the votes of the opposition had not been decisive. Meanwhile, government proposals would have priority in the parliamentary timetable and would be largely free of the need to satisfy the requirements of the Senate whose powers were for the most part reduced to those of a revising chamber, with Deputies having the final say. It is evident that, if his commitment to a ‘remaking’ of Italian politics were something he wished seriously to pursue, a man with Berlusconi’s apparent powers of public persuasion had everything to gain from such a reform. So it is significant – especially as he was also engaged in strenuous efforts to undermine the centre-left government that had just replaced his – that in the run-up to the referendum, he conducted what was a low-key campaign in which, all things considered, he failed to take a front-line role (Bull, 2007: 129–34). To many it seemed as though he had resigned himself to defeat at the hands of centre-left opponents



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who won thanks to having better grassroots organisations with which to mobilise voters on a technical, not very salient, issue. As for his actions in managing the Italian implications of the global financial crisis, these were marked by his more or less constant disputes with his finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, from the end of 2009 when, against the background of the sovereign debt crisis, the government came under considerable international pressure to cut public spending in order to avoid the risk, first, of debt and interest rates spiralling out of control and, second, of financial contagion: much of Italy’s debt was owned by French banks which, in the case of an Italian default, would put the French banking system and economy under considerable pressure, which would in turn affect France’s creditors and so on. Such a scenario, it was understood, would put at risk the European integration project; for, with a number of other Eurozone member states already being unable to repay or refinance their government debt, the emergence of popular resentment against financial aid packages in the creditor countries created the potential for conflict between these countries’ governments and the governments of the weaker countries who had to deal with popular resentment against austerity. The conflict between Tremonti and Berlusconi was a direct expression of this tension; in 2011, as the crisis reached its apogee, Berlusconi’s leadership was continually obstructed by Tremonti who, by opposing all attempts to increase expenditure, acted as an obstacle to the search for popularity through recourse to public indebtedness (Ceccarini, Diamanti and Lazar, 2012: 69). What struck observers about Berlusconi’s behaviour during this period was the way in which he sought constantly to downplay the seriousness of the crisis and, to the extent that he would admit that there was a crisis at all, to attribute it to forces – the euro, international speculators, a left-wing media and so forth – either hostile to him or beyond his control. At a press conference at the end of the G20 summit in November, he famously asserted that Italy was a well-off country in which the restaurants were full, in which airline tickets were often sold out; that he didn’t think that, going to live in Italy, one would have the impression that the country was suffering from anything resembling a major crisis. Leadership has, among others, two important dimensions, decision making and communication (Campus, 2006), whose imperatives may sometimes clash with one another  – as this example illustrated. Unwilling to take potentially unpopular decisions, Berlusconi fell back on the aspect of leadership he was best at – ­communication – in an attempt to create an atmosphere of optimism whose lack of credibility, when combined with his related assertions – for example, his complaint that as prime minister he was without even the power to replace cabinet ministers – only served to reinforce the view of international ratings agencies that Italy with him at the helm was badly placed to confront its problems (Jones, 2012: 194). Consequently, besides bringing about his own downfall, Berlusconi’s attitude in the crisis seemed to suggest that he was a man strongly oriented to two of Winter’s (1995) three motivational categories – affiliation (the need to establish and maintain interpersonal relationships) and power – but, in relation to public policy, only weakly oriented to the third: the achievement of results.

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Berlusconi could not, then, be described as a prime minister willing to assert himself in the public-policy field – unless his personal interests were at stake. In terms of his public image, it is true – as confirmed by the research into popular perceptions of him – that he was successful in conveying the impression of being a leader who had determination, energy, courage and similar qualities (see, e.g., Barisione, 2006; Caprara and Vecchione, 2007). However, if, as Campus (2006: 73) notes, we go beyond Berlusconi the communicator to consider him in the round, a more multifaceted picture emerges. It was not that he lacked a clear political vision; rather, it was that he was not willing, as other leaders such as Margaret Thatcher had been, to pursue policy objectives more or less regardless of the risks involved.19 Given that he, unlike Thatcher, was a successful entrepreneur, this was not, perhaps, very surprising.

A lack of effectiveness? It was also true that the lack of the great changes that Berlusconi had promised to bring about was due to the ineffectiveness of some measures; and this was, perhaps, especially true in the area of economic policy where, Luca Ricolfi (2006: 112) notes, measures could, according to several economists, ‘have been more effective’. An example of this was the 2003 Biagi law, a high-profile labour-market initiative named after the labour lawyer who inspired it. The aim was to raise rates of ­employment (which were around 10 per cent below the EU average) and reduce barriers to labour-market entry (that were apparent in the sharp divergences in employment rates according to age, gender and region of residence). Ultimately, these barriers were thought to reside in national-level collective bargaining arrangements. These provided wage protection for workers on full-time, permanent employment contracts, and a form of subsidisation of wages in the south (where levels of productivity were below average) – thus encouraging forms of black-market employment without any of the social protections available to those in the full-time, regulated sector. Italy thus had a dual labour market with a sharp division between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. The law – which Berlusconi himself took a front-line role in championing – thus introduced a wide range of new types of flexible employment contract, and (with the aim of reducing the volume of employment-related litigation) a form of prior certification of employment ­contracts – all on the assumption that it would raise employment opportunities for those otherwise denied them, while reducing the size of the black market. As is well-known, the impact of labour-market flexibility on employment is hotly contested among economists. Consequently, there was little consensus about how subsequent shifts in employment patterns were to be interpreted and about the role, if any, of the reform in them.20 What was less uncertain was that, if it were true that international economic integration was creating pressures for greater mobility and flexibility in the labour force – another driver of the reform – then logically, action was also required to reduce, for those in the full-time, regulated sector, the protection they enjoyed by virtue of the national-level, tripartite, collective bargaining arrangements. The government had expressed the ambition



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of freeing itself from the constraints of these arrangements, but in doing so had aroused the suspicion, and in some cases the outright hostility, of the unions, whose cooperation was required in the implementation of Biagi since ‘details of many of the new contracts were to be hammered out in negotiations between the employers and the unions’ (Tompson, 2009: 258). Consequently, the new law left the position of ‘insiders’ largely untouched, while many of the new labour contracts were not used at all and others remained extremely rare. To a significant extent, the problems arose from the fact that the government oversold the reform. Although it was in many respects an extension of an earlier centre-left reform, it was presented, publicly, as a radical break with the past. And while the centre left had negotiated its reform with its social partners quietly, ‘understanding that their acceptance of the reform would be sufficient to ensure its acceptance by the electorate’ (Tompson, 2009: 259), Berlusconi had sought to secure acceptance of his reform by making a strong public case for it from the start. Consequently, he made a rod for his own back, not only by arousing union hostility, but also by giving his union opponents an incentive to collaborate in his own narrative: since they had accepted the earlier reform, they too had an incentive to exaggerate Biagi’s significance, presenting it as a radical innovation (Tompson, 2009: 260).

A lack of power? Finally, although Berlusconi had considerably more power resources than his predecessors as prime minister, he was nevertheless subject to all of the considerable constraints facing any government leader, and due weight in the assessment of his performance must be given to these. The constraints arose from institutions, his coalition partners, the economy and public opinion. It was not that they were unamenable to his influence: as we have already seen, he was able to, and did, take steps to circumvent the obstacles he faced. The constraints can be exaggerated. With regard to institutions it is true, for example, that historically, Italian governments have found it comparatively difficult to pursue an agenda through a legislature that is not as amenable to executive dominance as legislatures elsewhere. But in the 1990s, under pressure from the demands of European integration, governments had already learned to bypass Parliament to some extent, through laws of delegation and similar means (Calise, 2005: 91–3). Berlusconi had to manage his coalition partners, but he made use of the full range of techniques available to him – such as coalition agreements (Moury and Timmermans, 2013) and ‘going public’ (Campus, 2006) – to enable him to do so, and as a consequence, his second and his fourth governments were by significant margins the longest lived in the history of the Italian republic. Governments are constrained by, but not powerless with regard to, the economy – even in a globalised world where economic management becomes intertwined with international summitry, where Berlusconi’s efforts at ‘personal diplomacy’ stood out, even if they were not always successful. He was more powerful than most in terms of his capacity to influence public opinion, this thanks to the communication resources available to him: his media control

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and his personal skills as a communicator. His problems, rather, stemmed from the fact that obstacles tend not to work in isolation but to be interrelated (so that reducing the size of one often tends to increase the size of another), and are often unpredictable (governments are constantly faced with unanticipated exogenous shocks). The interrelatedness of obstacles can be conceptualised in terms of George Tsebelis’s (2002) theory of veto players, the idea that if policy change requires the agreement of at least two actors (veto players), then as their number increases, change to the status quo does not become easier and may become more difficult depending on the actors’ preferences. If policy change involves several different dimensions, and if the majority that can be constructed for change along one dimension fails to coincide with the majorities that can be constructed for change along one or more of the other dimensions, then it is probable that, in the absence of log rolling, there will be no majority that can be constructed for the overall package.21 Since Italy is a polity that notoriously has considerable numbers of partisan veto players spread over a large ideological distance (to the extent that it has even been described as ‘veto-ridden’ (Molina and Rhodes, 2007: 803)), it is perhaps hardly surprising that Berlusconi failed to realise his promised ‘miracle’. The unpredictability of some obstacles (examples would be the Iraq War, the 2009 earthquake in Abruzzo, the implications of the sovereign debt crisis) meant that he did not have complete control of the political agenda; and unpredictability complicated matters still further by rendering the preferences that he had to accommodate constantly shifting. Consequently, while it is true that the shortfall between Berlusconi’s actual record and his claims can be partly attributed to a lack of enthusiasm and to the ineffectiveness of some of the measures taken, ultimately the failed revolution must be attributed to a lack of sufficient power – that is, to circumstances he could influence but not control – because in a sense the former are often merely reflections of the latter: often a lack of enthusiasm for change stems from awareness of the difficulties involved, while ineffectiveness merely reflects the fact that while, in the pursuit of change, Berlusconi could will the means, he could not will the ends.

Conclusion Given this, it is unlikely that Berlusconi will go down in history in the way he would like (Gibelli, 2010: 5): though he may lend his name to a period of Italian history (as previous prime ministers have done), it is not very probable, after he passes away, that there will be scores of admiring Italians queuing up before the imposing mausoleum he has had built in the grounds of his family home to pay tribute to him. Or if there are, it is unlikely that many of them will be thinking of his achievements in government. Detailed comparisons with the performances of the governments that came before and after his would no doubt reveal some, more or less significant, quantitative and qualitative differences in particular areas.22 It is true, too, that his governments actually delivered respectable proportions of their policy programmes. And whatever the objective economic and social outcomes of



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his governments’ activities, in terms of subjective well-being, Italians appeared to become better off during the Berlusconi years than the objective data concerning their economic circumstances might lead one to suspect.23 But none of this alters the basic point being made here, namely, that despite being in a better position than most Italian prime ministers to make a significant difference in terms of policy outcomes, by and large Berlusconi failed to do so, much less to meet expectations of a new Italian miracle, however defined. Most importantly, he failed to do so because he lacked the necessary power. As we have seen, this was because he was operating in a context populated by veto players, one subject to significant forces of path dependency, meaning that change could at most be incremental. It might perhaps be difficult to find a more fitting illustration of Karl Marx’s famous aphorism that though men (sic) make their own history, ‘they do not make it as they please’.

Notes  1 Bettino Craxi and Matteo Renzi are good examples of this.  2 As of course was the famous ‘Contratto con gli Italiani’ presented during the course of a talk show on 8 May when Berlusconi gave a commitment not to seek re-election at the end of his term if more than one of the five promises contained in the contract remained unfulfilled.  3 The entire speech can be found in Berlusconi (2013).  4 Data for the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s taken from Bull and Newell (2005: ch. 2).  5 Rossi (2004: table 1); OECD Stat Extracts, http://stats.oecd.org/WBOS/index.aspx (accessed 20 April 2018).  6 This was a public health crisis which arose as a result of the inability of the Neapolitan authorities to find landfill: existing landfills were full and there was public opposition to the construction of waste-to-energy facilities. As refuse accumulated in the streets, people began dumping it illegally. In the end the city was able to reach agreement with disposal facilities elsewhere in Italy.  7 At 13.2 per cent in 2006 as compared to 13.3 per cent in 2000: Bank of Italy, ‘Supplemento al Bollettino Statistico, Indagini Campionarie, I bilanci delle famiglie italiane nell’anno 2006’, Anno XVIII No. 7, 28 January 2008, p. 16, Table 2, http://www.bancaditalia.it/pu bblicazioni/indagine-famiglie/bil-fam2006/suppl_07_08.pdf (accessed 20 April 2018).  8 Which rose by an average of 1.3 per cent per year as compared to 0.57 per cent for the preceding five-year period. Figures derived from OECD data available at https://data. oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm (accessed 20 April 2018).  9 Growing by 1.9 per cent per annum between 2001 and 2006 – and therefore at the same rate as for the period from 1996 to 2001. Figures derived from Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ITARGDPC (accessed 20 April 2018). 10 ‘La disoccupazione tra passato e presente’, ISTAT, Argomenti no. 41, 2011, p. 17, Table 1.1, https://www.istat.it/. 11 While the net wealth of manual households declined from 51.4 to 46.9 per cent of the national median between 2000 and 2006, that of higher-managerial households went from 185.1 to 200 per cent over the same time period. Bank of Italy, ‘Supplemento al Bollettino Statistico, Indagini Campionarie, I bilanci delle famiglie italiane nell’anno 2006’, Anno XVIII No. 7, 28 January 2008, p. 18, Table 3, http://www.bancaditalia. it/pubblicazioni/indagine-famiglie/bil-fam2006/suppl_07_08.pdf (accessed 20 April 2018).

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12 Pejoratively referred to by opponents as ‘la politica degli annunci’ (the politics of announcements), the implication being that they were being used as a substitute for genuine action. 13 Decree laws are government measures which enter into force immediately but which become null and void unless enshrined in ordinary legislation approved by Parliament within 60 days. A law of delegation is an Act of Parliament conferring on the government the power to pass, on its own authority, measures pursuant to the law’s provisions. 14 Calculated from the data available at at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ITARGDPC (accessed 20 April 2018). 15 Derived from OECD data at https://data.oecd.org/italy.htm (accessed 20 April 2018). 16 According to ISTAT (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica) data (available at https://www. istat.it/) the proportion of households living in relative poverty went from 13.3 to 13.1 per cent from 2008 to 2011, but the proportions in absolute poverty rose from 4.6 to 5.2 per cent over the same period. 17 The Gini coefficient of dispersion rose from 32.7 to 33.3 for income between 2008 and 2012 and from 60.7 to 64 for household wealth over the same period. Bank of Italy data taken from https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/indagine-famiglie/bil-fam2012/ index.html (accessed 20 April 2018). 18 Data taken from ISTAT, ‘Forza di lavoro media 2008, Roma 2009’; ISTAT ‘Occupati e disoccupati anno 2011’, 2 April 2012 (https://www.istat.it/). 19 With the possible exception of taxation – where, as we have seen, he had been willing to face down his governing allies, towards the end of his second term, in an effort to achieve tax reductions pursuant to the promises made – though, as Ricolfi (2006) demonstrated, ultimately not kept – in his 2001 ‘Contract with the Italian People’. Yet even here the extent of his commitment to the achievement of results was not unequivocal insofar as it was driven at least as much by the pursuit of personal popularity as by fiscal reform for its own sake. 20 In an analysis of the impact of the Biagi law, Eryk Wdowiak (2017) points out that between  2004 and 2015, the employment rate among those aged 15 to 64 went from 57.6 to 56.3 per cent. Meanwhile, in the south and Islands it went from 46.3 to 42.5 per cent. Among men it went from 74.9 to 70.6 per cent, and among women from 48.5 to 50.6 per cent. Thus, women seemed to have gained at the expense of men, and the south seemed to have gained nothing at all. 21 And where it is exists, log rolling may throw up a whole new set of problems altogether. For example, the clientele politics characteristic of the First Republic could be regarded as a form of log rolling which notoriously multiplied the number of veto players present in the system. 22 Reflecting on this, Ricolfi (2006: 115) suggests – interestingly – that in 2006, a voter wanting policies typically associated with the right rather than the left might rationally have voted for Berlusconi’s opponents rather than for Berlusconi himself, and vice versa. 23 For example, European Social Survey respondents were asked in 2002 and 2012 to say how happy they were on a scale from one to ten. In 2002, 55 per cent of the Italian respondents gave themselves score of 7 or above. Ten years later, 68 per cent did so (http://www.euro​ peansocialsurvey.org/). And the authors of the European Commission’s 2013 report on the quality of life in Europe noted that ‘life satisfaction [had] risen overall in Europe since 2007, including in some countries that [had] supposedly been worst hit by the economic crisis such as Spain and Italy’ (Eurofound, 2013: 82).

10

Berlusconi’s legacy for the quality of Italian democracy In chapter 6, we explored Berlusconi’s relations with the political class, seeking to make sense of his conflict of interests, that is, to understand why it gave rise to such passions among foreign observers and what it was about the context in which he took office that would explain why it arose in the first place. Our answer to the first question was that in infringing the rule separating the public and the private, Berlusconi’s conduct was implicitly subversive of the conditions under which the pursuit of private wealth could be carried on legitimately and therefore securely. Our answer to the second question was that location of the boundary between public and private is a matter of social convention and therefore must be constantly negotiated and managed, with the result that it may be handled in ways that seem strange or inappropriate in one context but which make sense in another. In essence, Berlusconi’s conflict of interests reflected an overlap between states and markets, between political and economic power that, in the Italian case, was already relatively large and long-standing. This throws a spotlight on the issue to be addressed in this chapter, namely, Berlusconi’s legacy for the quality of Italian democracy; for it is often suggested that, by having set such a bad example – by having engaged in conduct, in pursuit of his private advantage, so obviously corrosive of principles of democracy and the rule of law – he must have undermined the robustness of these principles in the functioning of the Italian state more generally. It is often suggested that Berlusconi undermined the quality of Italian democracy in other ways too, for example, through the content of his media outlets (considered in chapter 7) or by virtue of some of the legislation he passed when in office (considered in c­ hapters 5 and 9). In the following sections we will assess Berlusconi’s legacy for the quality of Italian democracy by exploring the impact of his media holdings, specifically his television networks, which of course amounted for many years to a virtual monopoly on private broadcasting in Italy; by exploring the impact he will have had by virtue of being a political leader with iconic status and who was therefore a role model; and by exploring the impact he has had as the leader of what has hitherto been the principal party of the centre right. In short, we will assess the impact he has had as a media entrepreneur, as prime minister and as party leader. In order to address these issues, however, we have to have some kind of benchmark against which we can assess what actually happened. That is, we have to

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have some notion of what a high-quality democracy looks like, so that we can then see how Italian democracy compares with that and to what extent Berlusconi’s actions might have been responsible for any difference. But what is ‘democracy’? The choice of criteria for assessing democracy’s quality presupposes having a clear answer to this question, so it is the one we consider first.

Democracy and its quality In the most abstract sense, ‘democracy’ means ‘rule by the people’, coming as it does from the Greek word democratia, ‘the root meanings of which are demos (people) and kratos (rule)’ (Held, 1996: 1). As David Held points out, there is scope for disagreement with every element of this phrase. Who are ‘the people’? ‘How broadly or narrowly is the scope of rule to be construed? … Does it cover (a) law and order? (b) relations between states? (c) the economy? (d) the domestic or private sphere? Must the rules of “the people” be obeyed? What is the place of obligation and dissent?’ (Held, 1996: 2). So ‘democracy’ is a highly normative concept – like ‘murder’, which means ‘unjustified killing’. The implication is not that we disagree on what these concepts mean, but that we disagree on the extent to which they apply to any given case – was the killing of Osama Bin Laden an example of ‘murder’? – or in other words, on the criteria that have to be fulfilled before we are willing to apply them. Therefore it is preferable to talk less of what democracy is and of what a high-quality democracy looks like, as if these matters could be established objectively, than of what democracy and a high-quality democracy are widely thought to look like. The fundamental normative principles and ideals informing modern conceptions of democracy come from ancient Athens. First, Athenian democracy gave us the idea of citizenship. A citizen is a person who has a right to membership of a polity, and by virtue of that fact, the right to participate in its political life. So strictly speaking, only in regimes commonly recognised as democratic does it make sense to refer to the population as citizens. Second, in Athenian democracy all citizens could participate directly in the running of the city and consequently were expected to do so: political participation was considered very much a duty as well as a right. This principle can be seen in action today, in article 48 of the Italian Constitution, which states: ‘Any citizen, male or female, who has attained majority, is entitled to vote. The vote is personal and equal, free and secret. The exercise thereof is a civic duty.’ Third, since in ancient Athens all citizens had the right and obligation to participate in debating, deciding and enacting laws in the Assembly, the laws of the state were the citizens’ laws. All citizens were therefore de facto equal before the law and could only be punished in accordance with the law. This is a fundamental principle adhered to by regimes commonly called democratic today: virtually all Italian courtrooms have on one of their walls the slogan, La legge è uguale per tutti. This means, as enshrined in article 3 of the Italian Constitution, that the law applies to everyone without exception – no one is above the law – and that nothing can be done to the citizen unless it is provided for by the law or is not



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prohibited by law: individuals can only be put in prison if the law allows this and if that law has itself been passed according to the correct procedure governing the passage and enactment of laws. Fourth, since the laws that governed the life of ancient Athens were the laws of the citizens, made directly by the citizens, for the citizens, they enshrined the principle of political equality or the principle that, as defined in and through law, each person’s voice counts as much as that of the next person – seen today in the notion of ‘one person, one vote’. Fifth, since the laws that governed the life of ancient Athens were the laws of the citizens, made directly by the citizens, for the citizens, it followed logically from this that each citizen was deemed to have a duty to obey the law. Note that this followed as a matter of logic: a law is a rule and a rule by definition is a precept that defines right and wrong ways of doing things. If, as a matter of fact, people do not believe that they have a duty to do things in a certain way, then the specific law prescribing that particular way of doing things cannot be said to exist in any meaningful sense: so the existence of a law implies a duty to obey it. And if laws are made with the consent of the citizenry as a whole, then the citizenry as a whole has a duty of obedience. Sixth, since Athenians made laws themselves and since laws were in that sense self-imposed, they had a very precise view of what ‘freedom’ meant. Freedom did not mean being unconstrained by the law. Although individuals might be constrained by the law, they were nevertheless still free because they made the law themselves by virtue of their rights as citizens. Rather, for the Athenian, to be free meant not to be subject to another person’s arbitrary will. For the Athenian, law was juxtaposed to tyranny, and freedom, therefore, implied respect for the law (Held, 1996: 18). Moreover, for the Athenian, the idea of ‘freedom’ and the idea of ‘equality’ could not be separated from one another: it was only because each citizen had an equal voice that citizens collectively could be sovereign and avoid falling under the sway of a tyrant or autocrat, and only to the extent that they avoided that would they continue to be free. Inspired by these principles, political scientists have long argued that a highquality democracy is one in which citizens have the characteristics necessary to enable them to behave in accordance with the aforementioned principles. That is, a high-quality democracy is one in which citizens accept an obligation to participate and do so while respecting principles of political equality and obedience to laws passed in accordance with norms of due process. In 1963 Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba argued that citizens could only be expected to behave in these ways if they lived in societies that had what they called ‘civic cultures’; that is, societies in which people accept the authority of the state and a duty to participate in political life. Societies with such cultures were essential to enabling citizens to behave in accordance with democratic principles since without them, people were likely to be mistrustful of the authorities, intolerant of opponents, and lacking in confidence in their capacities to participate effectively. In 1993 Robert Putnam argued that what was required for democratic behaviour was copious amounts of ‘social capital’, a term which ‘refers to connections among individuals – social

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networks and the norms of reciprocity and trust that arise from them’ (Putnam, 2000: 19). Social capital, like physical capital, enables us to get more done with than without it. By definition, social connections and networks involve mutual obligations and norms of reciprocity which in turn underpin feelings of interpersonal trust. These facilitate patterns of behaviour conducive to high-quality democracy because they help to sustain civic cultures. In short, high-quality democracies are widely thought to be ones in which citizens are, in matters political, tolerant of each other, trustful of the authorities, and confident in themselves and in their abilities to participate.

The impact of Berlusconi’s control of the media Berlusconi, then, has often been held to have left a negative legacy for Italian democracy thanks to his control of the media, the mass media having long been viewed as having the potential to be either supportive or corrosive of the aforementioned attitudes and patterns of behaviour, because they provide a public sphere, that is, a set of institutions ‘through which facts and opinions circulate and by means of which a common stock of knowledge is built up as the basis for collective political action’ (McNair, 2003: 18). On the one hand, therefore, where they effectively provide a platform for a diversity of individuals and groups to make their cases to the public, and where they effectively raise awareness of issues and social problems, then – it is suggested – they are likely to provide high-quality information about, and thus stimulate and engage public interest in, current affairs. On the other hand, where the range of views that can gain expression is limited, and where the content of the media is limited in other ways, perhaps through bias or lack of depth, then – it is suggested – all the attitudes of trust, tolerance etc. said to be necessary for healthy democracy may be missing or weakly expressed. In both cases, of course, there is a basic underlying assumption, namely, that the media have an effect, that they exercise influence. So in order to investigate the case that Berlusconi damaged Italian democracy through his role as a media magnate, we have to explore what has been said about the content of his media, and what has been said about its impact. As far as the first of these questions is concerned, there seems little doubt that, in the process of breaking the state television network’s monopoly on nationallevel broadcasting, as he did in the 1980s, Berlusconi revolutionised programming conventions. Seeing the link between the demand for television advertising and the maximisation of audiences, he forged it through programming that was much more colourful and spicy than that offered by the public broadcasters dominated by the Catholic and the Marxist subcultures, with their antipathy to unbridled capitalism, consumerism and hedonism. Implicit in Berlusconi’s programming, it may be argued, was a powerful message – of prosperity, enjoyment and freedom stifled by the old parties that dominated public television and much else – which thus exemplified the point that the distinction between ‘politics’ and ‘entertainment’ is an analytic one, made by the observer, not one that is inherent in media content itself. News is, or can be, a form of entertainment, while the idea that



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politics is ‘contained and constituted’ within entertainment has long been a familiar one (Street, 2001: 61), it being enough to recall that poetry and song have for several centuries been used as vehicles for causes of various kinds. Paul Ginsborg argues that the advertisements, the variety shows and the fiction broadcast by Italian television convey a specific political message through a bland but consistent portrayal of what family life ought to be like (implicit in his focus on ‘Italian television’ being the point that, once it had become significant, Berlusconi’s broadcasting set a standard that broadcasters generally were obliged to imitate as the price of survival): The family is seen as the locus for the development of love and solidarity, but also ambitions and voracious appetites, the basis for enterprise and saving as much as for consumption. Ideally, it lives its daily life surrounded by an abundance of equipment: from cars, mobile telephones and computers, to video cassette recorders and televisions. The values of the family are those of opulent consumption but also tolerant Catholicism, leaning more or less towards gender equality, but with mothers whose principal role remains that of supplying services – ­emotional, gastronomic and laundry. Television conveys an image of the family as a unit based on the principles of familism in the sense that it foregrounds its urges to accumulate and to place its own interests first, only rarely depicting it as ready to sacrifice some part of itself for the good of society, and even more rarely for the state. Such representation is the embodiment of negative freedom. (Ginsborg, 2003: 31, my translation)

So one might argue that, on the assumption that Berlusconi’s media have been influential, they have been damaging to the kinds of values and attitudes necessary for healthy democracy since the principle of negative freedom (or ‘freedom from’) is essentially self-regarding and therefore corrosive of social capital and the orientations inherent in civic cultures. With regard, then, to the issue of impact, there is a sense in which media are necessarily influential in shaping political values and images and therefore people’s capacity to act as effective democratic citizens; for their experience of politics comes to them almost exclusively from the media, while politics itself is constituted in and through the media in the sense that political reality is as much a media construct as it is something located in pre-interpreted events and processes of various kinds (Kellner, 1995). So whether or not it can plausibly be argued that the media are able to determine political behaviour in the sense of – for example – persuading people to vote in ways they would not otherwise have done, and whether or not, therefore, it can be argued that Berlusconi won this or that election thanks to his control of the media, it seems clear that the alternative position – that the media are without influence – is untenable. The issue is, rather, about the nature and the extent of the influence. Indeed from this perspective, the media are influential not merely thanks to content and to some more or less crude conception of the ‘impact’ of this on behaviour and attitudes, but rather because of their place in the management of conflict over the distribution of power more generally. For instance, it may be that

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some forms of media consumption are inherently corrosive of democracy – as implied by the work of Robert Putnam (1995; 2000) who has argued that, as it is a leisure activity that can be and therefore is engaged in by individuals acting on their own, watching television is an agent of social disengagement. Consequently, it is associated with lower levels of social trust and group membership and therefore ‘deadens people’s capacity to operate as citizens’ (Street, 2001: 91). Again, what is widely referred to as the growing ‘mediatisation’ of politics draws attention to the role of the media not merely in depicting and reporting on political life but in actually shaping its substance and its conduct, politics having become increasingly reliant on the media, which have thereby become increasingly integrated into the operation of political institutions, as a result of which politics is increasingly taking place via the media. Since entertainment is the dominant assumption driving both the work of media journalists and the expectations of their audiences, the focus in party campaigning, it is suggested, must be on candidates and leaders and their qualities – they must become celebrities – rather than on policies and their respective merits. This in turn, it has been suggested, has led to a strengthening – a presidentialisation (Poguntke and Webb, 2005) – of the role of leaders vis-à-vis their parties and parliamentary followers: ‘by virtue of the alleged competitive advantage that s/he may bring to the party, the leader is able, supported by his/ her personal staff, to acquire greater autonomy, becoming chiefly responsible for the issues and the substance of the campaigns and of the policies s/he intends to implement’ (Palladino, 2015: 108). Finally, a number of accounts (Lukes, 1974; Bourdieu, 1991; Norris, 1996) point in the direction of the suggestion that the media significantly affect the quality of democracy simply by virtue of their role as suppliers of information. Knowledge and ignorance are associated with power and its opposite because information is a political resource shaping people’s capacities to act. Consequently, suggestions that news has been ‘dumbed down’ in recent years carry with them the implication that the quality of democracy is likely to have suffered because of its effect on the cultural resources available to citizens. Against this background, a widely held view (see, e.g., Ginsborg, 2003; Bernini, 2011; Chiurco, 2011) is that by using the media as a vehicle for the provision of entertainment, Berlusconi has successfully sought social control because the effect of his programming has been to dampen people’s critical faculties and so encourage them to behave as passive spectators rather than as active citizens. Comparisons and contrasts with fascism have often been made.1 Both regimes, it may be suggested, have been successful in obtaining conformity with traditional values through messages both confirming and denying those values at the same time. Under fascism, deep conservatism in matters of sex sat side by side with legalised brothels and great permissiveness towards male adultery as expressions of virility. Under Berlusconismo, official declarations, visits to the Pope and support for ‘family days’ sit side by side with the entrepreneur’s jokes and wisecracks that reveal a masculine desire for women both as devoted wives and mothers and as freely available objects. On the other hand, while fascism sought social control by using the media as a vehicle for propaganda – the purpose of which was to educate and train people in order to ensure their conformity with certain abstract



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standards embodying the ‘good society’ – Berlusconismo has sought social control by doing the opposite: by giving people what they want. Unlike fascist propaganda or, in the early days of television, Catholic propaganda, both of which were very much ‘in-your-face’ and easily identifiable, modern television programming and advertising are much more subtle and continuous. In essence, according to Ginsborg (2003: 30), by generating aspirations to entire styles of life as much as to the ownership of specific products, Berlusconi’s advertising has created the insidious paradox of inviting viewers to aspire to a life of unrestricted freedom through broadcasts that encourage total conformity. And by underpinning the kinds of attitudes that are associated with the ‘amoral familism’ famously described by Edward Banfield (1958), this, it is suggested, necessarily reduces the quality of Italian democracy to below what it might otherwise be by sustaining tendencies to sacrifice the public good for the sake of nepotism and the immediate family; by sustaining outlooks of mistrust and envy; and by sustaining the unwillingness of citizens to help one another unless their own personal gain is at stake. Now in order to bullet-proof the case for a Berlusconi impact on Italian democracy it would, of course, be necessary to consider in some detail the relevant survey evidence concerning popular attitudes, and the extent to which his programming could be said actually to have shaped popular attitudes and conventions as opposed to merely reinforcing what had been there for a very long time. A full and proper investigation of these matters would constitute an entire research project in itself. Here we will merely note that the broad suggestion that citizen attitudes conducive to healthy democracy could potentially be more widespread than they are in Italy is frequently made and is supported by comparative data (see Table 10.1). It is also the case that the relative absence of some if not most of these attitudes long predates Berlusconi, and had already been analysed and discussed in some detail in the late 1950s and early 1960s by authors such as Hadley Cantril (1958) and Sidney Tarrow (1967) besides the already-mentioned Banfield (1958) and Almond and Verba (1963). Berlusconi may be said, then, to have intercepted rather than moulded popular sentiments. Table 10.1 Attitudes relevant to quality of democracy: Italy, France, UK and Germany, 2012 Italy Most people can be trusted or you can’t be too careful:   0–2 on a scale 0–10 Trust in politicians: ‘no trust at all’ (0 on a scale 0–10) How satisfied with the way democracy works in   country: 0–2 on a scale 0–10 Involved in work for charitable or voluntary  organisations: at least once a month in last 12 months

France

UK

Germany

8.6

8.3

4.8

6.4

40.6 20.2

14.4 12.0

12.3 9.2

9.4 6.8

12.6

15.8

16.4

22.9

Source: European Social Survey data, http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/

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However, against this it may be noted that the distinction between the two is relative rather than absolute: by intercepting popular sentiments, Berlusconi has necessarily helped shape them, and no attempt to shape attitudes can be successful without some reinforcement of media-consumers’ pre-existing outlooks, since they come to the media with certain predispositions, including the need to feel that what they are exposed to is credible, a desire for reinforcement of already deeply held attitudes and so on, all of which means that to have an impact, media purveyors must be cognisant of the ways in which consumers are likely to interpret their offerings.

Setting a bad example Of course the messages and outlooks conveyed by Berlusconi’s television stations not only sustained attitudes of questionable value for democracy, but they were also important in sustaining the entrepreneur’s own appeal when he later entered politics. On the one hand, the commercial formula that underlay them gave Berlusconi fabulous wealth and iconic status; and this, on the other hand, enabled him to come to personify the families portrayed in the world of television advertising and the aspirations and dreams of upward mobility generated by them. Consequently, it may be suggested that Berlusconi’s career has had negative consequences for Italian democracy in another way, that is, by virtue of the way in which his appeal placed him in a position to obstruct efforts to get to grips with such anti-democratic patterns of behaviour as bribery and corruption, which appears to be a particularly significant problem in Italy.2 Berlusconi as prime minister was not just the country’s chief executive but also the embodiment of popular aspirations and therefore a role model, meaning that the attitudes and positions he took on issues related to such aspirations – those concerning the acquisition and accumulation of material wealth – would tend to have a significant impact on conventions and patterns of behaviour in civil society. For instance, his repeated claims that the charges of corruption and false accounting he faced were the result of judicial persecution arguably assisted him in winning elections by tapping into widespread distrust towards public officials, scepticism of their impartiality, and therefore admiration for individuals able to gain advantage by working the system. The claims may therefore explain why, despite Mani pulite and the upheavals of the early 1990s, political corruption appears still to be systemic, or at least widespread, in Italy (Vannucci, 2009: 233); voters who are relatively indifferent to allegations made against their leaders presumably face correspondingly low moral costs when contemplating their own potential involvement in activities of doubtful legality. The quality of democracy is undermined by corruption and similar behaviours because of the way in which they bring about the suspension of normatively defined criteria for the allocation of resources, in favour of an allocation ­mechanism – market exchange – whose distributive consequences in turn depend on the arbitrary and unequal distribution of money and other resources. In other words, they result in an arbitrary and unequal distribution of precisely those resources  – planning permission, licences and permits, public works contracts

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and so forth  – whose distribution, by common consent, should rather be governed by non-arbitrary considerations and considerations of equality. In turn, by undermining the principle of equality, bribery and corruption are subversive of democratic regimes, whose authority rests precisely on the claim that they are successful in ensuring, through the franchise and political accountability, that every member of the electorate can have a say in public decisions – which are therefore made to conform to the wishes of the electorate as a whole. Corrupt exchanges entail the replacement of these wishes by considerations of private gain as the determining factors in the making of public decisions, thus undermining the very rationale for liberal democracy in the first place, and with it the trust and confidence of citizens in public institutions. Of course, as a hidden phenomenon, corruption is difficult to measure, but the available evidence suggests that in the period since Berlusconi launched his political career there has been a worsening of the situation. On the one hand, Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) scores since the mid-1990s have either shown trendless fluctuation or else deteriorated depending on the year one chooses to use as one’s starting point (see Figure 10.1). On the other hand, there has been a sharp decline in the number of convictions for corruption-related crimes – which fell from 1,279 in 2000 to 206 in 2008, with even more dramatic falls since the mid-1990s (Vannucci, 2012: 76) – and in the number of media reports: at the height of the Tangentopoli scandal between 1992 and 1994, la Repubblica, one of Italy’s largest circulating dailies, published details of 220 corruption cases a year on average. By the period from 1997 to 2000, the number had fallen to 44 and for the period from 2009 to 2011, to 25 (Vannucci, 2012: 99). The combination of these figures could be interpreted to mean that corruption has spread significantly in Italy in recent years; for, if perceptions of corruption, as measured by the CPI, have increased while the numbers of media reports and convictions have gone down, then the implication

60 50

CPI score

50

46

40 30

30

55

47

52 53

52 48 50 49

46

48

43

39 39 42 43 43

34

44

20 10

Year

Figure 10.1  Perceptions of corruption in Italy: Corruption Perception Index scores, 1995–2015 Source: Transparency International (www.transparency.org/research/cpi/overview)

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

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0

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is that corrupt networks may have become more robust. In other words, the combination of unchanged or increasing perceptions of corruption with a decline in the number of cases being exposed and successfully prosecuted suggests that the chances of being caught and punished, as well as the chances of being found out in the first place, have gone down – leading to the inference that corruption will have become more widespread because the risks involved have decreased.3 The suggestion that Berlusconi bears some degree of responsibility for this rests not only on the idea that by his own conduct and pronouncements he set a bad example (on at least two occasions – for instance – he appeared, famously, to incite citizens to engage in tax evasion),4 but also on the expectation he created when he took to the field in 1994 that his rise to power would represent the start of a new era. Explaining his decision to join the political fray at the height of the Tangentopoli corruption scandal, he said: The self-destruction of the traditional governing politicians, crushed by the weight of public debt and by the system of illegal party financing, has left the country unprepared and uncertain at a difficult moment of renewal and the transition to a new Republic. Never before has Italy, which is rightly sceptical of prophets and saviours, had so much need of people with their heads squarely on their shoulders, with solid experience of creation and innovation, able to lend a hand and get the state working efficiently.5

In other words, continuation of the corruption problem could be attributed either to words and deeds encouraging it or to a failure to take the expected action necessary to combat it effectively, or both. When we investigate the matter in some detail, we find that prior to Berlusconi’s departure from office in 2011 there had been no comprehensive reform in the anti-corruption field since 2000, when Italy ratified the OECD’s Anti-bribery Convention, and 2001, when legislative decree 231 made companies responsible for corruption-related and other crimes committed by employees on their behalf. Some of the most high-profile measures in the field – such as law no. 61 of 2002 which decriminalised false accounting – were arguably such as to enhance, rather than reduce, the likelihood of corruption taking place. This was because they were, as described in previous chapters, designed to serve the financial and legal interests of Berlusconi personally and thus likely to make the detection and prosecution of corrupt and similar activities more difficult. Other measures – such as the so-called ‘Brunetta’ civil service reform of 2009 – if they had any anti-­ corruption effects, had them as unintended consequences, having actually been aimed at solving other problems such as administrative inefficiency. This legislative inactivity, which partly explains why corruption appears to remain widespread in Italy,6 may itself – arguably – be explained in terms of an awareness by Berlusconi and his opponents that vigorous efforts to combat corruption and increase the probity of those in public life (which after all might have gone some way to raising the low levels of public confidence in politicians and the political system revealed by the figures in Table 10.1) were worthwhile



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only if the votes to be gained from so doing could be expected to outweigh those that would be lost thereby – and from a perception that this was not really the case. Such an argument would run as follows. The conflict of interests involved in his position as head of the executive while being head of Italy’s three largest private television stations meant that Berlusconi had little interest in moralising public life. As he was attacked by the centre left for his pursuit of legislation designed to benefit him personally, and as he was himself investigated, by the judiciary, for corruption-related offences, he was able to portray himself as a victim. Consequently, among his supporters he managed to convert the popular indignation against the establishment that had been so vigorously expressed at the time of Tangentopoli into indignation against the judicial investigators and the parties opposed to him. So for the centre left, when it was in office, it was difficult to pursue clean-up reforms without being seen to attack Berlusconi personally. Anti-corruption requires diverting resources from other, potentially more popular, reforms. And for most voters, anti-corruption reform was of relatively modest importance: a lack of probity in public life is something whose costs are difficult to assess and in any case spread widely, and therefore difficult for the voter to perceive as making a significant difference to him or her personally.

Party-system changes A high-quality democracy, then, is one in which citizens have the values and beliefs to enable them to participate in political life with attitudes of tolerance and trust, and in which public resources are distributed in accordance with the normative criteria enshrined in law. By acts of commission or omission, Berlusconi ensured, in terms of both benchmarks, a continuation if not a heightening of the deficiencies of Italian democracy. Some have gone much further and have even suggested that Berlusconi was successful in realising an anti-liberal or an antidemocratic regime in Italy. Such suggestions seem wide of the mark. They tend to rely on claims about his use of the media for the mobilisation of consent; on claims that there is or was an identifiable political project or ideology for the remaking of Italian society that can be called Berlusconismo; and on the claim that during his terms of office there was a range of specific measures and actions that could be called ‘authoritarian’.7 While, for the reasons we have set out in chapter 2, we are sympathetic to the notion of a Berlusconi ideology, we suggest that whatever his impact on the quality of democracy, nothing that Berlusconi has done has changed Italy’s status as a liberal democracy as such: the state and its institutions continue to be founded on the rule of law, regardless of how well or badly the principle is applied; the 1948 Constitution remains intact. Berlusconi tried but failed to change the Constitution in 2006, but even if he had succeeded, Italy’s democratic credentials would not, given what was actually being attempted then, have been placed in doubt. Berlusconi himself, though he talks about constitutional change, does not seem to be much interested in the hard work that would be required to devise a serious constitutional reform plan and then mobilise the degree of cross-party

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support that would be necessary to make it a reality. When he had an opportunity to do this in the late 1990s, he simply rejected it. So Berlusconi’s impact on Italian democracy has not gone so far as to enable us to say that he has put in place some kind of authoritarian regime. But if he has not gone that far, then he has, it may be argued, nevertheless inflicted some significant damage because of how he has helped to perpetuate if not exacerbate the historic weaknesses of the political parties, with a consequent growth in anti-political sentiment and a decline in the parties’ capacities to solve the substantive problems of Italian politics. Political parties, like all organisations, perform pedagogical functions for their members and supporters; so a high-quality democracy is one in which the parties are able successfully to inculcate among followers democratic norms and patterns of behaviour based on a conception of the national community; success implies that citizens are inspired by principles of ‘democratic patriotism’ and public spiritedness – with all that this in turn implies in terms of social capital and the other attitudes conducive to healthy democratic participation that we have already discussed. Italian parties have always struggled to perform this function well, as we discussed in chapter 6. Thanks to the Cold War, neither the Christian Democrats nor the Italian Communist Party was able to afford to the other unconditional recognition as a fully legitimate actor. In this they reflected a tendency that stretched as far back as the founding of the Italian state itself, that is, a tendency for those in government to see their mission as being less to ‘govern’ than to defend the state against the forces of opposition, which they saw as ‘usurpers’ – leading to periodic regime crises arising from the ultimate failure of those in power to contain the forces of opposition (Salvadori, 1994). The first such crisis had brought Benito Mussolini to power; the second had brought about his fall; and the latest such crisis had taken place in the early 1990s, bringing to an end an almost fifty-year period during which the conventio ad excludendum and the enforced cohabitation of the DC and its minor-party allies had placed significant clientelistic obstacles in the way of the pursuit of coherent legislative programmes and effective policy making, obstacles which were both self-reinforcing and significant sustainers of anti-political sentiments. By the time of the demise of the ‘First Republic’, then, parties were essentially weak organisations – in many respects constellations of factions competing for patronage resources; therefore unable to deal with the substantive problems of Italian politics; therefore lacking in the authority necessary to enable them to socialise people into being ‘good citizens’; and therefore unable to contain the spread of anti-political sentiment. The advent of Berlusconi unfortunately only worsened the situation. He did, of course, bring together, in the early 1990s, the forces of the centre right by creating a party which, besides being indispensable to the coalition’s unity and thus a necessary condition for its electoral success, was a completely novel entity. In other democracies at about the same time, the end of the Cold War, the decline of ideology and the growing salience of valence issues were, along with media developments, bringing a growing focus on, and significance



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for, individual party leaders and candidates and their characteristics in determining election outcomes. Consequently, parties were becoming machines for the selection and support of leaders (Ceccarini, Diamanti and Lazar, 2012: 68). But more than this, Berlusconi’s party was created by him and for him: a party whose rules, organisation, values and identity were given by him; a party to enable him to further his economic interests and satisfy his personal cravings to be at the centre of attention by deploying his skills as a communicator. Uniquely, therefore, it was not the party that brought votes to Berlusconi, but Berlusconi who brought votes to his party. This had a number of major consequences for the style of party competition that ensued. First, thanks to the emerging bipolarity of the party system in the aftermath of Mani pulite, and the success of the Berlusconi model, his centre-left opponents were driven to attempt to imitate it, with the result that elections were increasingly a contest between two prime ministerial candidates: Berlusconi on one side and Achille Occhetto (ambiguously), or Romano Prodi, or Francesco Rutelli, or Walter Veltroni on the other. Second, thanks to Berlusconi’s high profile, his conflict of interests and his legal difficulties, the main political cleavage in Italian politics became the entrepreneur himself. As we mentioned in the Introduction, Giuliano Urbani, culture secretary in the 2001 government, put it very well when he pointed out at the beginning of 2009: ‘to be on the centre right means to support Berlusconi, to be on the centre left means to oppose him’. Third, as a result, competition between the two main coalitions was always extremely polarised, with neither coalition willing to accord the other legitimacy as a potentially governing actor. For the centre left, Berlusconi was inherently illegitimate as a prime ministerial candidate thanks to his conflict of interests and his legal difficulties; for Berlusconi, the centre left was inherently illegitimate because it denied that his legal difficulties were the result of a persecutory intent on the part of judges with a political agenda. In fact, continuation of the abovementioned historical tendency of governments and oppositions to withhold from each other recognition as legitimate contenders for power was presaged, from the very start of Berlusconi’s political career, in the speech he made announcing his decision to take to the field. There he explained his decision in terms of his opposition to what he polemically called the threat of a government staffed by the left and the ‘communists’ – about whose unfitness to govern he was explicit: Those who have been orphaned by the collapse of communism and are nostalgic for its return are not only incapable of governing the country. They also carry an ideological legacy that is incompatible and clashes with the requirements of a public administration that aims to be liberal in politics and laissez-faire in economics. Our left-wingers claim to have changed. They say they have become supporters of liberal democracy, but it is not true. Their representatives are the same. Their mentality, their culture, their deepest convictions, their actions have all remained the same. They do not believe in markets; they don’t believe in private enterprise; they don’t believe in profit; they don’t believe in the i­ndividual. They don’t believe that the world can be improved through the freely given

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Berlusconi’s legacy c­ ontributions of many persons each different from the others. They have not changed. Listen to them talk; watch their news broadcasts paid for by the state; read their newspapers. They no longer believe in anything. They would want to transform the country into a public square full of people screaming, shouting, swearing and hurling abuse.8

Fourth, given that opposition to Berlusconi was not far from being the only common denominator of the parties on the centre left, it was a significant source of weakness and division for them; for while the Democratic Party sought from time to time to expand towards the centre by shelving anti-Berlusconi rhetoric, this deprived it still further of any clear identity, leaving it vulnerable to the incursions of its allies, and in particular Italy of Values, to which many of its voters felt closer in any event (Diamanti, 2008), and for which the moralisation of public life and therefore anti-Berlusconi rhetoric was close to being its entire raison d’être. So Italy’s party system following Berlusconi’s emergence remained polarised. It also remained fragmented, parties being generally small, lacking in solidity on the ground, dominated by individual personalities and therefore generally incapable of offering effective governance. Cultivating niche electoral markets, they would use a power of blackmail to secure places for themselves in electoral coalitions and therefore in Parliament, but once there they would reclaim their autonomy, depriving governments of cohesion and therefore the executive of any real capacity to control the legislature in the interests of coherent policy making. And as entities by and large lacking internal democracy, openness to society or much transparency, they were prey to both indiscipline and organisational weakness – which in turn made more likely the kinds of financial irregularity – ­involving party coordinator for the Campania region, Nicola Cosentino,9 the Milanese city councillor, Mirko Pennisi,10 and the party coordinator for Sardinia, Ugo Cappellacci11 (to give just three examples among many) – that came to light in November 2009, February 2010 and May 2010 respectively. All of this has had two fundamental consequences for democracy in Italy. First, as expressed in the emergence and explosive growth of the Five-star Movement, it has fuelled the growth of the anti-political sentiments which appeared to reach their apogee in 2013. Then the stunning electoral success of the M5S appeared to bring to an end what many commentators had been wont to view as a regime transition (albeit one within a continuation of democratic arrangements) between a First and Second Republic; and for a while, as the parties struggled find a governing formula, it seemed to have brought party politics to a state of paralysis. The second consequence was to sustain a continuing search, on the part of Italy’s governing elites, for institutional reform, thought to be essential if the country was to overcome its historical deficiencies in the areas of executive stability and the efficiency and effectiveness of policy making. The most recent of these searches has been expressed by the package of constitutional reform proposals devised by the government under Matteo Renzi from February 2014 but rejected by voters in the referendum held on 4 December 2016.



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In fact, like the earlier proposals, the projected reforms were in essence attempts to compensate, through institutional changes, for deficiencies that were essentially party political in nature. For example, central to Renzi’s plan was a reform of the Senate, which, among other things, would lose its parity with the Chamber in the authorisation of legislation, the argument in support of the proposal being that it would help to enhance the power and authority of the executive, thus restoring public confidence because proposed legislation would no longer have to shuttle back and forth between Chamber and Senate until they could agree identically worded texts. But as many pointed out in the run-up to the referendum, there is no reason why ‘symmetric bicameralism’, in and of itself, should lead to cumbersome law making. This depends on the nature of the party system. Data presented by Pasquino and Pelizzo (2016) suggest that the Italian Parliament produces more laws, more quickly, than its counterparts in France, Germany, the UK and the United States. Indeed symmetric bicameralism should, all else being equal, facilitate legislative productivity, at least as compared to monocameral systems, as it allows two proposals to be considered simultaneously. As Pasquino and Capussela (2016) point out, the shortcomings of Italian democracy are bound up with issues such as inefficiencies in the public administration and the judicial system, inadequacies in adherence to rule-of-law principles and so forth; and these are due, not to deficiencies in the country’s national-level institutions, but to deficiencies in its political parties. In short, the main negative legacy for Italian democracy of Berlusconi’s political career has been that it has perpetuated the lack of the required authority for the parties to engender the public trust required for effective governance. When he took to the field in 1994 at the dawn of what looked as though it might be a new era in Italian politics, Berlusconi suggested that ‘the history of Italy’ was ‘at a turning point’ – going on to say: As an entrepreneur, as a citizen, and now as a citizen taking to the field – without any timidity but with the determination and the serenity I have acquired through experience – I tell you that it is possible to put an end to a politics of incomprehensible chatter, of pointless conflicts and without any professionalism. I tell you that it is possible to realise a great dream: that of an Italy that is fairer, more generous to those in need, more prosperous and peaceful, more modern and efficient, a key player in Europe and the world. I tell that we can and must realise together, for ourselves and our children, a new Italian miracle.12

Reference to an ‘Italian miracle’ will, of course, have evoked in his listeners thoughts and images of the stunning economic resurgence of the years immediately following the Second World War. So what Berlusconi did was to create high expectations – but then fail to pursue, as a party leader, any kind of strategy that would actually give the parties and the party system the characteristics that would make remotely possible the kind of miracle he had spoken about. Thereby, he significantly diminished the authority of the parties and consequently their capacity for reform, thus doing a considerable disservice to Italian democracy and his country.

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Conclusion In this chapter we have taken the ‘Berlusconi story’ forward by discussing what his career has meant for the quality of Italian democracy, and we have argued two things: first, that it is difficult to make the case that he has been responsible for initiating any major new departures as opposed to intercepting and perpetuating tendencies and trends already present in Italian society; second, that his impact, such as it has been, has been negative rather than positive. Some have argued – in effect – that this has been largely due to the fact that Berlusconi is, fundamentally, lazy. In other words, these people suggest, Berlusconi has never been driven by any serious project for the control or remaking of Italian society alla Mussolini, but simply, as Sartori has argued, by the desire to do what he, personally, wants; to lord it over others in his party and in government, to make and revoke appointments at will, and generally to live a life of splendour with lots of women at his disposal (cited by Bernini, 2011: 21). On the other hand, the suggestion has also often been made that this desire ‘to do what he, personally, wants’ reflects a populist ideology impatient with constitutional constraints that would restrict the freedom of action of a leader such as Berlusconi – one with, in his own estimation, an extraordinary and immediate ability to understand the needs of the community of which he sees himself as the representative – to carry out his ‘mission’ on behalf of the common good. (Tarchi, 2015: 275). In this respect, the Berlusconi phenomenon reflects broader, international trends and tendencies which we shall seek to explore in the concluding chapter.

Notes  1 ‘If he uses the term “communists” pejoratively, to denigrate his political opponents – thereby assimilating the entire history of the workers’ movement and the social democratic and communist parties to Stalinism – his opponents accuse him of having realized an antidemocratic, anti-liberal, dictatorial, fascist or totalitarian regime’ (Bernini, 2011: 19–20, my translation).  2 In terms of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, Italy occupies 26th place among the EU 28, being ahead of only Bulgaria and Greece.  3 Italy’s High Commissioner for the Prevention of Corruption has argued that ‘[t]he dramatic fall in the number of reports [of corruption] should not … be taken as an indicator of a reduction in the level of corruption but rather perhaps reflects inurement to a culture of corruption that runs from petty demands for money to higher levels of conditioning’, Il fenomeno della corruzione in Italia (la mappa dell’Alto Commissario Anticorruzione), n.d., p. 122, http://www.irpa.eu/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ Mappa-corruzione-Italia.pdf (accessed 20 April 2018).  4 On 17 February 2004, during the course of a press conference, Berlusconi is reported to have said, ‘If one imposes a tax burden of 50 per cent, everyone will feel morally justified in evading it’, while ‘if we ask citizens to pay 33 per cent in taxes then everyone will convince themselves that it is right and proper, that it is correct to pay for the services one obtains’. On 2 April 2008, he is reported to have said, ‘if taxes are around 50 and 60 per cent then it is too much and thus justified to engage in tax avoidance and ­evasion’ (la Repubblica, 2010).



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 5 From the televised speech given on 26 January 1994 when Berlusconi announced his intention to contest the general election of that year, my translation, http://www. repubblica.it/2004/a/sezioni/politica/festaforza/discesa/discesa.html (accessed 26 May 2018).  6 Additional factors included the effects of Tangentopoli itself: though many were put on trial, few were convicted thanks to the inefficiencies of the justice system and the statute of limitations, leading to the increasingly widespread perception that the risk of punishment is limited (Vannucci, 2009: 242).  7 Among them one might cite the conduct of the police at the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001; the 2008 law giving prefects the power to deploy troops on the streets of major cities for public security tasks; and the attitudes towards migrants – which have included the use of centres for their identification and expulsion, where they are held against their will not for anything they have done, but simply for who they are.  8 From the televised speech given on 26 January 1994, my translation, http://www.repub blica.it/2004/a/sezioni/politica/festaforza/discesa/discesa.html (accessed 26 May 2018).  9 On 9 November 2009 public prosecutors requested the lifting of Cosentino’s parliamentary immunity in connection with allegations about his involvement in a waste disposal company used by the Camorra for money laundering, in exchange for the group’s involvement in mobilising electoral support in his favour. 10 Pennisi was president of the council’s town-planning commission and on 11 February he was arrested and charged with extortion in connection with the awarding of a building contract (Corriere della Sera, 2010). 11 On 15 May 2010 it came to light that Cappellacci had been placed under investigation for corruption in connection with the awarding of contracts for the installation of wind turbines in Sardinia. 12 From the televised speech given on 26 January 1994, my translation, http://www.repub blica.it/2004/a/sezioni/politica/festaforza/discesa/discesa.html (accessed 26 May 2018).

Conclusion: the Berlusconi story and Donald Trump

We are now in a position to summarise this book’s main argument, to bring the story up to the present, and to address any outstanding questions – a task undertaken in the final section where we consider the cross-national, comparative significance of the Berlusconi phenomenon especially in relation to the election of Donald Trump, a man with whom Berlusconi is often compared. Throughout, we have sought to throw light on three key issues: Who is Silvio Berlusconi? What has been his significance for the way Italian democracy has unfolded since he came on the political scene? Would things have been different had he not been around to do the things that he did? Our answers to the three questions are summarised in the section immediately following.

An extraordinary popular delusion? With regard to the first question, we have seen that Berlusconi is a media magnate who originally made his fortune as a builder by taking advantage of the demand for construction generated by the post-war boom. He operated in a world in which the interface between business and politics had always been relatively permeable, in that informal networks bridging economic and political elites served to compensate for the weakness of public institutions and so provide the certainty required for making rational investment decisions. Ultimately, the weakness and the permeability of public institutions could be traced back to the circumstances surrounding the unification of Italy in 1861 and, in the post-war years, to the role of the political parties in providing civil society groups with channels of access to decision makers. A politicised economy, in which party faction leaders acted as brokers, meant that entrepreneurs such as Berlusconi were dependent on politicians for the supply of a range of services, so that collusion between him and the Socialist prime minister, Bettino Craxi, crucial for the consolidation of Berlusconi’s growing television empire, was both key and reflective of a situation that was ‘normal’. This helps to make sense of the struggle that arose after Berlusconi made the political debut that gave rise to his conflict of interests. The struggle was a cultural one taking place both within and beyond Italy, for everywhere the distinction between public and private is a matter of social construction that requires negotiation. On the one hand, Berlusconi’s critics operated with the awareness that by undermining the security of the public–private ­boundary,



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Berlusconi’s conflict of interests implicitly threatened the underpinning of legitimacy required for the secure and peaceful pursuit of power and wealth. On the other hand, Berlusconi’s supporters were aware of the element of bad faith involved in the claim, implicit in his critics’ allegations, that his refusal to address his conflict of interests properly meant that he was less than ethically upright. He therefore forged ahead in the pursuit of his private interests, resisting the criticisms of him, aware that the collapse of the traditional governing parties in the 1990s provided him with an opportunity to apply his wealth and his communication skills to the task of preventing the election of a government of the left likely to introduce legislation that would be directly damaging to his business concerns. As a media magnate and front-line politician, Berlusconi was in an extraordinarily powerful position to influence popular attitudes and the style and substance of party competition, which in turn had significant implications for the quality of democracy in Italy, a high-quality democracy being one in which citizens are socially and politically engaged and trustful of those in public life who display high levels of probity. Although, comparatively speaking, Italy does not perform especially well in terms of such indicators, its poor performance predated Berlusconi; and although he did little or nothing to improve the position, it is also true that he cannot be said to have changed any of the fundamentals of Italy’s status as a full democracy: the 1948 Constitution remains fully intact. His attempts at legislation designed to further his own interests were forcefully resisted and regularly struck down by the Constitutional Court. Yes, his media empire and his activities as a politician conveyed messages that were hardly conducive to attitudes reflective of a citizenry possessed of high levels of social capital; but Italy remains a polity founded on constitutional checks and balances, political equality and the rule of law, however badly applied. This is because Berlusconi espouses an ideology which, though it is impatient with constitutional checks and balances, does not reflect a project for regime change. While extolling the virtues of civil society and the way in which these are betrayed by the political elites, Berlusconismo suggests that the solution lies less in institutional reform than in the election of a new political elite – meaning individuals better endowed with the personal qualities and skills necessary for resolving concrete problems. In this he sought to intercept and spearhead widespread anti-political sentiment. So the significance of Berlusconi for the way in which Italian democracy has developed in recent years lies less in the extent of his impact, or the way he has changed the distinctive features of Italian politics, than in how his career reflects it. This can be seen in relation to political and social culture. He has been a leading protagonist of cultural change in Italy in recent years, intercepting and therefore helping to shape processes of cultural development – especially the sense of what it means to be Italian in the early twenty-first century; but he cannot convincingly be described as a cultural innovator, having contributed more to the reinforcement of existing trends – for example, celebrity culture – than to sending them off in new directions. Consequently, political change in Italy over the past twenty-five years or so might well not have looked very much different had Berlusconi not existed. That

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is, he was/is clearly a very powerful media entrepreneur and has been a very striking political communicator. However, it is uncertain that the electoral success of his coalition, the centre right, in recent years actually owes very much to him, as opposed to broader, sociological factors, bearing in mind that parties drawn from the centre and the right have always enjoyed majority support in Italy and that voters do not make their decisions uninfluenced by their past decisions or their ideological and social affiliations. As a ‘personal party’, FI is not especially original. True, its patrimonial characteristics set it apart from other parties, but otherwise, in concentrating power in the hands of its leader, it reflected broader trends and tendencies that appeared to make such concentration an indispensable requirement of campaigning and which Berlusconi was powerless to change. He played a significant part in aggregating the parties of the centre right and in ushering in a new period of party-system bipolarity in Italy, but his role was that of the ‘eventful’ rather than the ‘event-making’ man. He was unable, as a prime minister, to achieve much that was new in terms of either policy outputs or policy outcomes, partly because of his own lack of enthusiasm, partly because of the doubtful effectiveness of some of the reforms he did introduce, but mainly because of his lack of power as the leader of a coalition government subject to all of the constraints operating on all governments everywhere. So the Berlusconi story may well have been the story of an ‘extraordinary popular delusion’ in that he went into politics promising a viable alternative to the government of professional politicians subject to the usual constitutional constraints and backed by parties organised along traditional lines, claiming that he could bring about political renewal – with some more or less significant numbers of voters having apparently believed him. Of course, the belief may not have run very deep, may have been closer to a hope than an expectation, but the point remains: to the extent that it was present, the belief overlooked the constraints under which Berlusconi was working, and to that extent was delusional. The delusion lay not in a belief that leaders can ‘never make a difference’ in politics: common sense tells us that sometimes they can, and the intellectual challenge is to know the conditions under which, and in relation to what, this is so – most obviously at critical historical junctures in relation to specific questions. It is a moot point whether events surrounding the Falklands/Malvinas conflict would have turned out differently if James Callaghan had been in office rather than Margaret Thatcher, whether events subsequent to the 9/11 attack would have been significantly different had Al Gore been president in place of George W. Bush, and so on (Rhodes and ‘t Hart, 2014). But this is so because leaders at such junctures are called upon to make decisions that themselves have power significantly to influence the direction of events – and in turn this is partly because the numbers of people whose actions have to be aligned in order to make the significant difference are relatively limited and under more or less direct control. One thinks, here, of declarations of war, or measures where the causal gap between the policy initiative and its intended outcome (e.g. gay marriage) is very small. In such circumstances, the ideas, skills, drives and styles of the individuals who occupy leadership roles are relevant to an understanding of



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outcomes because they help us to understand why the individuals took the decisions that they did. But now consider the case of attempting to engineer a ‘new Italian miracle’. In using the phrase, Berlusconi was borrowing from mass-media references, with which his audience would have been familiar, to the post-war economic boom that had transformed Italy from a poor, mainly agricultural society into a global industrial power, and had been accompanied by transformative social and cultural change. In such cases, outcomes are dependent on the actions of millions whose behaviour can at the very most be controlled only indirectly. Yes, leaders’ decisions can influence the actions of these millions, and leaders’ personal qualities will influence their decisions. What was delusional was the belief that outcomes of such vast proportions could be achieved simply by virtue of the leader having his ‘head on his shoulders’, vast entrepreneurial experience and an ability to offer ‘a programme for government consisting only of concrete and understandable commitments’, as Berlusconi essentially claimed when he made his political debut in 1994. In essence his message was: ‘I have it within my gift to make your lives different to an extent that none of the other politicians you have ever voted for have been able to do.’ History is replete with examples of popular delusions of this kind. One type consists of speculative bubbles – where rising markets lead to a belief in the inevitability of gain – with famous examples, such as the Mississippi Bubble of 1719 and the South Sea Bubble of 1720, going back hundreds of years. In the first case, the Scottish financier John Law, a colourful character ‘with a passion for women and gambling’ (Moen, 2001), persuaded the French government that he could restore the nation’s finances if it allowed him to issue paper currency and gave him exclusive control of trade between France and its North American colonies through his Compagnie d’Occident – which was financed through the exchange of shares for government debt and paper notes issued by Law’s own bank. Initially leading to dramatic rises in the Compagnie’s share prices, the issue of additional notes to fund share purchases led to equally dramatic falls in 1720 as investors began to attempt to turn capital gain into gold coin, of which there were insufficient reserves. In the South Sea Bubble case, the South Sea Company was granted a monopoly on trade with South America and persuaded the British government to allow it to take over responsibility for the national debt in exchange for company shares. Taking the government’s endorsement as a sign of confidence in the company’s prospects, investors began bidding up the price of shares, notwithstanding the actual international political obstacles in the way of the company’s potential, and people all over Britain lost everything they had as investors began seeking to realise capital gains and the share price collapsed. Another type is exemplified by the (in)famous ‘Make Money Fast’ chain letter, initiated in the US in the 1980s by someone presumed to be a student. The letter included a list of names and addresses and invited the recipient to add his or her name to the bottom and delete the one at the top, to send the list of names and $1 to the first five names on the list, and to invite these recipients to do the same. The promise was that as the recipient’s name moved up the list and the number

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of letters being sent from person to person expanded exponentially, so he or she could expect to receive thousands of dollars. Yet a third example comes from the Naples weekly lottery where, a few years ago, the number 13 failed to be drawn for several weeks and people began to believe that with each successive week, the probability of the number being drawn the subsequent week must be increasing. They thus began staking ever larger proportions of their savings until they were staking money merely in the desperate hope of recouping the losses they had suffered in the earlier weeks’ draws. Finally, Brexit might be considered an example of a popular delusion in that for many it was driven by the promise of ‘regaining control’, even though the control that can be exercised by a state government is always heavily constrained by the international institutional framework and context, whether the state is a member of the EU or not. In all these cases, the mistake arises from the desire for material improvement or gain and the consequent assumption that there is only one condition necessary for the desired outcome while all of the other conditions necessary for it can be safely ignored. It is likely that Berlusconi supporters were subject to a delusion like those we have described above at least to some extent. To establish this, we would need to know, at the level of their subjective interpretations, what voters were voting for and why. As far as the first of these issues is concerned, in 2001 a relatively high proportion, amounting to about a third (ITANES, 2001: 135), of those who gave their votes to FI said, when presented with a list of possible factors, that the party leader had been the most important in orienting their decision. If, then, they were voting for a party leader, it is a reasonable assumption that they were doing so because they believed, to some degree or other, that he could make some more or less significant positive difference. What appears to explain their assumptions is a lack of cognitive resources and political engagement, in that those most likely to respond in this way were the less well-educated, the less well-informed and interested in politics, the less inclined to read books and newspapers (ITANES, 2001:  135–8). These are the people least easy to reach other than by campaign messages that are simple and straightforward, and it is difficult to think of messages more simple and straightforward than the ones inherent in the claim that an iconic figure with a proven track record in generating wealth for himself was the prime ministerial candidate best placed to generate it for everyone else. Consequently, Berlusconi, as Caterina Paolucci (2006: 169) puts it, undoubtedly ‘appealed to those who were looking for an immediate and painless way out from the political trauma of the early 1990s’.

The period since leaving office Since popular delusions are such because, as we have said, they fail to take sufficient account of complexity, the inevitable consequence is disappointment, and Berlusconi’s career since he was ousted from office reflects this. The day he resigned as prime minister, the emperor appeared to be naked: demonstrators took to the streets of Rome to boo and jeer at him. Not surprisingly: two decades after Tangentopoli none of the hopes and expectations to which that event had



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given rise – of improvement in standards of probity in public life and in the efficiency and effectiveness of policy making – appeared to have been met (Bosco and McDonnell, 2012: 43–4). This was ultimately due to the weakness and lack of authority of the political parties, of which Berlusconi’s was a prime example. Consequently, the months subsequent to his last term in office were marked by the fallout from the anti-political sentiments he himself had sought to spearhead. In the first place, his government was placed in the hands of administrators, with the academic Mario Monti taking Berlusconi’s place at the head of an executive staffed by non-party technocrats. As Monti’s was a transition government, taking office with the specific remit of overseeing, on an interim basis, a policy of austerity, its appointment testified, for the third time in two decades, to the inability of the political parties to provide firm leadership just when it was most required. Both governing and opposition parties had little choice but to reach a temporary truce and support Monti. On the one hand, the authority of the outgoing government had been irredeemably compromised by internal disputes, perceptions of policy-making inefficacy, regular allegations of dishonesty on the part of public figures associated with it in various ways, and the numerous allegations surrounding Berlusconi’s sexual conduct. Ultimately, the latter contributed to the prime minister’s undoing at the end of 2011 less because of its direct effect on his image (which was already colourful) than because, against the background of the other perceived shortcomings, it reinforced the insistence with which commentators, at home and abroad, asked questions about his fitness to govern. On the other hand, the opposition centre-left parties had not seemed able to develop sufficient synergies and strategies to convince public opinion that they represented a credible alternative (Braghiroli and Verzichelli, 2011: 85); they had been divided on how to oppose the government, the polemical outbursts of Antonio di Pietro and Italia dei Valori (Italy of Values) against Berlusconi and his conflict of interests being greeted coldly by spokespeople for the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party), convinced that they cut little ice with ordinary voters and made it difficult for the coalition as a whole to build the bridges with the forces of the centre necessary to enable it to return to government in the immediate term. In the second place, popular dissatisfaction with mainstream politics now found a new vehicle for its expression in the form of Beppe Grillo’s Five-star Movement. Grillo himself was a comedian and satirist who in the 1980s had been ‘excommunicated’ from the state broadcasting networks thanks to jokes that offended supporters of the Socialist leader, Bettino Craxi. His movement originated in an invitation he issued, in 2005, to the followers of his blog to use the social networking site MeetUp.com to get together and transform online discussion into a movement ‘to realise an efficient and effective exchange of opinions and democratic debate, free of associational or party ties and without the mediation of controlling or representative organisations’.1 Thanks to the success of this initiative several groups were able to assemble in 2007 to agree on a number of principles for the creation of a network of non-party lists based on the principles of direct, participatory democracy. They were considerably strengthened by the subsequent success of large rallies – called ‘V Days’, where ‘V’ stood for v­ affanculo! (or ‘fuck

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off!’) – organised by Grillo in several cities in September 2007 and April 2008. What gave the rallies their power was that they were organised and publicised, without the support of the mainstream media, entirely through the horizontal dissemination of information through the web (Pepe and di Gennaro, 2009), and were therefore themselves powerful symbols of the direct democracy and political spontaneity Grillo himself stood for. With the authority he had thus acquired, he was able in 2008 to begin to coordinate, and to establish principles for, the network of non-party lists by announcing the requisites and commitments that would apply to candidate lists wanting his endorsement and publicity through his blog. At the municipal elections in May 2012, the last major contest on the politicalinstitutional agenda before the February 2013 general election, the M5S saw an explosion in its support, enabling it to come from nowhere to capture the highprofile city of Parma among others; and in later regional and municipal contests it revealed that it had a decisive strategic advantage as compared to other parties: as a populist, catch-all formation, eschewing alliances with either the left or the right, it found that the two-round voting systems typically used for such contests worked to its advantage in that where it made it through to run-offs, it was able to attract the votes, not only of its own supporters, but also those of the voters who were opposed to whichever candidate, whether of the centre left or the centre right, it found itself up against. And it was able to exploit a new medium with which Berlusconi was uncomfortable. While the entrepreneur excelled in his exploitation of television, a top-down, one-to-many medium, his plebiscitary approach to politics2 clashed fundamentally with the interactive potential of the new web technologies. Berlusconi nevertheless managed, for several months after his resignation, to keep himself at the centre of the attention of the mainstream media, first by ‘disappearing’ from the scene and then by making a series of assertions and counter-assertions about his intentions, thus fuelling constant speculation about his future. By December 2012 Berlusconi was thus ready to attempt to regain the political initiative, and, encouraged by growing expressions of hostility to the government on the part of his own supporters (Zulianello, 2013: 251–4), announced that its policies were proving unsuccessful; that his followers would withdraw their support once the 2013 budget had been approved; and that he would resume leadership of the centre right and return to front-line politics. He then attempted, at the general election of February 2013, to mount a comeback and in one sense was nearly successful. Though he was far behind the centre left in the polls, he was aware, at the start of the campaign, that about half of the electorate was undecided and that with Grillo making inroads into the support bases of the centre left as well as the centre right he could actually secure the Chamber of Deputies majority premium with a relatively small proportion of voters. In other words, though the vote might be split three ways, between the centre left, his own centre right and the M5S, he would manage the feat simply by achieving a relative majority, however small. In the event, he failed in the attempt by just 293,506 votes. However, his coalition’s total number of



Conclusion205

votes amounted to just 58 per cent of the number it had attracted in 2008; and by far and away the most significant feature of the outcome was the tidal wave of support for the M5S. This ensured that, in the absence of a majority for any of the three main contenders in the Senate – which has the same powers to make and unmake governments as the Chamber – neither of the political logics – consensual or majoritarian – according to which government formation had taken place hitherto seemed any longer to be available (Fabbrini and Lazar, 2013: 106). Consequently, it was not until 28 April – nine weeks after the election had taken place – that a new government – a grand coalition consisting of the PD, the PdL and centrists – could be sworn in under the PD spokesperson Enrico Letta. Berlusconi appeared initially to be placed in a strong position by this outcome, as the support of his party was indispensable to the government’s majority, and he soon had a renewed opinion poll lead. However, by the end of the year his new-found power had revealed itself to be illusory. Exploited by the PdL as a means of maintaining its distinctive profile within the coalition, the issue of taxation was the source of frequent conflict between the governing partners during early and mid-2013 and resulted in periodic threats by the PdL to leave the coalition. Matters came to a head in September. Letta’s statement concerning his parliamentary programme had referred to the need for growth and the role of tax reductions in achieving this, mentioning among other things a commitment to abandoning a planned increase in VAT. This had been provided for by the Monti government in December 2012 and, following an initial three-month postponement, was due to come into effect on 1 October 2013. A decree was required to bring about a further postponement until 1 January 2014, while it was planned to use the 2014 finance law to resolve the matter definitively. Meanwhile, in late September 2013 PdL parliamentarians threatened to resign en masse to show solidarity with Berlusconi, whose future was to be the subject of a vote by the Senate elections committee on 4 October. On that date the committee would decide whether, in accordance with the Severino law passed by the Monti government (which provides that those found guilty of offences carrying a prison term of two years or more are ineligible to be Members of Parliament for not less than six years), to recommend to the Senate that it vote in favour of Berlusconi’s expulsion following his conviction on 1 August for tax fraud. Consequently, on 27 September the cabinet decided to postpone the discussion of a number of issues relating to economic and fiscal policy – including the deferral of the planned increase in VAT – on the grounds that the PdL parliamentarians’ threat had created such uncertainty about the government’s capacity to pursue its programme that there needed to be prior clarification, through a vote of confidence in Parliament, about whether it could carry on. Thus, when it was announced on 28 September that the PdL ministers would resign, the reason given for this – the failure of the cabinet to guarantee that the increase in VAT would not go ahead on 1 October – was widely judged to be a pretext. Berlusconi probably calculated that if he succeeded in bringing down the government he could provoke fresh elections, which might enable him to avoid the consequences of his tax fraud conviction. Although the outcome of a new poll

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could not be taken for granted, voting intentions data were not discouraging, and the PD might suffer most from any government collapse if Berlusconi could frame the event as an attempt to thwart moves by the centre left to raise taxes as part of the following year’s budget proposals. The risk, however, was that collapse might stir up turmoil in the financial markets, for which the PdL might be blamed. It was presumably the awareness of this risk that led each of the ministers whose resignation was ‘ordered’ by Berlusconi to express misgivings openly, until it became apparent that the threat to bring down the government might incite a major party split. It became clear that, notwithstanding Berlusconi’s stance, the government would survive the vote of confidence scheduled for 2 October 2013. Hence, there was a sense of high drama when, during the preceding debate, Berlusconi suddenly entered the Senate to announce a humiliating climb-down: he and his followers would oppose the motion of no confidence. This dramatic last-minute reversal was the consequence of Berlusconi’s awareness that he no longer wielded his earlier power and authority over the centre right, presumably because at the age of 77 he had become a less useful asset. These events helped to strengthen the government. The widely held assumption that it was weak because it depended on the cooperation of Berlusconi, who had the power to withdraw the support of his followers any time he wished, had been put to the test and found wanting. This was a dramatic new development in Italian politics: for the first time, Berlusconi, the leader of a ‘personal party’ created by him and for him, had been forced to bow to the will of his followers. Confidence in the government rose from 35 per cent to 37 per cent, and in Letta as prime minister from 46 per cent to 49 per cent, while the public seemed much more confident that the government was unlikely to collapse in the immediate term.3 Public expectations seemed to be confirmed in November 2013 when the Senate was called upon to vote on the elections committee’s recommendations. Berlusconi clearly still entertained the hope that he could avoid expulsion from the Senate by persuading his followers to ensure that the vote planned for 27 November went in his favour by threatening to bring down the government. However, those who had expressed their misgivings prior to the vote on 2 October did not concur, and on 15 November they left to form their own party, the Nuovo Centro Destra (New Centre Right, NCD), having garnered sufficient support to ensure that the government could continue in office. Meanwhile, Berlusconi and the remainder of the PdL went into opposition as a re-launched FI. Since then, Berlusconi’s profile in Italian politics has been very much overshadowed by Matteo Renzi and by the M5S. Leader of the largest governing party, the PD, from 8 December 2013, and prime minister from 22 February 2014 until 7 December 2016, Renzi had already established a reputation for himself as the young charismatic mayor of Florence with the nickname il rottamatore (or ‘the scrapper’), thanks to his insistence that the PD, to win, needed to undergo fundamental renewal based on a generational turnover among its leaders. This, by allowing him to project himself as a politician offering a ‘soft’, relatively innocuous form of the anti-political cocktail peddled by Grillo, enabled him, initially



Conclusion207

at least, to articulate the centre-left electorate’s growing mistrust of the political class (Vignati, 2013) and to meet his party’s requirement for a leader able to act as a celebrity – in this way offering a style of leadership that clearly owed much to the example set by Berlusconi. The M5S, meanwhile, had succeeded in reducing the significance of the main political divisions of the past – between left and right, centre and periphery – and in ensuring that by far the dominant division was that between politics – represented by the mainstream parties – and anti-politics – represented by itself (Diamanti, 2013). Although it faced the significant challenge of acting both as a party of protest and – in several major cities – as a party of government, and although, as time went on, it revealed that was not immune to the corruption and related scandals that affected its rivals, it appeared relatively unaffected at the polling booths as it continued to represent something different from a political class in whom large numbers of voters lacked confidence. In these circumstances, Berlusconi had no real power to set the political agenda and was largely reduced to reacting to initiatives taken by others. His party languished in the polls and by 2017 it was struggling to stay ahead of a resurgent Northern League, a party that had once had a subordinate role to the party led by Berlusconi. Berlusconi himself clearly wanted to perform the extraordinary feat of leading the centre right, at the age of 81, into a sixth successive general election campaign (due in early 2018), but he faced fierce competition from the 44-year-old Matteo Salvini who appeared to have succeeded in transforming the Northern League from a regional-autonomy party into a national populist force. Attempting to appeal to moderate voters put off by Salvini’s stridency, Berlusconi, by the autumn of 2017, was seeking to project the image of a wise elder statesman who had turned his back on his flamboyant past, aware that, though he was no longer at the centre of Italian politics, he might still act as a kingmaker. Enoch Powell who, like Berlusconi, was a political maverick, once famously said that ‘All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs’ (Powell, 1977: 151). Berlusconi clearly hopes that his political career is not over yet – but in a sense it already is, and it has already ended in failure; for, although as an entrepreneur and a communicator he has been extraordinarily successful, he has been unable to bend these resources to the effective pursuit of a political project: as a politician with the ambition of altering society-wide modes of organisation, thought and value, he has already had his chance, and age means that time has run out on him. He is famous for his comebacks against seemingly impossible odds, and it is in principle possible, notwithstanding everything, that he might yet succeed. But I doubt that, whatever happens to him from here on in, he will be remembered, once he finally fades from the scene, for having been the progenitor of significant change in Italian politics.

Berlusconi and Trump What, then, are we to make of Berlusconi’s cross-national, comparative significance? Observers have been struck by the similarities, as politicians and political

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leaders, between Berlusconi and Donald Trump. They both represent a significant novelty, having acquired political power not through conventional party-political careers but by the deployment of their considerable wealth. There are also obvious differences – quantitative differences so considerable that they become differences of quality. Most obviously, Trump’s election has implications on a world scale; Berlusconi’s election did not. Both are men of the right; but Trump is arguably a man of the hard right, driven by racist and xenophobic proclivities, whereas Berlusconi’s outlook is ‘softer’, one driven by an essentially romantic conception of the power of the individual (Taylor, 2016). There is an undertone of violence in the rhetoric of Trump that is largely absent from that of Berlusconi. The considerable difference in physical stature between the two also contributes to the difference in the images they project: the aggressive cowboy versus the little crooner. What places them, as political phenomena, in the same category is that thanks to their populist rhetoric – their claims to be the authentic representatives of the interests of the forgotten ordinary people against those of established elites – they have become the most high-profile expressions of a new political cleavage in the advanced democracies, one that has opened up since, and partly because of, the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The cleavage can best be described by noting, first, the striking similarities in the electoral bases of the two leaders. Both find their support preponderantly among the less well-educated, the less interested in politics and those who are less well-informed about politics. While supported by the wealthy, they also find disproportionate levels of support among some, but not all, groups of economically marginalised voters: the white working class, in the case of Trump; self-employed manual workers and private-sector manual and clerical workers in the case of Berlusconi. The collapse of the Berlin Wall is significant for all of this because it decreed ‘the end of history’ in Fukuyama’s famous phrase: from then on, liberal democracy and unbridled capitalism were the only games in town, and, concomitantly, parties of the left lost the last vestiges of their former cultural ascendancy, not to say hegemony. In the UK, Labour and the post-war social democratic consensus gave way to New Labour and ‘the third way’. In Italy, the Communist Party and the case del popolo made way for a succession of non-communist parties and for Canale 5, which took over from the case del popolo as a source of mass entertainment and as a vehicle for the construction and maintenance of cultural hegemony. Everywhere, election turnouts began to decline. With the social and economic changes beginning before and continuing after the collapse of the Wall, citizens’ senses of identification with politically and electorally relevant social categories, of class and of church, began to fade, the process being explicitly encouraged in some cases by public policy initiatives such as the sale of council houses and the home-ownership drive in the UK. Membership of the traditional class- and religious-based mass parties began to decline. Meanwhile, globalisation continued apace, bringing the emergence of problems and perceived problems in the areas of health, the environment and migration that escaped the jurisdiction of specific states and societies. The emergence



Conclusion209

of a genuinely global capitalist economy brought with it a seeming paradox. On the one hand, thanks to rapid economic growth in countries such as China, India and Brazil, disparities of income and wealth between countries declined. On the other hand, the very processes of capitalist expansion that allowed these countries to emerge also brought growing inequality within countries. One of these is the United States which, although relatively rich in terms of average GDP per capita, saw the share of income earned by the top fifth of population going up from 46.6 to 50.3 per cent between 1990 and 2010 alone, while the share earned by the bottom fifth went down from 3.8 to 3.3 per cent.4 While those in hourly paid employment faced growing job insecurity and downward pressure on wages, those in salaried occupations were relatively protected from the implications of the increasing mobility of capital, especially if they were able to save and invest, since the possession of even modest share portfolios made it possible to participate in the process of global capitalist expansion. There thus emerged a growing gap between the working class – those entirely dependent on wage labour for their subsistence but who thanks to home ownership and the other processes of social and economic change mentioned above no longer identified themselves as working class – and what have since become referred to – by populist politicians, by the media and by academics alike – as the  elites: politicians, bankers and wealthy industrialists, but also the well-­ educated in salaried employment – those who, by virtue of their education, are protected from the insecurities of globalisation, are comfortable with its ­associated cultural changes and who, like the owners of capital, enjoy positions of relative material privilege through the practice of social closure, that is, the exclusion of others from access to rewards and opportunities through the possession of educational credentials and in some cases varying amounts of share capital. The traditional mass parties of the left, in organisational and cultural retreat, have struggled to provide representation for a working class that no longer identifies as such, that finds it increasingly difficult to distinguish in ideological and policy terms between the mainstream parties of the left and right, that has little energy for political engagement after long hours and with mortgages to pay off, and that feels threatened, culturally and economically, by mass migration. The parties have struggled to a much lesser degree among the better educated in salaried occupations, especially if they are in public employment and have trade union protection, all of which enables them to feel an affinity with the leftwing themes of cosmopolitanism, solidarity and market regulation. Against this background, both Berlusconi and Trump have been able to make their political fortunes by articulating the resentment felt by working-class people against mainstream politicians they cannot distinguish, who appear unable or unwilling to offer them protection, and who appear to be at one with the bankers, industrialists and the well-educated, suffering none of the insecurities, real and imagined, that they suffer. On the other side of the electoral divide, the well-educated, offended by the misogyny and intolerance of Berlusconi and Trump, unconvinced by their

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­ iatribes against conventional politicians and political processes with which they d are at ease, also feel threatened by their attacks, real and alleged, on legality and due process, whether through interfering with the proper conduct of elections (in the case of Trump) or by passing legislation to secure their private interests (in the case of Berlusconi). They feel threatened because social closure based on educational credentials only ‘works’ where adherence to the rules and norms of impartiality gives the credentials, as claims to an unequal share of resources, legitimacy and credibility. And it only works as long as credentials and intellectual prowess are not denigrated and undermined in favour of alternative criteria of allocation in the perennial conflict over the distribution of power and wealth – as they frequently are: Trump famously declared in February 2016 that he loved ‘the poorly educated’. As noted in chapter 2, Berlusconi suggested, in 2003, that public prosecutors could not legitimately constrain his actions in part because they were people who had merely passed a competitive examination. As confirmed by the Brexit campaigner Michael Gove in 2016 in the run-up to that year’s referendum, hostility to ‘experts’ is a recurring theme in populist discourses.5 So Berlusconi and Trump are manifestations of a cross-national syndrome, with UKIP and Brexit being a third. The Berlusconi phenomenon was thus a precursor to the rise of Trump, along with others which in some respects match it more closely. One of these is the Northern League which has been closer to Trump than has Berlusconi in basing its appeal more clearly on a politics of identity. Such a politics, in the case of the brand of right-wing populism it represents, expresses itself as an emphasis on the perceived injustices visited upon ethnic majorities: the white working class, in the case of Trump; northern Italians in the case of the League. Right-wing populists of the kind more closely represented by Trump and the League than by Berlusconi therefore denigrate minorities – African Americans, meridionali, Muslims or immigrants as the case may be – arguing that measures to help them have gone too far, with the consequence that members of the ethnic majority have become ‘strangers in their own land’.6 They, not the minorities, are discriminated against by the political elites – the ‘Washington establishment’, or Roma ladrona (‘thieving Rome’) as the case may be. As Vernon Bogdanor has put it, ‘this, they say, is particularly unfair, since the majority are the people who have built up the country and played by the rules’.7 Supported by the elites, welfare recipients, southern Italians or recent immigrants, as the case may be, are not playing by the rules, taking more out of the country than they are putting in. These themes are by no means absent from the discourses of Berlusconi’s followers, but they are more strongly apparent in the followers of Matteo Salvini. Where Berlusconi and Trump are much closer – and this brings us back to this book’s central theme – is in the emotional substance of their appeals, a feature that they share with Salvini and other populists. As Bogdanor puts it, populism is a straightforward emotion; it is easy to understand, and it engenders a mood which seeks to explain away the difficulties of government. The problems involved in balancing different claims, in balancing spending and taxation,



Conclusion211 in balancing strength and conciliation, are conjured away. They are seen as ­difficulties ­deliberately erected by the elite in order to prevent the people from ­exercising power.8

Populism is, in other words, in all probability another extraordinary popular delusion. And if the experience of Berlusconi’s period in office suggests that this is the case, then the signs are that Trump will provide further confirmation: by early November 2017 he had failed to enact any of his flagship economic policies; and when, the following month, he achieved congressional approval for sweeping tax reforms, it was thought that the measure would add around 7.5 per cent to the US debt which the previous year he had promised he would eliminate.9 The problem, as both men have demonstrated, is that populists tend to come to power at moments when major crises – the world financial crash and the loss of America’s international hegemony in the case of Trump; the disintegration of Italy’s governing class in the case of Berlusconi – lead people to lose confidence in established politicians generally and to place their hopes in the claims of a more or less colourful outsider. But the assumption that he or she can succeed where the established politicians have failed is an inherently implausible one simply because, in a constitutional democracy, power is by definition limited, and governing is a matter of reconciling competing interests. Under these circumstances, the hopes and expectations that populists generate seem bound to be disappointed simply because of their scale. Silvio Berlusconi was a precursor, then, of Donald Trump. He was a leader, in other words, whose characteristics have been mirrored in even more raucous fashion by the leader of another, more powerful country, to the fear of a great many. This is not the first time in contemporary history that Italy has given to the world a leader of unusual qualities that then reappear, more strongly, in another leader elsewhere. And no doubt it will not be the last.

Notes 1 www.beppegrillo.it/movimento/elenco_liste.php, my translation. 2 The concept of ‘plebiscitary democracy’ expresses the idea that the people are sovereign, that they express their views through referenda and similar mechanisms and that a government’s duty is simply to implement the will of the people as so expressed. Plebiscitary democracy is often thought to empower leaders at the expense of voters since it can be used to exercise control from the top down: by choosing when, and on what, votes are held, leaders claiming a direct relationship with ordinary people can use the votes to legitimate their domination. 3 IPR Marketing, http://www.sondaggipoliticoelettorali.it/GestioneDomande.aspx (accessed 20 April 2018). 4 Figures taken from ‘Statista, the Statistics Portal’, https://www.statista.com/statistics/ 203247/shares-of-household-income-of-quintiles-in-the-us/ (accessed 20 April 2018). 5 In an interview with Faisal Islam of Sky News on 3 June 2016, Michael Gove said that the British people ‘have had enough of experts … from organisations with acronyms – saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong’. 6 This is the title of a book by Arlie Russell Hochschild (2016) on the white American

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working class – as Vernon Bogdanor pointed out in a BBC ‘Briefings’ lecture, looking back at Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 US election, given on 7 November 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoeTie0wJeM (accessed 26 May 2018). 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 ‘Trump hails “largest tax cut” in US history’, BBC News, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ world-us-canada-42429424 (accessed 20 April 2018).

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Index

Abruzzo earthquake (2009) 178 absolute monarchy 79 AC Milan football club 30, 94 L’Aquila earthquake (2009) 105 action, definition of 131 Adams, Ian 40–1 advertising 24–5, 29, 31, 72, 133–4, 150, 184–8 Agcom (regulatory authority) 112 Albertazzi, Daniele 147 Albertini, Marco 171 All Iberian (company) 32, 94–7 Alleanza Nationale (AN) 83–6, 89, 99 Alliance for Good Government 60, 74, 84 alliances 84–7 Almond, Gabriel 183, 187 Amato, Giuliano 71 Andreotti, Giulio 29, 121 anni di piombo 34 anti-communism 42, 46–9, 56, 59, 74, 163 apparentment 100 Ariosto, Stefania 32, 71 l’arte di arrangiarsi 19–20 Asquer, Enrica 132, 142 Athenian democracy 182–3 ‘audience democracy’ 152 authoritarianism 191–2 authority 115–16 Banca Rasini 18, 23 Banfield, Edward 187 belief systems 41–2, 50 Bell, D. S. 31 Benedetti, Carlo de 29, 31–2 Berger, Peter 117–18 Berlusconi, Paolo 19, 65, 67, 70

Berlusconi, Silvio abuse of office for private gain xi, 105–6, 109, 112, 119–20, 126–7, 166–7, 173–6, 190–1, 199, 210 aims and objectives of 165–9 business career 12–13, 17–24, 30, 36, 43–5, 61–2, 66–9, 75, 89, 127, 176, 198–9, 207 campaigning style 152–4, 159–62, 165 childhood and youth 17–20 as a coalition maker 88–9, 148 criticisms of and opposition to 82, 97–9, 105, 117–18 and cultural change 140–1 electoral performance 147–8; see also general elections ideas associated with 42–7 impact of 2–3, 12–13, 49, 74, 83, 89, 131, 140, 156, 159, 162, 184–8, 196, 199, 207 lack of interest in public policy agenda 42 lack of success in government 173–9 landmarks in political career 22, 29, 36, 38, 42, 55, 58–68, 73–8, 81–6, 101, 108, 112, 121, 143, 153, 166, 188–90, 193–5, 198–205 leadership provided by 78–83, 154, 162, 165, 172–5 legacy of x, 4, 12–13, 127, 181 legal proceedings against x, 32, 94–6, 104–5, 205 legislative record 45, 94–9, 112–14, 170–2, 181 literature on 2 as a man of the people 62–4, 72, 143, 150 personal connections 22

228

Index

Berlusconi, Silvio (cont.) personality and personal qualities 10, 19, 44, 109, 150, 153, 156–7 popularity of 98 power and authority of 7, 9, 77–9, 82, 89, 93, 106–7, 131–2, 162, 164, 177, 179, 199–200, 203, 206–7 public image and reputation of 5, 94, 106, 143–4, 176 reasons for downplaying the role of 157–61 role as elder statesman 207 as a role model 188 successes and political longevity of x, 1–2, 5, 51, 99, 108–9, 144, 147–52, 170–3, 200, 207–10 television and media interests of x, 24–32, 62–9, 72, 96, 102, 112–13, 121, 124, 133–4, 141, 181, 184–8, 198–200 wealth 1, 7, 188 ‘Berlusconi age’ 174 Berlusconi family 18–19, 21–3 Berlusconismo 11, 45–7, 132, 134, 174, 186–7, 191, 199 criteria of 38–42 as an ideology 47–50 Bersani, Pierluigi 46, 149 Bertolaso, Guido 105 Biagi law (2003) 176–7 Bin Laden, Osama 182 blind trusts 64–5, 112 Blumer, Herbert 9 Bobbio, Norberto 76 Boffa, Dino 105 Bogdanor, Vernon 210–11 Bollati, Giulio 131 Bologna 48 Bondi, Sandro 42, 96 Bongiorno, Mike 135 Bonzi, Leonardo 23 Borsano, Gianmauro 94–5 Borsini, Lidia 23 Bossi, Maria 23 Bossi, Umberto xi, 65–6, 71, 87, 103, 142 Bosso, Luigi 124 Brancher, Aldo 105 Bratsis, Peter 116 Brexit 202, 210 bribery 65, 95–7, 115–16, 126, 188–90

Brugherio 21–3 ‘Brunetta’ reform (2009) 172, 190 Bull, Martin J. 123 Bush, George W. 200 business and politics, borderline between 12, 113, 122–5, 198 business principles applied to government 169 Butiglione, Rocco 80 Caccavalle, Michele 63, 81–2 Calise, Mauro 76, 79 Callaghan, James 200 Caltagirone family 121 campaigning, political 152–4, 159–62, 165, 186, 202, 204 Campbell, Angus 155 Campus, Donatella 2, 176 Canale 5 (TV station) 133, 208 Canali, Pietro 21 candidate selection 78 Cantoni, Giampiero 46 Cantril, Hadley 187 capitalism 208–9 Cappellacci, Ugo 194 Capussela, Andrea 195 Catholic Church 125, 142 celebrity culture 141–4, 199, 207 Cencelli, Massimiliano (and Manuale Cencelli) 123 centre-left politics in Italy 4–5, 45, 60, 68, 72, 83, 88, 97–101, 153–4, 157–8, 174–5, 193, 203 centre-right politics in Italy x, 1, 4–5, 12, 60–1, 67, 74, 84, 88, 100, 147, 151, 157–8, 192, 200, 204 charismatic leaders 6, 12, 66 Chi magazine 142–3 Chiesa, Mario 56–7 Chirac, Jacques 31 Christian Democrats 43–4, 55–6, 80, 121, 123, 124, 125, 133, 159, 192 La Cinq 30–1, 61 Cirami, Melchiore (and ‘Cirami law’) 95, 98 Cirielli, Edmondo 97 citizenship 182 civil society 47–50, 62–3, 121–2, 144, 199 ‘clan’ politics 12, 121



Index229

clientelism 46, 56, 122–5, 192 coalition leaders ix–x, 149, 166 coalition making 2–3, 11, 59–61, 74, 93, 98–103, 193 Berlusconi’s contribution to 88–9, 148 Coen, Sharon 153 cognitive dissonance, theory of 68, 119 collective action 13, 122 Colombo, Gherardo 95 Communist Party, Italian (PCI) 48–9, 55–6, 59, 122, 133, 192, 208 Communist Refoundation (RC) 9 Compagnie d’Occident 201 Confalonieri, Fedele 19, 62, 75 confidence votes 29–30, 108, 205–6 conflicts of interest x, 11, 64–8, 72, 98–9, 103, 109, 112–15, 120–1, 150, 169, 181, 191, 193, 198–9 conservative tendency in society 159 Constitutional Court, Italian 24–5, 29, 69, 95–6, 105, 112, 199 constitutional provisions and reform, Italian 11, 27–8, 57, 59, 68–9, 96, 102, 107, 125, 138–9, 174, 182–3, 191, 194, 199 Converse, Philip 41 corruption 57–8, 63–5, 83, 104–5, 121, 124, 133, 188–91 Corruption Perceptions Index 189 Cosentino, Nicola 105, 194 Cossiga, Francesco 28, 30, 86 Costanzo, Maurizio 135 Council of Europe 113 Craxi, Bettino 17, 26–31, 36, 56–7, 64, 67, 71, 93, 121, 133, 139, 165, 198, 203 criminal procedure, code of 70, 95 culture and cultural change 131–41, 199 D’Adario, Patrizia 105 D’Alema, Massimo 30, 68–9, 102 Dall’Oglio, Carla 22 debt crisis 107–8 decision-making process 172 il decreto salvaladri 65 decrees promulgated by the Italian government 27–8, 65, 113 deism 33 Della Porta, Donatella 124 Dell’Utri, Marcello 67–8, 73

De Lorenzo, Giuseppe 76 democracy definition and concept of 182 quality of 181–8, 191–2, 196, 199 see also liberal democracy Democratic Party see Partito Democratico Dini, Lamberto 67, 80 Di Pietro, Antonio 71, 98–9, 203 disenchantment, political 6, 8, 11 Di Virgilio, Aldo 84–6 La dolce vita (film and lifestyle) 20 dual labour market 176 ‘dumbing down’ 186 economic growth 98–9, 167–8, 205 ‘economic miracles’ 19–20, 33, 55–6, 98, 142, 159, 167, 195, 201 economic well-being 171–3 The Economist 45, 113, 120, 150 Edilnord (company) 21, 23, 61, 65 education reform 171–2 El Mahroug, Karima (‘Ruby’) 104–5 electoral system, Italian 59–60, 71, 73, 87–8, 93, 100–2, 122, 148 Elias, Norbert 81 elite groups 48–9, 115, 117, 124, 209 employment protection 176–7 entrepreneurship 123 Epoca (magazine) 32 equality before the law 105, 125, 182–3 ethics 117–21 European Community presidency 30 Eurozone crisis 107, 168 ‘eventful’ and ‘event-making’ people 2–3, 17, 86, 200 extortion 104 factionalism 106 false accounting 94–5, 188, 190 family-owned entities 123–4 Farage, Nigel xi il Far West edilizio 21 fascism and anti-fascism 48, 64, 85–7, 131–2, 137–41, 163, 174, 186 Fellini, Federico 20 Festa della Liberazione 140 Festinger, Leon 119 feudalism 114 filibustering 28

230

Index

Fini, Gianfranco 65–6, 83, 85, 106, 141 Fininvest 27, 29, 32, 61–4, 67, 76 Finland 9 Fiori, Giuseppe 29 Fisichella, Domenico 86 Five-star Movement (M5S) x–xi, 147–8, 194, 203–4, 207 flight-paths, diversion of 24 Florenza, Rosario 137 foreign observers’ view of Berlusconi 97, 109 foreign residents in Italy, voting by 88 Forlani, Arnaldo 34 Formenton, Mario 31 Forza Italia (FI) ix–x, 11–12, 35–6, 38, 44, 50, 60–3, 74–84, 103, 147, 165–6, 200, 202, 206 activists’ clubs 75–6 choice of name 74–5 rules and organisational structure 77–9 framing, theory of 154 France ix, 175 freedom meaning of 183 negative 185 Freedom Alliance 60, 74, 84 freemasonry 32–3, 36 Friedrich, Carl 40 Frigerio, Gianstefano 70 Fukuyama, Francis 208 furbizia 22

2008 contest 11, 61, 103, 148, 151 2013 contest xi, 1, 3, 148, 204–5 2018 contest x Ghedini, Nicolò 95 Giannini, Massimo 174 Gibelli, Antonio 174 Ginsborg, Paul 134, 185, 187 il Giornale (newspaper) 35 girotondi demonstrations 125–6 global financial crisis 107, 175, 211 globalisation 208–9 Gobetti, Piero 174 Gore, Al 200 Gove, Michael 210 Gramsci, Antonio 132 ‘great man’ theory of history 3, 7 Greece 107 Grillo, Beppe xi, 203–4, 206 Guareschi, Giovannino 48 Guarino, Mario 26, 32 Guglielmi, Angelo 28

Garibaldi, Giuseppe 141–2 Garzia, Diego 155 Gasperi, Alcide de 159 Gaulle, Charles de ix Gelli, Licio 32–6 general elections in Italy 1948 contest 49–50, 158 1983 contest 26, 165 1992 contest 56–7, 61 1994 contest 36, 43, 46, 50, 59, 63, 75, 84, 87–9, 148, 153, 160 1996 contest 44, 61, 67, 89, 148, 164 2001 contest 12–13, 43–4, 61, 71–3, 93, 98, 143, 148, 150–1 2006 contest 43, 61, 100, 147–8, 151, 160–1

identity politics 210 ideology 4, 11, 39–42, 47–51, 80, 122, 144, 166 Berlusconismo as 47–50 individualism 13, 132–3, 136, 144 individuals’ contributions to historical change 3–4, 200 industrialisation 114–15 ‘infinite regress’ problem 3 institutional reform 49, 194–5 instrumental relationships 80–3 Iraq War 178 ‘-ism’, use of 39 Italian National Election Study (ITANES) 12, 155 Italian Second Republic 2, 82

Hanretty, Chris 124 Held, David 114, 182 Hersant, Robert 31 Hine, David 106 Hitler, Adolf 18 Hobbes, Thomas 114–15 Hopkin, Jonathan 75–6 House of Commons (UK) 117 House of Representatives (US) 116–17 human nature 41–2



Index231

Italian Social Movement (MSI) 85–7, 122 John Paul II, Pope 142 Johnston, Michael 115, 123 judicial system and the judiciary, Italian 9–10, 17, 32, 43, 58, 67, 94–6, 99, 104–5, 113, 119–20, 125, 188, 191, 193 Julliard, Jean-François 113 labour-market flexibility 176 Labour Party, British 79–80, 208 Lakoff, George 154 Lane, David 113 Larini, Silvano 26 Latvia 8–9 Law, John 201 law enforcement 10, 125 leadership political ix, 4–9, 13, 81, 154 roles of 200–1 two dimensions of 175 Lega Nord x, 43–4, 56, 60, 65–6, 71, 84–9, 99, 148, 159, 192–3, 207, 210 legge Mammì 29, 61–2, 66, 69 Leninism 55 Lentini, Gianluigi 94 Letta, Enrico 205–6 Letta, Gianni 29, 62 libel proceedings 32 liberal democracy 189, 191, 199 liberalism 43–4, 49 Lima, Salvo 121 Lloyd, John 139 Locke, John 114 lodo Alfano 105 lodo Schifani 96, 98, 105 Lorenzetto, Steffano 18 love, Berlusconi’s emphasis on 46 Luckmann, Thomas 117–18 Maccanico, Antonio (and Maccanico law) 69–70, 98, 112 McCarthy, Patrick 76, 121 McDonnell, Duncan 147 Machiavelli, Niccolò 114 Mackay, Charles 8 McNair, Brian 184 Magna Carta 114

Magni, Luca 56 majority premium 100–3, 148 ‘Make Money Fast’ chain letter 201–2 managerial efficiency in government 167 Manca, Enrico 30 Mani pulite investigations 70, 124–5, 188, 193 Manin, Bernard 152–3 Manzoni (advertising agency) 21–2 Maraffi, Marco 76 Marangoni, Francesco 172 Mariotti, Claudia 81 Marx, Karl 1, 179 Marxism 121–2 Mastella, Clemente 80, 102–3 Mastropaolo, Alfio 88 media developments 4 Mediaset (company) 30–1, 96–7, 104, 112, 134–5 mediatisation of politics 6–7, 143, 147, 152, 186 Members of Parliament, British 117 Mennitti, Domenico 74 Merkel, Angela 107, 166 Metta, Vittorio 32 middle-class interests 126 migration within Italy 20–1 Milan 17–22, 33, 56, 95 Polytechnic 24 University 19 Milano 2 development 23–4 Mills, David 97, 104 ministers without portfolio 170 Mississippi Bubble (1719) 201 Mitterand, François 30–1 monarchy, Italian 137–8 Mondadori (company and case) 26, 32, 67, 70–1, 94 money-laundering 21, 23 Monti, Mario 203, 205 Moro, Aldo 34 Moroni, Sergio 118 murder 40 Mussolini, Benito ix, 18, 85–6, 137–8, 174, 192, 196 Naples weekly lottery 202 Napolitano, Giorgio 107–8, 166

232

Index

National Alliance see Alleanza Nationale national identity, Italian 125 Nelken, David 118–19 neoliberalism 134, 165–6 ‘new public management’ 172 Newell, James L. (author) 35, 93, 123, 125, 160–1 ‘niche markets’ in politics 101, 123, 194 nihilism 50 Northern League see Lega Nord Norway 8 Nunnally, J. C. 40 Occhetto, Achille 55, 149, 153, 193 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 190 Orsina, Giovanni 2, 47, 49, 132 Osgood, C. E. 40 Palladino, Nicola 165, 186 Paolucci, Caterina 39, 75–6, 202 Parenti, Tiziana 63 Parkin, Frank 126 Parma 204 Parotto, Giuliana 44, 46 partisanship, political 155, 157 Partito Democratico (PD) 83, 103, 194, 203 party bureaucrats 153 party leadership 5–6, 77, 163, 186, 192–3 Berlusconi’s 78–9, 83, 162 impact of 155–6 party system, Italian 2–4, 12, 55–61, 68, 74, 77, 79, 82–5, 89, 122–5 changes in 191–5 disintegration of 79, 85 routinisation of life in 82 Pasquino, Gianfranco 195 Passigli, Stefano 64–5 path dependency 17, 88, 179 patrimonialism 74, 77, 82, 98, 200 patronage, politics of 123 Pecorella, Gaetano 95–6 Pelizzo, Riccardo 195 Pennisi, Mirko 194 pensions reform 171 perjury 32 Perot, Ross 80

personalisation of politics 4, 6, 79–80, 143, 147, 151–4, 157 personality cults 6 Piano di governo per un’intera legislatura 167 Pilittieri, Paolo 56 Pizzorno, A. 67 Plamenatz, John 40 pluralism in the media 113 Poli, Emanuela 75–6 policy-making 2, 106, 122–3, 135 political parties impact of 5 membership of 58 purpose of 80 see also party system, Italian politicisation of the economy 123 politics and business, borderline between 12, 113, 122–5, 198 Popolo della libertà (Pdl) 82–3 popular delusions 200–2, 211 populism x–xi, 6–9, 13, 43, 49, 56, 97, 135, 140, 196, 208–11 posters 72, 150 Poulson, John 118 Powell, Enoch 207 power, arbitrary exercise of 78 Prada, Maurizio 70 presidency, Italian 11, 29, 43, 105–8, 112–13, 174 ‘presidentialism’ and ‘presidentialisation’ 5–7, 152, 186 press conferences, prime ministerial 170 Previti, Cesare 32, 70–1, 82, 103 Prime Minister of Italy Berlusconi as x, 64–6, 73, 93, 98–9, 103–9, 112–13, 149–52, 163–9, 173, 176, 188, 193, 200, 202 power resouces available to 5, 13, 163–7, 174–7 Prime Minister’s Office (PCM) 164, 170 prison population 102 private sphere separate from the public xii, 109, 114–17, 120–7, 181, 198–9 Prodi, Romano 45, 101, 104, 149, 164, 172, 193 Progressive Alliance 60, 87 prosecutors, public 57–8, 65, 70, 95, 104, 124

prostitution 104 P2 (Masonic lodge) 32–8 public administration 115, 172 public opinion and opinion polls 4, 97, 100, 112, 161 public sphere definition of 184 separate from the private xii, 109, 114–17, 120–7, 181, 198–9 Publitalia 25, 27, 62 Putnam, Robert 183–4, 186 Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) 24, 30, 64–5, 104, 124 Railo, Erkka 9 Rasini, Carlo 21–2 Rauti, Pino 86 Reagan, Ronald (and Reaganism) 38–9, 133, 139 reality television 142 reciprocity, norms of 10, 125, 184 Red Brigades 34 referenda 59–60, 66, 68, 194 Reform Party (US) 80 regional autonomy 172 regulation, threat of 27–30 Renzi, Matteo 164, 194–5, 206–7 la Repubblica (newspaper) 29, 189 Resistance movement (1940s) 121 Rezzonico, Augusto 61 Rezzonico, Renzo 21, 23 Riall, Lucy 141 Ricolfi, Luca 176 Rose, Richard 5 Rosenberg, Alexander 131 Rossini, Giuseppe 28 Rovelli, Nino 70, 121 Ruggeri, Giovanni 26, 32 rule of law 106, 115, 191, 199 rules, nature of 126–7 Rusconi, Edilio 24–7 Russia 115–16 Rutelli, Francesco 72, 141, 149–50, 193 Saccà, Agostino 104 Sainsbury, Diane 40 Salvini, Matteo 207, 210 San Raffaele hospital 24

Index233 Sant’Ambrogio school 19 Santomassino, Gianpasquale 131–2 Saporta, S. 40 Sarkozy, Nicolas 107, 166 Sartori, Giovanni 64, 112, 196 Sbardella, Vittorio 121 Scajola, Claudio 105 Second World War 18–19, 137, 159 secret associations 34 Segni, Mario 62–3, 80, 84–5 Senate, the 174, 195 Severino law 205 sexual misconduct 105, 108, 144, 186, 196, 203 Seydoux, Jérôme 31 Sigonella crisis (1985) 139 Sindona, Michele 32, 34 Smith, T. Dan 118 social capital 125, 183–4, 192, 199 social changes in Italy 159 social closure 126, 209–10 social control 186–7 social determinism 3–4 social identities 153 Socialist Party, Italian 133 Società Meridionale di Elettricità (SME) 94–6 Sordi, Alberto 19 Spaventa, Luigi 150 speculative bubbles 201 spending cuts 100, 106–7, 166 La Stampa (newspaper) 124 La Standa 61 statute of limitations 70, 94–7 Stille, Alexander 10, 22–5, 64, 153 Storace, Francesco 85 Street, John 134, 185 subjective well-being 179 symmetric bicameralism 195 Tangentopoli scandal 36, 56–61, 74–5, 85, 118, 159, 189–91 Taormina, Carlo 96 Tarrow, Sidney 187 taxation 47–8, 98, 100, 104, 166, 190, 205, 211 ‘informal’ 123 taxi services 45–6 Telemilano 24, 35

234 television programming 4, 134–6, 150, 184–8 Thatcher, Margaret (and Thatcherism) 1, 38–9, 133, 176, 200 ‘Third Italy’ 133 Thompson, John B. 4 Togliatti, Palmiro 6 Tompson, William 177 Trani case 104 Travaglio, Marco 28 Tremonti, Giulio 99, 106–7, 175 Trump, Donald xi, 13, 198, 208–11 trust in and mistrust of political leaders 6, 152, 189, 195 Tsebelis, George 178 Ulivo coalition 71 underdog effect 151 unemployment 171–2 Union of Centre Democrats (UDC) 93–4, 99 United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) 210 universalism 115, 126 Urbani, Giuliano 62, 193

Index Vampa, D. 106 Vannucci, Alberto 124 ‘V Days’ 203–4 Veltroni, Walter 11, 103, 149–54, 169, 193 Verba, Sidney 183, 187 Verdelli, Carlo 32 vertici di maggioranza 163 veto power and veto players 11, 26, 80, 167, 178–9 Violante, Luciano 68 Viroli, Maurizio 7, 81 voli di stato case 104 vote switching 73, 88, 147, 156–7, 160–1 voter surveys 154–5 voting, social-psychological model of 157 Waters, S. 57 Weber, Max 115 ‘welfarism’ 123 well-being see economic well-being; subjective well-being Winch, Peter 9 Winter, David 175