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The Christian Democrats and the Political Crisis∗

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Pietro Scoppola
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Extract

The Christian Democrat Party (DC) is at the centre of the current Italian political crisis. It was in some measure responsible for precipitating it and is now suffering the backlash. Unless we take account of the central role that the DC played for so long within the Italian political system, we shall not be able to explain its centrality in the current crisis.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , 1995 , pp. 18 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

1 Further discussion can be found in Mark Donovan's essay on the Italian Christian Democrats in Hanley, D. (ed.), Christian Democracy in Europe. A Comparative Perspective, Pinter, London and New York, 1994.Google Scholar

2 Galli, G., Il bipartitismo imperfetto, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1966.Google Scholar

3 Trasformismo—a process by which the dominant political class neutralizes opposition by partially recruiting it into the apparatus of power.Google Scholar

4 There was no list of parties that triggered the mechanism giving 65 per cent of parliamentary seats to the winners of a 50 per cent majority (translator's note).Google Scholar

5 ‘Risposte parlamentari alla crisi del regime: un problema di istituzionalizzazione’, in La crisi italiana, 2 vols, Graziano, L. and Tarrow, S. (eds), Einaudi, Turin, 1979, vol. II, pp. 367–422.Google Scholar

6 On Moro's understanding of political parties, see Traniello, F. ‘Partito e società nel pensiero di Moro’ in Appunti di Cultura e di Politica, May–June 1981.Google Scholar

7 On these events, the diary of the then Italian ambassador to the Papacy is of great interest; see Pompei, Gian Franco, Un ambasciatore in Vaticano, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1994.Google Scholar

8 On institutional reform, see my La Repubblica dei partiti. Profilo storico della democrazia in Italia (1945–1990) , Il Mulino, Bologna, 1991, esp. the chapter ‘Il paradosso della riforma istituzionale’ pp. 399ff.Google Scholar