Bull, MJ 2004, 'Parliamentary democracy in Italy' , Parliamentary Affairs, 57 (3) , pp. 550-567.

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Abstract

The Italian 'partitocrazia' or 'partitocratic regime' - known as the First Republic - effectively came to an end in the early 1990s under the pressure of a range of different factors, and political changes began about which most observers were, at the beginning, very optimistic, since it was felt that they would lead to a 'normalisation' of Italian politics and therefore an improvement in the quality of Italian democracy. However, ten years on, after the reassertion of the political party sphere in the late 1990s and the electoral success of the media magnate, Silvio Berlusconi, the debate has shifted to focus on the difficulties Italian democracy is facing and whether or not, far from making progress, the political system is in regression. This article evaluates the changes Italian democracy has been and is undergoing along several lines, the continuities that still exist with the old model of the First Republic and the difficulties of achieving significant improvements in the future.

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