Italian politics today

Italian politics today:
This is an introductory guide to Italian politics and the social forces that shape them. Italy has long been stereotyped as a nation of upheaval and chaos, in which weak and incompetent political leaderships govern precariously in the face of an anarchic society. But the surface turmoil of Italian politics has longed masked a changeless hierarchical order. The Christian Democrats and their allies were allowed to rule undisturbed because the only alternative was government by the Communists. In the early 1990s, the 'regime of the parties' that had ruled Italy since the end of the Second World War collapsed under the accumulated costs of holding on to power.

Topics covered in the book include: the legacy of the Risorgimento; the liberal era and fascism; Italian constitutional arrangements and the on-going debate over their reform; the Christian Democratic 'regime' and the long-standing exclusion from power of the major party of opposition; clientalism and corruption; right-wing conspiracies; terrorism and the Mafia; economic, social and political rights; the collapse of the traditional parties and the reshaping of the party system.

Partridge, Hilary
Italian politics today
Politics Today
Manchester University Press, 1998
ISBN: 0-7190-4943-1 (Hbk)/ 0-7190-4944-X (Pbk)
Price: £40.00 (Hbk)/ £9.99 (Pbk)