1 While Gabriel Almond’s recent formulations are very suggestive (see his section in Comparative Politics Today: A World View, Boston, 1974, p. 73 where he states: ‘the interests of people ‐ their needs, wants, values, expectations ‐ are fulfilled or frustrated by what governments do. Citizens therefore are or become concerned with the decisions of their governments. They express or articulate their interests to political and governmental agencies through groups they form with others who share one or another of those interests’.), I feel that in dealing with interest articulation and group conflict it is necessary to look as well at their bilateral or multilateral competition in the society at large. This might be a useful addition to our understanding of the process of interest articulation, particularly in those cases in which the government is brought into the picture only to play the role of referee.

2 The standard work is Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture, Princeton, 1963 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also recent important empirical findings by Giacomo Sani, ‘Political Traditions as Contextual Variables: Partisanship in Italy’, paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, 1–3 May 1975, and, for elite political culture Putnam, Robert D., The Beliefs of Politicians, New Haven and London, 1973 Google Scholar, especially ‘Ideology, Conflict, and Democracy in Britain and Italy’.

3 The point has been made in its extreme form by Banfield, Edward C., The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, Glencoe, 1958 Google Scholar. The author puts the blame upon some psychological and sociological characteristics of the Italian population ‐ in this case a very poor Southern village ‐ completely overlooking the problems of structural opportunities, of governmental responsiveness and of past experiences. For a devastating critique of the approach and the findings, see Pizzorno, Alessandro, ‘Amoral Familism and Historical Marginality’, International Review of Community Development, XV, 1966, pp. 55–66 Google Scholar, now also in Dogan, Mattei and Rose, Richard (eds.), European Politics: A Reader, Boston, 1971, pp. 87–98 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Raphael Zariski, Italy. The Politics of Uneven Development, Hinsdale, 111., 1972, p. 212; see also pp. 202–3; Jean Meynaud, Rapporto sulla classe dirigente italiana, Milan, 1966, makes a similar point adding that the self‐confidence of the “patrons” was growing considerably during the reconstruction phase. This was the time when many considered the “patronat” a dam against communism, p. 78.

5 Strangely enough there is not, to my knowledge, a reliable scholarly account of this period and the close ties between Confindustria and the DC.

6 Levi, Fabio, Rugafiori, Paride, Vento, Salvatore, Ricostruzione economica e lotta di classe nel triangolo industrials, Milan, 1974 Google Scholar. Excellent is the long essay by Beccalli, Bianca, ‘La ricostruzione del sindacalismo italiano’, in Stuart Woolf, J. (ed.), The Rebirth of Italy, 1943–50, London, 1972, pp. 319–88Google Scholar, which, after a detailed analysis of the CGIL‐PCI relationship, explores the availability and the cost of alternative choices. The importance of the membership figures should not be overrated since the industrial working class constituted, in this first period, only a small part of the labour force. In addition, the presence of large, even if ‘physiological’, unemployment rendered the threat of large scale dismissals a very credible one (and such it remained until the end of the 1950s).

7 AA.VV., La presenza sociale del PCI e della DC, Bologna, 1968, p. 39. A good account of the entire period is provided by Horowitz, Daniel L., in The Italian Labor Movement, Cambridge, Mass., 1963 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 AA.W., La presenza sociale del PCI e della DC, at p. 54 and p. 51. A very interesting analysis, which is more than a case study because of the importance of the firm, is the book by Liliana Lanzardo, Classe operaia e partito comunista alia Fiat. La strategia della collaborazione 1945–1949, Turin, 1971.

9 Bruno Manghi, ‘La dinamica della CISL: dal moderatismo ad una nuova coscienza politica?’, in AA.VV., La DC dopo il primo ventennio, Padua, 1968, p. 107. See also a particularly interesting case, that of the Federazione Italiana Metal‐meccanici (FIM) analysed by Gian Primo Cella, Bruno Manghi and Paola Piva, Un sindacato italiano negli anni sessanta. La FIM‐CISL, dall’associazione alla classe, Bari, 1972.

10 Some authors contend that it was the other way around: ‘DC leaders exploit their position in the CISL to make the organization take a line of action that coincides not so much with that of the majority of the party as with that of the faction to which those leaders belong’, AA.VV., La presenza sociale del PCI e della DC, at p. 71. In terms of influence upon the government the difference may be negligible. In terms of the subsequent evolution of the political and syndical strategy of the CISL, my interpretation seems to have more explanatory power.

11 Jean Meynaud, in Rapporto sulla classe dirigente italiana, pp. 76–7, usually very cautious in his evaluations, credits the member firms of the Confindustria with a high discipline and esprit de corps and with an overall performance in the field of interest representation and defence which are, in my opinion, far superior to actual performance.

12 The most important sectors within Confindustria in the 1950s were textile, sugar, refineries, cement, Falck siderurgical industries, electrical companies and the ship‐building sector. As to FIAT’s more direct channels of interest articulation ‐beside La Stampa, the FIAT owned daily paper, there is little doubt that parliamentary representatives from Piedmont, irrespectively of their political affiliations, acted as a lobby in favour of FIAT: the moderates to promote the interests of small industries working nearly exclusively for FIAT, the progressives to defend the level of employment at the several FIAT plants as well as in connected industries. One must bear in mind that Turin was and to a large extent still is a typical one company town.

13 FIAT’s declaration of non opposition to the creation of a Centre Left government, was made by Vittorio Valletta, director general of FIAT: ‘The centre left government is a product of the development of the times. One cannot, one must not go back. I am a supporter of the centre left.’ Quoted by Carlini, Lucio De, ‘La Confindustria’, in AA. VV., La politica del padronato italiano dalla ricostruzione all “autunno caldo”, Bari, 1972, p. 65 Google Scholar. The entire essay contains valuable information.

14 LaPalombara, Joseph, Interest Groups in Italian Politics, Princeton, 1964 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, a very influential book on Italian politics.

15 Which became very easy to draft since ‘Interest groups do not supply information in a nonstructured way, but rather in the way which supports the conclusions that they wish to be drawn from it’, as Percy Allum, Italy ‐ Republic without Government?, London, 1974, p. 106 perceptively puts it.

16 Lucio De Carlini, ‘La Confindustria’, p. 60.

17 In fact, highways were also instrumental in channelling towards Italian cities and beaches a large inflow of tourists, but their effect on private car ‘consumption’ was probably by far more important. It must be added that the Turin—Milan highway was built by a society owned by FIAT and soon revealed itself a very profitable investment.

18 After a decade of separation, the general evaluation was commonly accepted that ‘State Participations and Intersind are, at best, an instrument in the hands of the Minister of Labour, which makes his activity as a broker easier and smoother and, at worst, an instrument which may be utilized by the very private capital (or at least by some of its sectors) to predetermine the levels at which a “compromise” will be achieved’, see Ada Collidá, ‘L’Intersind’, in La politica del padronato italiano, p. 123.

19 AA.VV., L’organizzazione partitica del PCI e della DC, Bologna, 1968, pp. 404–5.

20 The best analyses so far of the ideological soul‐searching of the two major trade unions, albeit with strong reference to juridical aspects, have been written by Mario Ricciardi, ‘Appunti per una ricerca sulla politica della CGIL: gli anni “50”, and by Treu, Tiziano, ‘La CISL degli anni 50 e le ideologie giuridiche dominanti’, both in Tarello, Giovanni (ed.), Dottrinegiuridiche e ideologie sindacali, Bologna, 1973, respectively pp. 161–265 Google Scholar and 267–396.

21 The best factual account of this very first period is given by the Socialist political analyst Giuseppe Tamburrano, Storia e cronaca del centra sinistra, Milan, 1970.

22 Approved by Parliament only in 1970, the law, a major contribution by the Socialist Minister of Labor Giacomo Brodolini, has been as widely acclaimed as an instrument for improving industrial relations as it has been attacked as an incentive to workers’ absenteeism and diminishing productivity.

23 The best indictment of the forces opposed to planning is to be found in Giorgio Ruffolo (Secretary of the Planning Office), Rapporto sulla programmazione, Bari, 1973. The struggle took place among many different competitors: the government versus the opposition, within the government, DC versus PSI, essentially the Socialist‐dominated Istituto Studi Programmazione Economica (ISPE) versus the Social‐Democratic Minister of Finance and the Christian Democratic Minister of the Treasury. ISPE could count upon the Minister of Planning’s support while the other two ministries, beside the sabotage of their bureaucratic apparatuses, could muster enough support from private industries and those public companies unwilling to subject themselves to strict controls. The best comparative analysis so far in this perspective is the volume edited by Hayward, Jack and Watson, Michael, Planning, Politics and Public Policy. The British, French and Italian Experience, Cambridge, 1975 Google Scholar, see especially the section by Pasquino and Pecchini on the planning process in practice, pp. 84–9.

24 Not very much is known about the activities of the consultative body Consiglio Nazionale dell’Economia e del Lavoro (CNEL) composed by representatives of industry, agriculture, trade unions, and government. Its function seems to have been a purely decorative one.

25 For a detailed analysis of these aspects see Valli, Vittorio, Sindacati e progratnmazione economica, Milan, 1969, pp. 243ff.Google Scholar

26 However, this relative defeat of the labour movement contained elements which would have strongly influenced future events: ‘these potentialities must be related not only to the fact that Confindustria was finally compelled to abandon its stand of stiff refusal and to accept the principle of decentralized bargaining (contrattazione articolata) nor only to the fact that the employers as a whole ‐ unimaginatively relying on the possibility to secure, even in the process of economic recovery, a real control upon the wage dynamics by means of direct and indirect instruments ‐ made a fundamental strategic blunder striving to keep the contract cost excessively low, but above all to the fact that also because of the length of the confrontation and the cleavages which were produced by it, this experience put into motion important processes of conscience maturation within the working class’. From Ada Collida, ‘L’Intersind’, pp. 111–12.

27 The best interpretation of the overall evolution of Italian trade unions can be found in Pizzorno’s, Alessandro essay, ‘I sindacati nel sistema politico italiano,’ in Rivista Trimestrate di Diritto Pubblico, XXI, 1971, pp. 1510–59Google Scholar.

28 On this point see the concise but remarkable analysis of Giangiacomo Migone, ‘La sinistra CISL a un nodo’, Il Manifesto, 9 July 1974, p. 2.

29 In this field a real breakthrough has been achieved in 1973 when the platform of Metalworkers contained a request for 150 paid hours to all workers over a two‐year period to be devoted to their cultural improvement, untied to any on‐the‐job qualifications. With varying degrees of success courses have been held at all educational levels: primary, secondary, and university (see the reports of the experiences in the cities of Macerata, Florence, Naples, Il Manifesto, respectively 30 July, I and 7 August, 1974, and Barbagli, Marzio, Bosi, Paolo and Capecchi, Vittorio, ‘Le 150 ore all’Universitá di Bologna’, Il Mulino, XXIII, 1974, pp. 989–98Google Scholar.

30 For a stringent criticism of its main assumptions and conclusions, see the slightly biased analysis by Gianfranco Mossetto, ‘Il “nuovo padronato”’, in AA.VV., La politica del padronato italiano, pp. 9–51.

31 It is appropriate to underline that the timing was very well chosen: the student movement of 1968 had just shattered many illusions about capitalism as a driving force and the Hot Autumn of 1969 was going to destroy some myths about working‐class embourgeoisement. How startlingly different was the situation described five years earlier by such a perceptive observer as Jean Meynaud, Rapporto sulla classe dirigente italiana, p. 80: ‘Anyway the economic miracle has favoured the diffusion of images and slogans aiming at increasing the social prestige of the employers.’ Later on Meynaud also wrote about the exceptional dynamism of Italian businessmen and the exaltation of neocapitalism as they are conveyed by the mass media (Italics mine).

32 See the details and the severe indictments of governmental officials and Montedison policy in ‘Complimenti, dottor Cefis!’, L’Espresso, 21 July 1974, p. 87. Eugenio Scalfari’s weekly columns represented the best commentaries on Italian economic events.

33 Joseph LaPalombara’s already quoted book, Interest Groups in Italian Politics, was written when the situation was changing and new patterns were emerging.

34 A brief appraisal of the economic stands of some important DC leaders (De Gasperi, Dossetti, Fanfani, Moro, Colombo) is offered by Fabrizio Cicchitto, ‘La politica economica della DC’, in La DC dopo il primo ventetennio, cit., whose overall evaluation is very negative. The three main goals of DC economic policy are identified in ‘the stability of the capitalist system, its development without endangering private initiative, the preservation of the traditional balance of power’, p. 21. See also the accounts by one of the most influential economic advisers to DC leader Moro, Nino Andreatta, Cronache di uneconomia bloccata: 1969–1973, Bologna, 1973 and his report to the DC Economic Conference of Perugia (December 1972), ‘La politica congiunturale ele strutture monetarie e creditizie’, Il Mulino, XXII, 1973, pp. 3–29. Needless to say, there is no reliable documentation of the positions held by Christian Democratic managers in the public sector but see L’Espresso, 2 May 1971.