ITALIAN REPUBLIC Official name: Repubblica Italiana (Italian Republic) Location: Western Europe International organisations: The Council of Europe, The European Union, The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, The United Nations, The Western European Union, The World Trade Organisation Borders: Austria, France, San Marino, Slovenia, Switzerland, Vatican City State Coastline: Adriatic Sea, Mediterranean Sea Land area: 301,230 Km2 Population: 57,700,000 Ethnicity: The population is almost entirely Italian. There is a German minority in Trentino-Alto Adige (South Tyrol), a French minority in Valle d'Aosta and a Slovene minority in Trieste-Gorizia. There has been an influx of Abanian and North African immigrants in recent years.

Languages: Italian is the national language, and is used everywhere except in the three border regions mentioned above.
Religion: Italy has been historically almost entirely Catholic Christian, but religious practice has declined sharply in the postwar period. Under the 1985 revised agreement between Italy and the Vatican, Catholicism is no longer the state religion. There are small Jewish and Moslem minorities.
Form of government: Parliamentary democratic republic. Italy is divided into 20 regions which elect their own legislatures, but is not a true federation.

Capital: Roma (Rome) Constitution: The Constitution of the Italian Republic came into effect on 1 January 1948 Head of state: The President, elected for a seven-year term by an electoral college consisting of both houses of the legislature and 58 regional representatives. President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi was elected on 13 May 1999. The President's functions are largely ceremonial. Head of government: The Prime Minister, appointed by the President. The Prime Minister is the leader of the largest party or coalition in the legislature and is accountable to it. Legislature: The Parliament (Parlamento) is a bicameral legislature. The lower house, the Chamber of Deputies (Camera dei Deputati), has 630 members, elected for five-year term. Of these 475 members are elected from single-member constituencies and 155 members are elected by proportional representation from the regions. The Senate of the Republic (Senato della Repubblica) has 326 members elected for five-year terms. Of these 232 members are elected from single-member constituencies, 83 are elected by proportional representation from the regions. There are 11 senators for life.

Electoral authority: Italian national elections are conducted by the Interior Ministry.
Freedom House 2005 rating: Political Rights 1, Civil Liberties 1

Political history

Until the 19th century Italy was, as Metternich famously said, only a geographical expression. But the French Revolution introduced liberal and nationalist ideas into Italy, and a movement for national unification developed which achieved its objective when the Kingdom of Italy was created in 1861. The new kingdom was a parliamentary democracy under the leadership of the Kings of Piedmont.

Alcide de Gasperi

The First World War and its aftermath produced a crisis in Italian politics. In 1919 and 1920 the Communists came close to launching a revolution, and a movement of the extreme right, fascism, was mobilised in response. With parliamentary institutions discredited, the fascist leader Benito Mussolini was able to "march on Rome" in October 1922, and soon established a dictatorship. In 1940 Mussolini foolishly entered the Second World War on Germany's side, and by 1943 the Allies had invaded Italy and he was overthrown. The end of the war saw the monarchy disgraced for having collaborated with Mussolini, and Italy became a republic in 1946. The Communist Party was very powerful, but was successfully kept from power by the organisation of a broad-based, progressive Christian Democratic party, led by Alcide de Gasperi.

The dominance of the left by the Communists, a situation unique in Europe, meant that there was no acceptable alternative government to the Christian Democrats for more than 40 years, which inevitably led in time to complacency and corruption. The fall of the Soviet Union produced a revolution in Italian politics. The Communist Party abandoned Communism, changed its name and suffered a major split. The Christian Democrats, no longer a bulwark against Communism, also fell apart.

Today the dominant force in Italian politics is the House of Freedom, a five-party alliance of the right led by the media magnate Silvio Berlusconi. The alliance consists of Berlusconi's party, the populist Forwards Italy, the right-wing National Alliance of Gianfranco Fini, the regionalist Northern League of Umberto Bossi, and the Christian-Democratic Centre and United Christian-Democrats, groups descended from the right wing of the former Christian Democrats. The traditional parties of the centre-right, the Liberals and the Republicans, have almost disappeared.

The left is grouped in an alliance known as the Olive Tree. The largest party in this alliance is the Party of the Democratic Left (PDS) of Massimo d'Alema, descended from the majority faction of the former Communist Party. The PDS now claims to be a democratic socialist party, but its term of office (1996-2001) was inept and directionless. Allied with the PDS are a group of centre-left parties descended from the progressive wing of the Christian Democrats: La Margherita (The Daisy), the Democrats, and the Italian Renewal-List Dini. Also allied with the left is the Federation of Greens.

Not part of the Olive Tree, but usually co-operating with it, is the left wing of the Communist Party, known as the Refounded Communists. The old Socialist Party has disappeared.

Italy's profusion of political parties is the product of the system of proportional representation. This was replaced in 1991 by a "mixed" system of single- member and proportional repesentation, but the existence of some proportionality has kept the minor parties alive. In 2005 the right-wing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi brought back the old system, apparently in the expectation of losing the 2006 elections. His motive seems to be to ensure that the next government will be weak and unstable so that he can return to power.