Forza Italia After Ten Years

FORZA ITALIA AFTER TEN YEARS

Jonathan Hopkin

For Silvio Berlusconi, the year 2004 began with ostentatious celebra- tions of the tenth anniversary of Forza Italia’s extraordinary first election victory, which came only a few weeks after Berlusconi officially “took the field” (scese in campo) to stand for election to the Chamber of Deputies. Forza Italia’s survival as one of Italy’s leading political forces a decade later is testimony to the staying power of what seemed at the time as a hasty improvisation, which many political commenta- tors were initially reluctant to take seriously. For much of the past 10 years, Forza Italia (FI) has been the largest Italian party in terms of vote share and parliamentary delegation, and Berlusconi has held the prime minister’s office for almost half of that time. As a vehicle for obtaining and keeping political power, FI has been extraordinarily successful. However, Silvio Berlusconi did not spend 2004 basking in this success. The first half of the year was almost entirely dedicated to campaigning for the June elections to the European Parliament and some local and provincial governments, a contest in which FI registered one of its poorest electoral performances to date. Much of the rest of the year has been spent dealing with the political fallout from FI’s poor result, which has further destabilized an increasingly fractious government coalition. It is, of course, far too early to write off FI and its leader, but they clearly face serious challenges. This chapter will assess the state of Forza Italia as a political movement after a decade of existence and will attempt to make sense of its current travails in terms of the organizational and political weaknesses that have been present since it was founded in late 1993.

Notes for this chapter begin on page 98. 84 Jonathan Hopkin

Party, Business, or Clique? The Ontology of Forza Italia

Berlusconi’s decision to enter political life and his unprecedented success in building a political force that in the space of just a few months was able to win control of the Italian Parliament left political scien- tists and other observers in a state of some confusion. Not only was Berlusconi a businessman with no formal political record, but his party, FI, seemed to have been conjured up out of nothing. Early studies quickly identified the key to this success. FI was in fact built around the structure of Berlusconi’s Fininvest corporation, which possessed the resources necessary to create a political party in short order, namely, a nationwide territorial presence, a large amount of money, and control of a significant slice of the Italian media. The decisive role of Fininvest, and of its television channels in particular, drove many initial analyses of FI. It was described variously as a “business firm party” (partito- azienda),1 an “American” party,2 a “virtual” party,3 a “plastic” party,4 and even a “media-mediated personality party.”5 What all of these defi- nitions had in common was their emphasis on the features of FI that distanced it from the classic mass-party model: FI had little grassroots presence, lacked a clear ideological identity, and was heavily reliant on the almost charismatic presence of its leader, reinforced by a sophisti- cated use of modern techniques of mass communication. In a sense, it is not surprising that early accounts of FI focused on its more anomalous characteristics. FI was a party hastily put together in an “emergency” situation, as the major parties of the Italian center- right had begun to collapse, opening the door to a center-left coalition implacably opposed to Berlusconi and his corporation. There was no time to build up a network of grassroots organizations gradually or to develop a clear set of political principles and detailed policy commitments. The exceptional circumstances of FI’s creation dictated that it would appear different to all other major parties in the Western Euro- pean context. Its decision to ally with controversial partners such as the Northern League and the National Alliance attracted further atten- tion to the more unorthodox aspects of Forza Italia and its leader. After 10 years, FI has had time to mature as a political organization, and it is probably more meaningful to pass judgment on what kind of party FI is now than it was in the months after its foundation. There is no doubt that FI has changed in these 10 years, and that some of the strikingly anomalous features of its organization and activity have consequently been attenuated. At the same time, the traditional “mass” parties in Italy have either disappeared (in the case of the DC and PSI) or suffered progressive organizational and programmatic decline (in the case of the DS). Gianfranco Pasquino has persuasively Forza Italia after Ten Years 85 argued that FI is no longer an anomaly within the Italian party system, but instead has become “an organized party, entrenched throughout Italy, relying on hundreds of thousands of members and several thou- sand ambitious office-holders.”6 Certainly, there is far less to differen- tiate FI from its rival parties now than at the time of its founding. A process of organizational consolidation has taken place, and after a decade of solid electoral performances, FI seems to have built a reliable electoral clientele that provides consistent support. What remains to be seen is whether FI, along with the DS, can provide a base for a stable bipolar party system capable of producing alternating governing majorities. The events of 2004 provide some grounds upon which to answer this question.

The Institutionalization of Forza Italia? The Second Party Congress

Forza Italia held its second national congress between 27 and 29 May 2004 at Assago (Milan) at the height of the campaign for the European Parliament elections. The timing in itself tells a story: the aim of the congress was to mobilize support and provide a dynamic image of the party and its leader in the run-up to the vote. The proximity of the congress to an important electoral test made it singularly unlikely that any grassroots discontent about the party’s organization and government performance could be ventilated. The fact that FI was holding only its second national congress after over a decade of existence suggests a flagrant lack of concern for consultation with the party base. In FI there is no formal recogni- tion of the traditional function of the party congress in the mass-party ideal type—that of holding the leadership to account and providing the party base with the opportunity to define party policy. To be sure, party congresses have rarely worked effectively as mechanisms for genuine party democracy, even in ostensibly “mass” parties. But the two FI congresses that have taken place to date have not even tried to put on a show of internal democracy. The first congress in 1998 set the pattern. Squeezed into just over two days, the congress began with an opening speech by Berlusconi on the afternoon of 16 April and closed on the afternoon of 18 April with a rally in Milan’s Piazza Duomo, again addressed by Berlusconi. In between, a number of “official” conference motions were approved without any visible opposition or serious debate, and elections to the party executive (the Committee of the Presidency, Comitato di Presidenza) took place. This body is indicative of the party’s internal 86 Jonathan Hopkin

distribution of power: only 6 of the 21 members of the Committee are elected by congress; the remainder are all appointed, in one way or another, by Berlusconi.7 Even if congress had the temerity to elect a slate of candidates unsympathetic to the president, he would still therefore have a cast-iron majority of supporters in the Committee. Although it would be naive to imagine that the leaderships of more established Western European parties are tightly controlled by their grassroots supporters, the statutes of FI are unique in their formal and openly recognized attribution of vast powers to the party president. The 2004 congress replicated the structure of the 1998 kermesse. It opened on the evening of 27 May with a series of short welcoming speeches by party leaders and then a keynote address by Berlusconi himself. The first full day consisted of a packed schedule of govern- mental representatives and other party figures speaking for 15 to 30 minutes each. After 7:00 PM, when the thoughts of many must have been shifting toward aperitivi and dinner, time was set aside for conference delegates (delegati)—the only speakers not directly appointed to their positions by Berlusconi—to speak. The final morning saw additional speeches by Forza Italia leaders, followed by the elections to the party presidency, the Committee of the Presidency, and the National Council (Consiglio Nazionale). The congress program con- fidently scheduled a final address by Silvio Berlusconi immediately after the votes, prejudging the outcome of the party’s internal elections. Fortunately, for want of an alternative candidate, the presiden- tial election itself did not need to take place, and Berlusconi could close the proceedings with another rousing speech, less than two days after the first. There are plenty of precedents of party congresses serving as pub- licity stunts rather than serious forums for debating party programs and strategies. American party conventions are largely cosmetic affairs, taking place after the serious business of candidate selection has concluded. Parties in parliamentary democracies often maintain the formal trappings of the “bottom-up” mass party, while stage-man- aging procedures to annul dissent and exalt party leaders. But FI is exceptional in that no genuine channel for contesting the distribution of power within the party has ever existed, and as Giovanni Sartori argued in an article published immediately after the second congress, this is a unique state of affairs among major parties in Western democracies.8 The formal procedures for selecting party officers in FI do, however, faithfully reflect the real distribution of power in the organization. Unlike many other party leaders, no matter how charismatic, Berlusconi does appear to be a sine qua non for FI, in that its main political assets are his own personality and image and the financial Forza Italia after Ten Years 87 and media resources that he personally owns and controls. This repre- sents a serious barrier to FI overcoming the challenge of succession, a test that any political party has to face if it wishes to survive. To this extent, FI’s development is highly “path dependent,” with its organizational characteristics and practices today strongly influ- enced by its “genetic model” (modello originario)9—the way in which the party was created in 1993 to 1994. Although there was a degree of grassroots mobilization (through the Forza Italia clubs), FI was built up by Berlusconi and his top Fininvest managers (particularly, in the early stages, Marcello Dell’Utri). In its initial phase, the party’s territorial structure was simply the territorial network of the Publitalia 80 company, run by Dell’Utri, which was part of Fininvest. Publitalia’s regional managers became the regional leaders of FI, selecting candidates and co–ordinating election campaign activities. Campaign- ing was heavily dependent on marketing and advertising resources controlled by Fininvest, in particular, the polling operation Diakron and television messages (spot) broadcast on the Fininvest channels Retequattro, Italia Uno, and Canale 5. Party statutes (consisting of just 19 articles) were written but immediately “suspended” for three years,10 and the first congress, as we have seen, took over four years to organize. The party membership was formally separate from the party in public office, ensuring total leadership control.11 In the early stages of its development, FI was almost indistinguishable from Fininvest. This “business firm” model was undermined by poor electoral performances, especially at the local and regional level. These limitations of the model persuaded Berlusconi to open up the party organization and allow a more institutionalized presence on the ground. Moreover, the succession of local and regional, as well as national legislative, elections that FI has fought over 10 years has brought a gradual expan- sion of the party organization to include non-Fininvest activists of various kinds (many “recycled” from the ranks of the DC and PSI).12 FI now has a significant and active mass membership,13 although the party’s claims to have 250,000 members14 should be treated with a good deal of caution. This membership is territorially patchy, with a very limited presence in some areas (for instance, Emilia-Romagna) and quite a strong presence in others (Milan, Liguria, parts of Sic- ily). Despite consistently polling fewer votes in local, provincial, and regional elections than in national contests, over its 10 years of political activity FI has, by virtue of its participation in electoral politics at all levels, built a base of thousands of party office-holders and aspir- ing candidates. In 2004, FI had over 9,000 local councillors (including 1,033 mayors), 563 provincial councillors and 21 provincial presidents, and 195 regional councillors (as well as 7 regional presidents).15 If we 88 Jonathan Hopkin

consider that there have been large numbers of candidates at these various levels who have failed to be elected but remain active in the party, the hypothesis that FI has become a serious mass political organization cannot be dismissed out of hand. In view of this, one might ask if the time has come to revise the early assessments of FI as a “virtual” party, consisting of little more than Berlusconi’s “larger-than-life” personality, his clique of advisers, and a few television stations. The second congress offers mixed indica- tions on this count. On the one hand, the organization of the congress, which involved assemblies of party branches of the local and regional levels throughout the country to choose 3,708 delegates to attend,16 suggested a degree of organizational presence at all levels. On the other, it seemed to conﬁrm just how dependent FI remains on its leader, how informal internal procedures are, and how difﬁcult it is to imagine the party having a meaningful existence without Berlusconi. In an attempt to complete the picture, the rest of this chapter offers an assessment of FI’s activities in the campaign for the June 2004 elections and an analysis of the party’s organizational development and involvement in the policy process.

The European Parliament Elections of June 2004: The Limits of the “Personal Party”

The second FI congress was part of a determined effort by Berlusconi to recover the political initiative by outperforming his rivals—both within and outside the government coalition—in the European Parlia- ment and local Italian elections, which were to be held on 13 June 2004. After decisively winning the 2001 general election and form- ing a government based on an unprecedented level of parliamentary support, Berlusconi and his party had spent much of 2003 under pressure. Italy’s consistently poor economic performance, along with controversies over Berlusconi’s conflict of interests, had sowed discontent within the government coalition, and the National Alliance (AN) and the Union of Christian Democrats and Center Democrats (UDC) had begun to demand ministerial changes (a verifica) to increase their influence over the policy process. The Italian presidency of the European Union had placed Berlusconi’s conflict of interests under the spotlight internationally, and the government had been further shaken by the ramifications of the Parmalat collapse. The 2004 elections seemed to offer an opportunity for Berlusconi to shift the focus toward the more favorable ground of political communication and away from the intractable difficulties of governing. Forza Italia after Ten Years 89

FI’s electoral strategies in statewide polls have tended to be simple and very effective. Campaigns have been top-heavy and capital-inten- sive, drawing on commercial marketing techniques, extensive exploita- tion of Fininvest’s media outlets, and Berlusconi’s personal popularity among sectors of the Italian center-right electorate. The 2004 poll was no different; indeed, if anything, the campaign was even more strikingly focused on the leader’s personal presence—filtered through mass-media channels—than ever before. The campaign started very early, with a series of appearances of the prime minister on sympathetic television programs, most notably Bruno Vespa’s political discussion series Porta a Porta. Vespa had already collaborated closely with Berlusconi in the 2001 legislative election campaign, most notably by hosting Berlusconi’s ceremonious signing of a “contract with the Italian people” (contratto con gli italiani), in which the FI leader outlined a series of specific policy commitments to which his future government would be held. The prime minister’s 2004 appearances on Porta a Porta were rather less effective, however. The format provided Berlusconi with ample opportunity to expound on his government’s successes, helped along by a panel of sympathetic studio guests. Ber- lusconi’s performances on these programs, in the absence of any serious critical scrutiny, degenerated into long and aimless monologues, and viewing figures quickly fell as the late-evening audience grew impatient with such an unchallenging format.17 The lackluster outcome of the media-exposure strategy tried out on Porta a Porta demonstrated some of the limitations of the FI approach to campaigning. While in opposition, Berlusconi’s energetic attacks on the political “establishment,” and the center-left in particular, and his infectious entrepreneur’s optimism in promising a “new Italian miracle” were very successful in mobilizing support. In 2004, many of Berlusconi’s best lines were no longer convincing. The credibility of the promise of a “new Italian miracle” had been based on Berlusconi’s track record as a successful businessman, with the implication being that a man who had enriched himself would know how to enrich the Italian economy as a whole. After nearly three years of economic stag- nation under Berlusconi’s government, some of the gloss had been removed from this image. In concrete policy terms, the 2001 promise of “less taxes for everyone” (meno tasse per tutti) remained to be accomplished, and Italy’s large budget deficit left the government with little room for maneuver. Finally, Berlusconi’s complaint that his first (1994) government had not been given the chance to carry out his program (non mi hanno lasciato lavorare) could not easily be revived in 2004, since the governing coalition had an ample and generally dis- ciplined parliamentary majority. In short, when called upon to defend 90 Jonathan Hopkin

his government’s performance, Berlusconi’s ability to communicate with the electorate from the small screen appeared compromised.18 This difficulty was reflected in a clear trend in public opinion, which suggested that Berlusconi’s personal popularity was waning. A poll by Eurisko, taken at the heart of the campaign, gave a clear indication of the erosion of his leadership and the reasons for this decline.19 When asked to evaluate the performance of the government, 48 percent of those polled in May 2002 had given Berlusconi himself a “pass” (suffi- ciente) mark, but by April 2004, this had dropped to 31.4 percent. Even worse, this was the poorest “mark” given to any member of the government. The reason for this disappointment was suggested by responses to another question: in May 2002, only 34 percent of those polled felt that the government had failed to keep its electoral promises, but by April 2004, this had shot up to 67.7 percent. Some decline after the “honeymoon” period following the 2001 victory was inevitable, but the rate of the decline is indeed striking. Particularly noteworthy is the extent to which Berlusconi himself was perceived by voters as perform- ing poorly; the FI leader was so personally tied to the extravagant promises made in the 2001 election campaign that the failure to meet these high expectations affected his own personal ratings significantly. This decline was not necessarily bound to undermine FI’s electoral performance. Ilvo Diamanti has argued that Berlusconi’s personal appeal is not the most important feature of FI’s electoral mobilization, and that his role as a co–ordinator of the various groups that structure the party at the territorial level is just as important.20 On this reading, FI’s problems are down to the government’s inability to generate economic advantages for the various lobbies supporting it. However, whether or not Berlusconi’s own popularity makes a difference, the communication strategy adopted in the 2004 campaign did not seem to succeed. As well as extensive use of sympathetic television channels, FI spent consider- able amounts of money advertising on billboards, which once again placed Berlusconi’s own image at center stage. Polling evidence suggests that not only was this advertising campaign unsuccessful, it may even have been counter-productive. One poll found that only 21 percent of voters felt that the FI poster campaign had made them more likely to vote for the party, whereas 57 percent claimed the opposite; 80 percent of those interviewed did not believe the claims made in the posters.21 This also suggests that Berlusconi’s personal image, which was natu- rally the focus of the FI posters, and the programmatic commitments of 2001 were no longer as effective in mobilizing support. The results of the 2004 elections were not uniformly bad for Berlusconi. In fact, the new unified center-left list (the so-called tri- cycle—triciclo) failed to make much of an impression on the electorate, Forza Italia after Ten Years 91 and the total vote share won by the parties of the center-right coalition led by Berlusconi held up quite well. However, the most dramatic shift in the electoral map was the weakening of FI’s position within this center-right coalition. FI polled 21 percent of the vote in the European Parliament elections, which was equal to its 1994 performance and slightly better than 1996, but a very sharp drop from the 29 percent it had won in the 2001 legislative elections. This poor result was particularly worrying for FI for two reasons. First, Berlusconi had com- mitted massive resources to the campaign in a determined effort to win back the political initiative; according to l’Unità, FI had booked up 40 percent of street advertising space in the whole country, at an alleged cost of Ð15 million.22 To coincide with the Assago congress, FI sent out a letter from Berlusconi to 15 million households, and in the closing stages of the campaign, the party transmitted millions of mobile phone text messages to voters.23 The relative failure of such an effort calls into question FI’s tried and tested model of campaigning. Second, one of the key themes of Berlusconi’s campaign was that voters should support FI and, by extension, Berlusconi personally, instead of the smaller parties in the center-right coalition. The relatively good performances of the other governing parties—a clear sign of Berlusconi’s waning powers of persuasion—shifted the balance of power within the governing coalition to his detriment.24 The disappointing results of the 2004 elections for FI do not in any way suggest that the future of the party is in doubt. With 21 percent of the vote, FI remains one of the two strongest forces in the Italian party system by some distance, and the party has yet to poll less than 20 percent in any nationwide election. Moreover, it is normal for governing parties to perform poorly in “mid-term” elections. How- ever, the results are a very bad sign for the center-right government that Berlusconi leads, and throughout 2004 survey data consistently showed public trust in and approval of the government at a low ebb, along with growing sympathy for the center-left opposition.25 This is particularly serious, since the purpose of FI is very much to win power and to use it to defend well-defined interests, not the least of which are the interests of the Berlusconi family and Fininvest.

The Organizational Dilemma: “Light” Party or “Heavy” Party?

FI’s poor electoral performance in 2004 revived the long-running debate about what kind of party it should be. FI has been caught in the middle of two competing logics: on the one hand, Berlusconi’s 92 Jonathan Hopkin determination to keep control of the organization he founded, and on the other, the requirements of competitive electoral politics in a large and complex democracy such as Italy. Berlusconi’s reluctance to allow FI to develop as a strong organization capable of developing autono- mous political strategies has pushed the party toward a “lightweight” structure (partito leggero). This model has been associated with Fin- invest manager Marcello Dell’Utri, who has argued against the party drifting toward a bureaucratic, “mass-party” model. Opponents of this strategy, such as Claudio Scajola, party co–ordinator from 1996 to 2001, have argued for a more entrenched party organization, better equipped for mobilizing reliable electoral clienteles and maintaining FI’s connections with its grassroots supporters. Scajola enjoyed the longest tenure as party co–ordinator, taking over in September 1996 and focusing on building a more solid party organization until becom- ing minister of the interior in the summer of 2001.26 During the 2004 election campaign, FI was under the leadership of party co–ordinator Sandro Bondi (a protégé of Dell’Utri) and vice- coordinator Fabrizio Cicchitto (a former Socialist). This choice of personnel has generally been interpreted as a move favoring the Fininvest faction of FI and their “lightweight” party model, at the expense of the Christian Democrat faction represented by Scajola. Although the “Sca- jola model” can claim a successful record in electoral terms, Scajola’s own background in the DC and close relations with the UDC aroused suspicions in some sectors of FI that the party could be absorbed into a revived Christian Democrat party. The Bondi-Cicchitto partnership therefore appeared designed to ensure that the FI party organization remained focused on its support of Berlusconi’s leadership. The 2004 election campaign seemed to reflect this, with its heavy emphasis on Berlusconi himself appearing on national television and in street posters. The poor results in the 2004 polls changed the balance of power in the party organization, undermining the position of Bondi and Cicchi- tto and strengthening Scajola, who had delivered better-than-average results for FI in his own province of Imperia.27 The Scajola diagnosis is also supported by a more detailed examina- tion of the election results. FI’s overdependence on Berlusconi’s personality and skills as a communicator leaves the party hopelessly exposed in elections where the leader himself is not standing as a candidate. In the June 2004 provincial elections, where FI was personified by a variety of little-known local figures, the party polled on average 3 percent less than in the European elections, in which Berlusconi stood as FI’s lead candidate.28 This has been a long-standing problem for FI, accentuated by what many have suggested is the poor quality of some of the party’s local elites. But for some sectors of FI, the 2004 electoral failure was Forza Italia after Ten Years 93 a result of the party’s local elites being by-passed by central diktats, which imposed what proved to be unsuccessful candidates detached from the local-party structures. Perhaps the most striking example of this is that Gianfranco Micchichè, the party’s Sicilian co–ordinator, was prevented from standing in the European elections, and FI’s vote share in Sicily fell by 15 percent compared with 2001. Candidates without a track record in the party’s territorial organization, such as Simona Fede, daughter of one of Berlusconi’s television news readers, failed miserably in the election.29 Whether or not the “lightweight” model was the cause of FI’s poor electoral performance, advocates of a more organized party lost no time in exploiting the opportunity to push for changes. Scajola caus- tically remarked on election night that “open parties have real congresses at regular intervals, they let anyone join who wishes to, allow free and open debate, and hold secret ballots.”30 Berlusconi quickly quashed speculation by confirming Bondi and Cicchitto in their roles, but levels of internal discontent in the party were revealed by the send- ing of a letter (lettera-appello) to Berlusconi, allegedly signed by 82 FI deputies and appealing for greater internal democracy. And by the end of the year, significant changes did come about. Bondi and Cicchi- tto remained co–ordinator and vice-coordinator respectively, but their powers were cut back by a set of high-profile appointments to positions in the party leadership.31 Giulio Tremonti, only a few months after his resignation as minister of the economy, was made vice-president of the party, a position that did not formally exist beforehand—clear evidence of the informal nature of the party’s internal governance. Tremonti took over policy development, including preparation of the party program for the 2006 general election, and a role as party spokesperson in the television studios. Scajola, Bondi’s chief rival, was made president of the Committee of the Presidency, sharing responsibilities for candidate selection and co–ordinating the party’s regional structures. Finally, Dell’Utri returned as youth co-ordinator. With these moves, Berlusconi chose to create a kind of restricted executive committee—one that integrated all the most senior party figures—in order to prepare for the decisive electoral battles of 2005 and 2006. Alongside the changes in personnel at the top, Berlusconi also announced an organizational innovation: the selection of 1,000 “young” activists, two for each electoral constituency, to co–ordi- nate campaigning and energize the party faithful. Although they were referred to as “volunteers,” it was revealed that they would be paid for their party work, eliciting the scorn of the opposition. It remains to be seen how this new structure will work in practice, but at first viewing it does not seem to resolve the long-standing dilemma over what kind 94 Jonathan Hopkin

of party model FI will adopt. Indeed, by bringing together rivals such as Scajola and Dell’Utri, it could also be seen as a short-term measure to assuage internal tensions and bring peace to a party traumatized by electoral disappointment.

Forza Italia’s Political Identity: “La moralità del fare”

FI’s time in government has shed light on the long-term difficulties of a political organization whose creation was hasty and improvised, and whose political identity is derived from rather short-term, and often mutually contradictory, imperatives. FI’s ambivalent political identity interconnects with the organizational vulnerabilities resulting from its heavy reliance on the contribution of one individual—Berlusconi— and the business interests he controls. The party’s current difficulties are in large part a function of the second Berlusconi government’s failure to produce the “new Italian miracle” promised in 2001. This promise itself acted as a cover for the lack of a coherent ideological or programmatic position on which to build a political party with aspira- tions to govern a complex modern society. One of the clearest examples of Berlusconi’s inability to produce the “miracle” is in the area of fiscal policy, where FI’s 2001 campaign had promised “less taxes for everyone” (meno tasse per tutti). After over three years of Berlusconi’s second government without significant tax reform, voters had become increasingly skeptical over the entrepreneur’s ability to achieve a substantial reduction in tax levels. One poll in the autumn of 2004 showed that 70 percent of Italians did not believe that Berlusconi would actually keep his promise to cut taxes, a figure that included 60 percent of Northern League voters, half of AN voters, and even one-third of FI’s own voters.32 At the end of 2004, after months of bitter wrangling within the government coalition,33 Berlusconi addressed this credibility problem by forcing through, as part of the 2005 finance bill, what was presented as the “biggest tax cut in the history of the Republic.” The reform of income tax, which replaced the existing five tax rates with three34 and extended untaxed income allowances, reduced direct taxation by some Ð6.5 billion. The finance bill recouped much of this money through offsetting increases in other taxes and “one-off” taxes such as a building amnesty. The total cut in the tax take was therefore worth less than 0.4 percent of GDP, insufficient to make any significant impact on overall consump- tion.35 The reform did, however, have redistributive consequences, giving far larger sums to high-income groups than to low-income groups,36 which may help shore up FI’s own electoral clientele. Forza Italia after Ten Years 95

Berlusconi was forced to backtrack on his initially ambitious proposals for tax cuts, and there is a risk that even the relatively limited measures in the 2005 budget will lead to a breach of the EU Stability Pact rules and to problems for Italy’s sovereign debt rating. This emphasis on tax cuts at whatever cost reveals much about the process of policy development within FI. FI’s political discourse has tended to avoid specific policy proposals. Berlusconi’s first formal speech as a political leader identified FI as a party representing a range of values that could, in fact, be shared by any democratic political party. As he himself recognized, “The principles we believe in are not abstruse principles, they are not complicated ideologies: they are the fundamental values of Western democracies.”37 In its initial phase, FI argued that Italy was threatened by a Communist takeover, and that a victory by the center-left would undermine democracy and freedom in the country. In the “emergency” situation of 1994, this message was very effective, but it became less so after the center-left had governed, without discernible threats to Italian democracy, from 1996 to 2001. For the 2001 elections, more detailed commitments were developed. The Prodi government’s tax increases brought an opportunity to fight elections on a clear tax-cutting promise, and the “contract with the Italian people” made very specific commitments to simplify the tax code and reduce personal taxation. The effectiveness of the “contract” rested on the specificity of the commitments Berlusconi made, along with his apparent credibility as a “man of action”—a man, as he had claimed in 1994, “with a head on his shoulders and vast experience, creative and innovative, able to lend [Italy] a hand and make the State work.”38 But the rest of the “contract” did not fit into a broad design for liberalizing reform, which would roll back the state and free up the Italian market economy. Instead, the “contract” also promised more policemen to reduce crime, higher minimum pensions, and an accel- eration of public works projects, as well as a promise to create 1.5 million jobs (with no indication as to how it would do so). In short, the “contract” seemed to be a collection of optimistic promises on “valence” issues, designed to win an election rather than to govern. This program, therefore, has not acted as a framework upon which to develop government policy. The “contract” could only have been met had Italy enjoyed economic growth above trend levels under the Berlusconi government. Instead, growth stagnated, and the only way to cut taxes significantly would have been to cut public spending (given the international constraints on deficit growth). But neither FI nor the center-right coalition as a whole has an appropriate electoral base to be able to reduce state spending. The majority of FI voters (many of them pensioners) are economically inactive and thus dependent on the state 96 Jonathan Hopkin for their income, at least to some degree. It would therefore be difficult for the Berlusconi government to cut taxes without damaging its own supporters. And the only means of squaring this circle—that is, higher economic growth—has not materialized. The failure to deal with citizens’ demands for lower taxes reveals a lot about what kind of political force FI is. Berlusconi has often used the slogans of neo-liberalism in his political discourse, and there is no doubt that FI is a party that stands for a smaller state and more private initiative. However, the practical policy implications of this stance have been evaded, or at the very least finessed. As well as its difficulties with tax cuts, FI has struggled to make progress on other aspects of its formal, liberalizing agenda; its attempts to liberalize the labor market were watered down in the face of trade-union pressure, as were proposals to reform the state pensions system. Unlike the center-left government, which made reform of the state bureaucracy a priority, the second Berlusconi government has largely ignored the issue of administrative modernization of the public sector, and as a result public spending in some areas (particularly health) has run out of control since 2001. Finally, in terms of its redistributive inten- tions, FI has failed to make any serious choice between the claims of the business community, on the one hand, and its own middle- income supporters, on the other. One of FI’s strongest assets at the time of its foundation—namely, not being a “party” in the traditional sense—is beginning to prove a weakness. FI’s formal statement of values (Carta dei Valori) is a vague document, emphasizing such non-controversial aims as “rejection of totalitarianism” (rigetto dei totalitarismi) and “positive thinking: the morality of getting things done” (pensiero positivo: la moralità del fare).39 The party’s ideological and programmatic vagueness, a big advantage when running election campaigns against an incumbent government, has become a serious disadvantage in office.

Conclusions

This chapter has sought to reassess Forza Italia as a political party after over a decade of existence. The celebration of its tenth anniversary in early 2004 marked a signiﬁcant achievement: a political force dismissed as a “virtual” or “plastic” party when it was founded has not only survived longer than many critics imagined, but has also established itself as one of the keystones of the Italian party system, winning consistently high vote shares in national elections and form- ing the center of gravity of the longest-serving government in the Forza Italia after Ten Years 97 history of the Italian Republic. However, 2004 also saw abundant evidence of the party’s serious and long-standing vulnerability. Its electoral and organizational strategies have, throughout its history, revolved around the personal popularity, media presence, and economic resources of Silvio Berlusconi, and the campaign for the Euro- pean Parliament elections illustrated this level of personalization quite clearly. FI remains a “personal party,” in the words of Mauro Calise.40 The results of the 2004 elections were not catastrophically bad for FI, but there are emerging signs that Berlusconi’s grip on the public imagination is fading. Although governing parties often suffer a fall in popularity in mid- term, there are reasons for suggesting that FI’s crisis is more serious. The 2001 elections were won on the back of a series of extravagant policy promises that have so far not been met, nor do they appear likely to be met by the end of the legislature. In the absence of a coherent ideological identity or organizational structure that could tie FI to its social base, this failure could have fatal consequences. FI has so far successfully deployed a kind of “catch-all” populism, in which Berlusconi has offered tax cuts without spending cuts, law and order alongside curbs on prosecuting judges, and traditional family values alongside a libertarian stress on personal freedom. Given the opportunity to govern with a stable majority for a full legislature, FI has proven just as subject to the laws of gravity as other governing parties in recent history, whose leaders Berlusconi had lambasted as ineffective “career politicians” (politicanti). With- out the option of reiterating promises of a “new Italian miracle,” FI must begin to represent identiﬁable interests (beyond those of the Berlusconi family) far more clearly if it is to become an institutionalized political party. Whether its founder and leader will permit such a shift remains to be seen. 98 Jonathan Hopkin

Notes

1. I. Diamanti, “Partiti e modelli,” Almanacco di Politica ed Economia (Janu- ary 1995): 71–81; J. Hopkin and C. Paolucci, “The Business Firm Model of Party Organization: Cases From Spain and Italy,” European Journal of Political Research 35, no. 3 (1999): 307–339. 2. L. Gray and W. Howard, “Forza Italia: An American Party for Italy?” in Italy: Politics and Policy, ed. R. Leonardi and R. Nanetti (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1996), 152–171. 3. P. McCarthy, “Forza Italia: The Overwhelming Success and the Consequent Problems of a Virtual Party,” in Italian Politics: The Year of the Tycoon, ed. R. Katz and P. Ignazi (Boulder: Westview, 1996), 37–55. 4. Various press reports used this term; see I. Diamanti, “Dal partito di plastica alla Repubblica fondata sui media,” Comunicazione Politica 5, no. 1 (2004): 51–65. It has recently been revived in the press by E. Galli della Loggia, “Il fragile asse del Cavaliere,” Corriere della Sera, 29 June 2004. 5. J. Seisselberg, “Conditions of Success and Political Problems of a ‘Media-Medi- ated Personality Party,’” West European Politics 19, no. 4 (1996): 715–743. 6. G. Pasquino, “A Tale of Two Parties: Forza Italia and the Left Democrats,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 8, no. 2 (2003): 207. 7. Statuto di Forza Italia, approved by the National Assembly (Assamblea Nazionale), 18 January 1997, http://www.forza-italia.it/speciali/stAtuto-forzaitalia.pdf. 8. G. Sartori, “Lo strano congresso di Assago,” Corriere della Sera, 31 May 2004. 9. A. Panebianco, Political Parties: Organization and Power (New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 1988). 10. Hopkin and Paolucci, “The Business Firm Model,” 322. 11. E. Poli, “I modelli organizzativi,” in Forza Italia. Radiograﬁa di un evento, ed. D. Mennitti (Rome: Ideazione, 1997), 79–110. 12. C. Paolucci, “Forza Italia a livello locale: Un marchio in franchising?” Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica 29, no. 3 (1999): 481–516. 13. Pasquino, “A Tale of Two Parties.” 14. Stefania Prestigiacomo, speech to second party congress, 27 May 2004. See also table C1 in the appendix. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. C. De Gregorio, “Fuga dalla Tv se c’è il Cavaliere. Precipita l’audience per i monologhi del premier,” la Repubblica, 8 April 2004. 18. P. Natale, “Ritorno alla realtà,” la Repubblica, 16 February 2004; B. Jerkov, “Aqua, fabbrica di consenso dietro le parole del Cavaliere,” la Repubblica, 22 February 2004. 19. Opinion poll by Eurisko, commissioned by Gruppo Editoriale l’Espresso, car- ried out between 26 and 29 April 2004. For press coverage, see F. Bordignon, “Due italiani su tre delusi da Berlusconi,” la Repubblica, 5 May 2004. For simi- lar poll evidence, see ISPO, “Gradimento Governo,” http://brunik.altervista .org/governo.html. 20. I. Diamanti, “Forza Italia: Un network a rischio declino,” interview in Il Mes- saggero, 24 January 2004. 21. S. Collini, “Sondaggi: Tre milioni di elettori in fuga da Forza Italia,” l’Unità, 16 May 2004. Forza Italia after Ten Years 99

22. F. Fantozzi, “Elezioni: Berlusconi ha già comprato il 40% degli spazi in tutta Italia,” l’Unità, 10 January 2004. L’Unità is obviously not an impartial source, but anecdotal experience suggests a massive presence of FI advertising during the campaign. 23. M. Bracconi, “E adesso Forza Italia lancia la sua campagna ‘via sms,’” la Repubblica, 11 June 2004. 24. F. Ceccarelli, “E il re prima del regno perse l’aureola,” La Stampa, 15 June 2004. 25. See the collection of opinion poll reports on the site, “Il termometro politico,” at http://brunik.altervista.org/index.html. 26. For an analysis of Scajola’s organizational strategy, see G. Lerner, “Radiografia di Forza Italia, partito di massa verticale,” la Repubblica, 29 May 2001. 27. B. Jerkov, “2004, fuga dal Cavaliere: Ecco la mappa della débacle,” la Repub- blica, 17 June 2004. 28. I. Diamanti, “Il voto che boccia l’irreality show,” la Repubblica, 16 June 2004. 29. Jerkov, “2004, fuga dal Cavaliere.” 30. C. De Gregorio, “Dopo il flop è caccia ai colpevoli,” la Repubblica, 15 June 2004. 31. G. Di Capua, “Tremonti torna per rilanciare Forza Italia,” Il Tempo, 4 Decem- ber 2004. 32. R. Mannheimer, “Taglio tasse: il 70% degli italiani non ci crede,” Corriere della Sera, 25 October 2004. 33. “Fisco: Berlusconi, taglio tasse bloccato da debito pubblico,” Il Sole 24 Ore, 11 November 2004; Marcella Ciarnelli, “Berlusconi ora straccia il contratto con gli Italiani,” l’Unità, 13 November 2004. 34. A fourth rate was added on a “temporary” basis through the “solidarity contribution” on incomes over Ð100,000 per annum. See M. C. Guerra, “Vero o falso?” 4 December 2004, http://www.lavoce.info. 35. F. Giavazzi, “Meglio sarebbe stato non illudere i cittadini. Per uno 0,4% del Pil. La riforma fiscale non farà crescere più di tanto il prodotto interno lordo,” Corriere della Sera, 26 November 2004. 36. M. C. Guerra and S. Giannini, “Si legge taglio si scrive aumento,” 29 Novem- ber 2004, http://www.lavoce.info. 37. S. Berlusconi, “Il primo discorso: Rome, Palafiera, 6 February 1994,” in L’Italia che ho in mente (Milan: Mondadori, 2000). 38. S. Berlusconi, “Per il mio paese,” televised message, 26 January 1994. 39. Forza Italia, Carta dei valori. Le idee-chiave del nostro progetto, http://www. forza-italia.it/images/cdv/ideechiavedelnostroprogetto.pdf. 40. M. Calise, Il partito personale (Bari: Laterza, 2002).