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Home , Forza Italia, Forza Italia (2013), The Right (Italy)

2

The Center-Right: Conflict, , and Permanent Mobilization

Mark Donovan

On 18 November 2007, in the midst of a rally calling for early elec- tions, announced the formation of a new party, to be known tentatively as “the Party of the People of Freedoms … into which will dissolve itself.” This announcement was unex- pected, indeed sensational. Asked whether the other center-right lead- ers and their parties would follow this initiative, Berlusconi replied that it was up to them. He hoped so, but he was responding to “the people, who are more advanced than we are, and who are asking us to follow a unitary path, to gather all the into a single forma- tion.”1 The announcement built on both the permanent mobilization of the electorate that Berlusconi had maintained since his narrow defeat in the 2006 election and on his use of the theme of unification to bolster his leadership of the center-right as a whole. The extraordinary impact of the event typified Berlusconi’s media- savvy approach to politics and his capacity to reverse tides of opinion apparently running against him. Thus, the implied switch in strategy from unification by consensus, which had made very little progress, to unification at Berlusconi’s command (suggesting that failure to do so would leave his much weaker allies to take the consequences) force- fully reimposed his leadership over the center-right just when its long, drawn-out unraveling seemed to be reaching a climax. Furthermore, in claiming that he was responding to the people, Berlusconi also hit out at the center-left’s construction of the (PD; see Lazar’s chapter in this volume), which, he asserted, comprised the “cold fusion

Notes for this chapter begin on page 83. The Center-Right: Conflict, Unity, and Permanent Mobilization 69 of two parties, imposing the decisions from above,” whereas, by con- trast, “We are starting from the foundations. From the demonstration of the second of December [2006] and from these 7 million signatures.”2 Berlusconi’s claim of 7 million signatures supporting the call for early elections, and the implication that they reflected a grassroots demand for unification of the center-right, was exaggerated, manipulative, and masterful. Since the 2006 election he had been continuously mobilizing center-right voters against the new government and strengthening their identity as a unified force. Initially, he had proclaimed the illegality of the electoral outcome, consolidating the sense of outrage and frustration that he fueled via mass rallies, most notably the national demonstration against the government and, more specifically, its , which was held in on 2 December 2006. As the claim of electoral fraud became increasingly strained,3 Berlusconi turned to emphasizing the govern- ment’s weak support in public opinion ratings and its poor results in the spring 2007 local elections (see McDonnell’s chapter in this vol- ume) as the source of its supposed illegitimacy. Berlusconi sought not only to mobilize and unify the electorate but also to encourage other developments that reinforced the possibility of creating a partito unico (single party) of the center-right. Those actions included the creation by a former president of the Young Entrepreneurs of Confcommercio of a grassroots movement of clubs that would be open to center-right sup- porters from all parties, and the registering in Brussels, in anticipation of the 2009 European election, of a new party name, Partito del Popolo delle Libertà (Party of the People of Freedoms). In sum, Berlusconi’s ultimatum came from a position of strength. This chapter first provides a brief background to the history of the center-right and the theme of unification. It then outlines why the terms “left,” “right,” and “center” have become so charged with significance in , especially in recent years. Thirdly, it explores the background to the current issue of party unification among the center-right, emphasiz- ing why it has been so difficult to achieve. Finally, it identifies Berlusco- ni’s use of unification in 2006–2007 as a mobilization device to reinforce his leadership and discusses the immediate impact of his November declaration. The long-term effect of the announcement will depend on future developments, not least of which is the electoral reform, should it be forthcoming (see Baldini’s chapter in this volume).

Competing Ambitions within the Center-Right

Broadly speaking, from 1999 to 2005, Berlusconi’s allies had sought above all to maintain their organizational independence from him while 70 Mark Donovan continuing to hope that his eventual departure from politics would enable them to take over the leadership of the center-right. In 1998, when the strength of Forza Italia and even its survival were in doubt and unification threatened to advantage his rivals, Berlusconi himself had rejected the idea of constructing a single party of the center-right, as recommended by the Spanish conservative leader, José María Aznar. Berlusconi instead emphasized that the formation of a programmatic alliance was itself no mean feat.4 The European election of 1999, how- ever, had confirmed Forza Italia’s electoral domination of the center- right, and the following year Berlusconi had re-established the alliance with ’s Northern League. This had previously broken down, at the end of 1994, less than a year after it had first been formed, at the outset of what came to be known as the “Second Republic.” In 2000, the Freedom Pole—formed in 1994 and comprising Forza Italia (FI), the National Alliance (AN), and the Christian Democrats, who in 2002 became of Christian Democrats and Center Democrats (UDC)—had been replaced by the (CdL).5 To a significant extent, Berlusconi’s announcement in November 2007 was a response to the process of alliance-building on the center- left, which, in the shape of the Democratic Party and its leader Walter Veltroni, threatened to usurp Berlusconi’s claim to be the champion of a new, reformed Italy. Ever since his entry into politics, Berlusconi had presented himself as Italy’s would-be political savior. Moreover, his transformation from entrepreneur into political leader had been built on alliance-making to counter the likelihood that would win the 1994 election. And that probability arose precisely due to the left’s strat- egy of alliance-making in the face of the disarray of the center and right- wing parties. Given the importance of alliance strategy to Italian politics since 1994, it is perhaps not surprising that, from the outset, Berlusconi has entertained the idea of the creation of a single party of . In March 1994, he had stated: “It will take three to six months. But soon we will have a new party: the single, liberal-democratic party.”6 For a decade, however, this had not been a remotely realistic prospect, given the conflicting ambitions and identities of the center-right parties. When it was brought up for discussion, it was usually in response to developments on the left: the formation of alliance and its electoral success in 1996; the formation of the Margherita-Democracy Is (Margherita) in 2000–2002; and ’s proposal to form single lists for the 2004 elections, which led, indirectly, to the formation of the Democratic Party. As pointed out by Marc Lazar in his detailed analysis in this vol- ume of the formation of the PD, party fusion is both rare and, when achieved, rarely successful. The conventional wisdom in Italy has been The Center-Right: Conflict, Unity, and Permanent Mobilization 71 that parties presenting unified lists get punished, since they rarely attract new voters sufficient to make up for the loss of those alienated by the removal of their party, or its symbol, from the election lists. This was particularly significant for the center-right: in the elections from 1994 to 2001, its “electorates” were less willing to vote, in single- member constituencies, for representatives of allied parties than were center-left voters. An alliance of multiple identities was thus seen as electorally more rewarding. However, the electoral system introduced by the center-right in December 2005 had done away with single-mem- ber constituencies. Moreover, many political figures and observers have come to believe that Italy’s major political problem is that the heteroge- neous alliances that are able to win elections are not able, because of their diversity, to govern effectively. A plural identity has thus ceased to be entirely a virtue. This became particularly evident after 2001, when, despite having the most solid parliamentary majority of any govern- ment since the crisis of 1993–1994, Berlusconi failed to bring about the decisive change in Italy’s governance that he had promised and which so many expected. The short and difficult life of Prodi’s second government (May 2006–January 2008), which comprised nine or more parties, depending on how you counted them, reinforced the argument (see also Boitani’s chapter in this volume). It can thus be argued that coalitions in the Second Republic are just as “negative” as they were in the “First Republic”—that is, they are formed primarily to prevent the other side from winning rather than because of any genuine program- matic unity, joint election manifestos notwithstanding.7

The Right, the Center-Right, or the Center and the Right?

From 1993–1994, the Italian moved ever closer to being dominated by bipolar competition for government. For many, this process was fairly conclusively established by the 2001 election, and in many respects the 2006 election confirmed it.8 In simple analytical terms, one might then describe the two poles as being those of the left and the right. However, the second defining characteristic of the Ital- ian party system has been its fragmentation, and the diversity of forces composing both left and right has fueled a debate about whether the system remains polarized, that is, dominated and characterized by significant political extremes, at least at the elite or parliamentary level.9 There is, then, a strong tendency among those who wish to emphasize and reinforce a process of “normalization” to prefer the terms “center-left” and “center-right” over “left” and “right.” These latter terms invoke memories of communism and and imply 72 Mark Donovan the non-governmental nature of the more radical parties. The terms “center-left” and “center-right” are also used, with a significant twist, to fit the arguments of those within the left and the right who them- selves emphasize the heterogeneity of these alliances. On the left, it has been argued that the term “center-left” signifies the existence of a centrist, reformist component alongside a “genu- inely” left component. Indeed, in Italian, if not English, it was to argue about whether “center-left” should be written with a hyphen, indicating the words’ separateness, or without a hyphen, indicating the substantial unity of a “pan-left.” During the late 1990s, the leader of the Communist Refoundation (PRC) theorized the existence of “two lefts,” one moderate and managerialist, the other transformational in the traditional socialist sense of the word, albeit he also sought to establish the programmatic, governing orientation of both lefts.10 After the 2006 election, the second Prodi government saw the con- solidation of what might be called a “left left” (whose radicalism was a matter of considerable debate), comprising the PRC, the Party of Italian Communists (PdCI), which had split from the PRC in 1998, the , and, more recently, the (SD), which split from the Left Democrats (DS) when it formed the PD (by fusing with the Margherita). In December 2007, some steps were taken toward unify- ing these four parties as the Rainbow Left (SA).11 On the right, the argument that the House of Freedoms is similarly split in two is most strongly made by the UDC, or at least its leaders, although they never talk of there being two rights since, for them, the right is equated with fascism or at any rate extremism.12 Rather, they talk of the existence of a radical, populist, and/or plebiscitary right and a moderate center. The latter is composed, essentially, of them- selves and unequivocally does not include the Northern League and, almost certainly, not even Berlusconi. His party, however, is regarded as so dependent on him that it will disintegrate without him; thus, chunks of it, and its electorate, may “return” to the center, which they abandoned in the crisis of 1993–1994. The situation of the National Alliance is ambiguous. Its membership and leadership remain essen- tially those of the (MSI), the neo-fascist heir to the , whose historical legacy has made the terms “right” and “Fascist” correspond in Italy. On the other hand, much of its enlarged electorate formerly voted Christian Democrat, and under the leadership of , the AN has moved far away from any identification with its neo-fascist origins, suffering a succession of minor splits as a consequence. Indeed, during the sec- ond and third Berlusconi governments (2001–2006), the UDC and AN often supported each other against the radicals of the “northern axis,” The Center-Right: Conflict, Unity, and Permanent Mobilization 73 that is, Berlusconi and the Northern League, while their leaderships looked forward to a post-Berlusconi future. It was in light of the right’s expected defeat in 2006 and the consequent onset—it was widely, and wrongly, assumed—of the “post-Berlusconi scenario” that some semi- serious steps toward the unification of the right began.

The Failure to Unify the Right (or Center-Right), 2005–2006

Notwithstanding the organizational unification of the Margherita in 2002, following the success of the electoral alliance it was built on, Berlusconi continued to reject the idea of forming a single party on the right: “It’s not something that can be done. If we’ve not done it these past ten years … And anyway, with more parties in the coalition, you take more votes.”13 This verdict did not stop him from echoing Prodi the following year when he called for the formation of a single list for the European Parliamentary election.14 Given the level of con- flict within the government coalition and the fact that Berlusconi was substantially correct in stating that the parties would garner more votes separately, nothing came of this. Indeed, at this point both the National Alliance and the UDC, hoping to inherit the leadership of the right from Berlusconi, apparently preferred to continue to fight a battle of attrition against him as opposed to immediate unification, which would have meant subordination to him. Following the center-right’s defeat in the April 2005 regional elec- tions, however, unification became a more plausible prospect for two reasons. First, electoral defeat in the 2006 parliamentary election now looked probable, and if Berlusconi bore responsibility for this, then his leadership was likely to be forfeited. Second, the relative strengths of the forces on the right shifted in favor of Berlusconi’s allies and against Forza Italia. As the UDC president, Rocco Buttiglione, put it when comparing the situation of the UDC and Forza Italia: “It’s one thing to have discussions between a party at 3 percent and weakening and the other at 30 percent and getting stronger, and it’s something else to discuss things between a party at 6 percent and growing, and the other at 18 percent and declining.”15 Of course, at the national level it is the parliamentary vote that counts, but this too has changed significantly over recent elections (see table 2.1). For the AN, center-right unification combined with electoral defeat held out the prospect of Fini taking over from Berlusconi, since Fini was consistently and by far the center-right’s most popular leader. The UDC, by contrast, was less keen on unification unless their de facto 74 Mark Donovan

TABLE 2.1 The share of the vote, in percent, received in the Chamber of Deputies proportional representation ballot

Year/Party FI AN CD LN Non-FI Total

1996 20.6 15.7 5.8 10.1 31.6 2001 29.4 12.0 3.2 3.9 19.1 2006 23.7 12.3 6.6 4.6 23.5

Note: CD refers to successive centrist Christian Democratic alliances: the CCD-CDU alliances of 1996 and 2001; the Union of the Center, with its core, the UDC, in 2008. leader, Pier Ferdinando Casini, could take over the leadership before the election and transform the center-right’s very identity. In the meantime, for the shift in the balance of power to be clear, the subterranean battle in which the parties were engaged had to be made visible. The end of April 2005 thus saw the UDC and, more reluctantly, the AN, force a government crisis. This show of strength infuriated Berlusconi. Accus- ing his allies of irresponsibility and treachery, he relaunched the idea of a single party, essentially as a device to enforce alliance discipline. He even publicly toyed with the idea that he might not lead the center-right at the next election. In the meantime, however, the reality was a battle in which Berlusconi sought to subvert Casini’s and Fini’s leadership of their own parties,16 while they hoped to reinforce their parties at the expense of Forza Italia and, above all, to force a change of leadership. Throughout much of 2005, then, a somewhat surreal power struggle took place over the leadership of the center-right and the possibility of constructing a single, unified party. It was surreal because of the unreal- istic expectations, above all, of the UDC, or at least of the party’s leader, Marco Follini, who in fact was forced to stand down as party leader. On 5 May, the Chamber of Deputies press room was the scene of the formal signing of a document, allegedly preparatory to the formation of a single party, which had been prepared by a think tank, the Todi Group, founded by Ferdinando Adornato of Forza Italia. The document read: “The aim of ‘Begin the Journey’ … is to initiate consideration of the hypothesis of building a single party of the center-right … all the parties that today comprise the House of Freedoms (FI, AN, the League, the UDC, New PSI, and PRI) can and must establish new and more efficient ways of achieving agreement, of political, cultural, and organizational unity … Some interesting and encouraging responses have already come from some parties—Forza Italia, AN, and the UDC.” The project foresaw the construction of the single party in four stages: grassroots mobiliza- tions by the parties; official announcements of adhesion to the project by the parties; the formation of a coordinating “constituent committee”; The Center-Right: Conflict, Unity, and Permanent Mobilization 75 and, finally, congresses ending in a constituent congress in January or February, that is, some few months before the national election.17 The timetable was unrealistic, but it helped maintain the momen- tum of the idea. In fact, the UDC’s second congress in July was unusu- ally forthright in rejecting the prospect of unification. Indeed, the UDC’s secretary, Follini, was bent on destroying the CdL and Berlusco- ni’s leadership of it.18 Despite this, Adornato’s think tank continued its work, and on 29 July the so-called constituent assembly of the “home of the moderates and reformists” met. The assembly was attended by just over 100 representatives of the center-right, not including the Northern League: 20 each from Forza Italia, the AN, and the UDC; 20 from other parties; 20 from , plus the nine-person Todi Group, Fini, Berlusconi, and half a dozen leading figures in Forza Italia. The assembly’s task was “to draft the statute and the manifesto of values of the single party.”19 The outcome of the assembly was the agreement that no single party would be presented at the 2006 elections. The reason given was that “without the symbols of the individual parties being highly visible on the voting slips, the House of Freedoms risks losing 10–13 percent of support.”20 This may well have been true, but a single party simply was not yet feasible. The League had not even participated in the event, and the UDC continued forthrightly to defend its independence. Only the National Alliance was sympathetic, but, as seen, its motives were self- interested: in the longer term, its aim was to take over a unified right from Berlusconi, while in the short-to-medium term, its goal was, by being included in this project, to prevent the party’s isolation via the alternative project of FI-UDC . Although the UDC rejected this proposal, which was tantamount to being swallowed whole, the idea of neo-centrist, Catholic reaggregation was intermittently prominent throughout 2004 and 2005. Such a project—in which the UDC would be unified with the UDEUR and, were it possible, even the Margherita— would be able to withstand Forza Italia and even, in alliance with Cath- olics within it, notably , the president of , to realize the project of recreating a Catholic, anti-left “center” force. Among those promoting this idea in 2005 was , a former UDC MP, but now leader of the recently founded for the (DCA) and part of the CdL.21 On 8 November, Adornato presented his “Manifesto of Values,” which was signed by the presidents of Forza Italia, the National Alli- ance, and the UDC, each for their own partisan reasons. Inevitably, the expectation of some that these parties would form a single parliamen- tary group after the 2006 election was not met.22 Indeed, the signing of the manifesto, an apparent “non-event” of the time, was little reported. 76 Mark Donovan

The newspaper , usually sympathetic to the center-right, sug- gested that the ceremony seemed like an attempt by Adornato to ensure that the agreement to change the electoral system (by strengthening the proportional aspect) would not undo progress toward the formation of a single party.23 Arguably, the electoral “counter-reform” did precisely this—to the extent that any progress toward unification had been made at all. Separate party identities were prominent in the 2006 election as they had not been in 2001, and as table 2.1 shows, the smaller parties benefited. Still, in the aftermath of Berlusconi’s declaration of the forma- tion of a new party in November 2007, when he sought to claim that his project was what his allies had been seeking, he referred back to this manifesto, so its contents should be briefly noted. The manifesto stated:

The new party is born of the meeting between the political forces, cul- tural inspirations, and movements of opinion which jointly sign up to the principles contained in this manifesto, building the horizons of their historical mission in Italian, European, and international society upon the principles of liberty and solidarity. We recognize our values in the Italian Constitution, to which we declare our loyalty … Forza Italia, the National Alliance, the UDC, PRI, PLI, and other movements and associa- tions of liberal-Christian and liberal-socialist inspiration come today … We identify ourselves with that great political and cultural fam- ily, the European Popular Party, which … proposes … the cooperation of … liberals, popolari, Gaullists, conservatives, reformists … on the basis of the value of the “centrality of the person.” We are, therefore, launch- ing the construction of a political subject of the center-right, something unprecedented in Italian history and the fruit of the meeting between four great traditions: liberal and popular Catholicism, lay reformist humanism, , and the culture of the modern, European right.24

For all the talk of unification, the reality remained that of a struggle for supremacy within and over the center-right. The December 2005 electoral reform reinforced the PR dimension of the vote but also contained two measures designed to maintain bipolarism. The first— the requirement that parties nominate a prime minister candidate— boosted Berlusconi’s desire to integrate the center-right under his leadership. The second measure, guaranteeing that at least 55 percent of seats would be allocated to the election winner, was intended to ensure the existence of a working majority in the Chamber of Deputies at least. With this system in place, the approach to the 2006 election saw Prodi and Berlusconi seek the greatest number of allies possible, with even the smallest of political formations. These included forma- tions such as the DCA, which, despite its miniscule size, reinforced Berlusconi’s claim that Forza Italia was fundamentally a Christian The Center-Right: Conflict, Unity, and Permanent Mobilization 77

Democratic party (thus denying the UDC any monopoly claim to that identity), as well as extreme-right party fragments, contrary to the logic of the “Manifesto of Values” (but which similarly enabled Berlusconi to deny Fini ownership of the conservative-nationalist identity). As predicted, the 2006 election resulted in defeat for the center- right, but the left did not win the clear victory that had been expected. The credit for this was due to Berlusconi, for part way through the electoral campaign he changed its orientation—from defense of his government’s record to an attack on his allies, for having prevented him from carrying out the economic and political revolution that Italy needed, and on their defeatism. The campaign and its aftermath were thus rancorous, and it is hardly surprising that subsequently no single parliamentary group was formed. The right’s parliamentary defeat in April was followed by local elec- tion defeats in May and by the rejection of its constitutional reform by referendum in June. Many suggested that this triple defeat had killed off the CdL, but the right remained united in such matters as the election of the president of the Republic, and others argued that the CdL would survive as long as the electoral system rewarded pre- election alliance-building.25 This latter argument is essentially cor- rect. It remained true of the 2007 local elections, despite the previous 18 months that Casini had spent theorizing on the existence of two oppositions. Nevertheless, at the end of June 2006, the National Alli- ance executive concluded that “a political phase is over” such that the hypothesis of a single party “has objectively become more distant.”26 A week later, Casini met Berlusconi and told him that the UDC would “no longer participate in coalition summits,” nor would it provide a united parliamentary front in opposition to the government’s policies. In particular, the UDC would support the government’s proposal on financing the military mission in Afghanistan, a policy initiated by the right but one on which the left was vulnerable in the Senate.27 A gov- ernment defeat on this issue in February 2007 did in fact see the prime minister offer his resignation (see Walston’s chapter in this volume). In the autumn of 2006, the UDC’s drive for independence intensi- fied. At its executive meeting in October, Casini made explicit the need to build a moderate center-right, without either the Northern League or Berlusconi’s radicalism, in order to establish a bipolar system based on a moderate center-right and the Democratic Party.28 The next day, Casini confirmed personally to Berlusconi that the UDC would not participate in the latter’s “street politics” approach, referring to the opposition rally scheduled for 2 December, and rejected the formation of a Freedoms Party. Instead, he counter-proposed a House of Moder- ates, which would exclude the Northern League.29 78 Mark Donovan

Berlusconi’s Mobilizing Radicalism, 2006–2007

Berlusconi did not remain passive in the face of his allies’ challenge to his leadership. In the autumn of 2005, he obtained the overthrow of Fol- lini within the UDC in return for the electoral “reform.”30 In late 2006, having repeatedly encouraged the establishment of new mobilizing pro- cedures to prevent the institutionalization of his own party or “move- ment” (as he preferred to see Forza Italia),31 Berlusconi sought to create grassroots structures that would assist in unifying center-right activists and their electorate. In the summer of 2006, he invited Michela Vittoria Brambilla, a former president of the Young Entrepreneurs of Confcom- mercio, to set up a movement to achieve this. On 20 November, the Freedom Clubs, open to all supporters of the center-right, were formally launched. Shortly afterward, on 2 December, Berlusconi, together with the National Alliance and the League, held their hugely successful rally against the government in Rome, while Casini’s UDC held its own, much smaller rally in Palermo. At the Rome demonstration, Berlusconi declared: “[W]e are here today, all of us together, to affirm our great love of liberty … We are the people of liberty … our values … belong to a single party … We here, today, are already the unitary party of the center-right, we are already the party of liberty.”32 By late January 2007, Berlusconi had prepared instructions for the presidents of all the FI clubs to dissolve their organizations and fuse with Brambilla’s Freedom Clubs. It seems that opposition within Forza Italia frustrated this. Berlusconi apparently wanted the neo-con- servative think tank and cultural association, Il Circolo (The Club), founded in 1999 by Marcello Dell’Utri, co-founder of Forza Italia, with its alleged 3,000 sections, to do the same, but Dell’Utri was reluctant.33 The extent of the reality on the ground of Brambilla’s clubs was a matter of controversy, but as a mobilizing vehicle, Berlusconi’s cham- pioning of the single party of the right was undoubtedly taking off—as witnessed by the turmoil within Forza Italia itself. In late August, a press investigation revealed that earlier in the month Brambilla had registered the name “Partito della Libertà,” apparently on Berlusconi’s behalf.34 In sum, the idea of constructing a single party of the center- right was well and truly alive within the center-right from late 2006 throughout 2007, independently of Berlusconi’s allies. It seems, too, that by the summer of 2007 Berlusconi was contemplating the con- struction of a post-FI Freedoms Party without his major allies, but with the DCA and other Christian Democrats, and with right-wing parties other than the National Alliance, should that be necessary.35 Casini’s response was to continue to repeat that Berlusconi was the leader only of Forza Italia, not of the center-right, while Buttiglione The Center-Right: Conflict, Unity, and Permanent Mobilization 79 confirmed that the UDC was preparing for “after Berlusconi and after Prodi.” The Northern League, too, continued to assert its independence, calling successive meetings of the so-called Padanian parliament and threatening to contest the local elections independently. Still, despite the fact that unification was unacceptable to at least Casini and Bossi, the center-right continued to be fundamentally united by institutional structures: by the electoral systems at the different levels; by broadly shared Catholic conservative values, which were given prominent space in public debates on the so-called ethical agenda, most notably the debate on the recognition of unmarried couples (see Ceccarini’s chapter in this volume); and by the weakness of the government. The right, including the UDC under Casini, was united in its opposition to the government. That Follini, the UDC’s former secretary, switched sides in the vote of confidence and had very little success in encourag- ing Catholic, neo-centrist aggregations at the grassroots level suggests that a gulf lay between him and the grassroots of his former party, and that the neo-centrist project remained fundamentally weak. At the end of March, Casini confirmed the UDC’s independence from Berlusconi in Parliament by supporting the government in yet another foreign policy debate. Although the government had a majority without its vote, the UDC’s stand reinforced the idea of the existence of “two rights.”36 Nonetheless, given Berlusconi’s undoubted popular appeal and the imperative of electoral alliance, Forza Italia’s leader was an apparently welcome guest at the UDC congress held in mid-April, just one month before important elections in and six weeks before the local elections on mainland Italy. Despite this, Buttiglione went out of his way to affirm that “Silvio … represents the past now” and that the bipolar party system “is finished—every day we can see that it no lon- ger holds,”37 while Cesa, the party secretary, confirmed: “There are still two oppositions.”38 The reality of the May local elections, however, was that bipolarism still dominated. Moreover, the right’s success in them led Berlusconi once more to invoke the formation of a partito unico, although this was rejected by the League and the UDC.39 The UDC again confirmed its on 20 June when Berlusconi, flanked by Fini, Bossi, and Rotondi, visited the president of the Republic to express concerns about the government’s weakness. The UDC refused to par- ticipate in what it saw as a populist publicity stunt. In July the National Alliance underwent another split when its traditionalist Roman leader, , set up La Destra (the Right) in protest against Fini’s and particularly his desire to gain membership for the party in the European People’s Party (EPP). Rumors were strong that the split was supported, perhaps financially, by Berlusconi, although this was denied. Certainly, at the new party’s 80 Mark Donovan foundation on 10–11 November, Berlusconi was greeted with extraor- dinary enthusiasm—and a sea of Fascist salutes. In many respects, Berlusconi was laying siege to AN. If it did not join him, his project would go ahead anyway, claiming that its identity was integral to a new alliance. At the same time, the various events feeding into the mobilization of a center-right electorate behind Berlusconi helped to create an alternative, in terms of media attention, to the formation of the Democratic Party. It is no coincidence that on 6 October, a week before the elections for the PD leader, Brambilla’s movement held a national convention attended by several thousand people and claimed that just over 5,000 clubs had been established—more than twice the number that formed the grassroots of Forza Italia.40 On the weekend of 16–18 November, the crisis in the center-right came to a head. While the AN was holding a national convention, Berlusconi launched a new mass mobilization, collecting signatures “to ask that the right to decide their own future, via a vote, be given back to the sovereign people.”41 The government majority had just agreed to a budget proposal, so once again the expectation that the government would collapse had proven false. Fini declared: “The CdL must change, or it will die … the moment has come when this center- right is capable of finding a unitary solution … of offering the country a project … or one accepts that the coalition no longer exists, and everyone goes their own way.42 Even Bossi agreed: “If the govern- ment hasn’t fallen by now, then it won’t fall … Berlusconi deluded himself into thinking that he could make the government fall, but he was mistaken in this.”43 While Saturday’s media was reporting that the CdL had put Berlusconi on trial for 18 months of failed leadership, Berlusconi was announcing, in his so-called running board speech (discorso del predellino), the formation of the “Party of the People of Freedoms … into which Forza Italia will dissolve itself.”44 The media’s response to Berlusconi’s announcement was surely what he wanted—dramatic headlines and intense coverage, putting the spotlight firmly on the center-right and Berlusconi’s centrality to it. Some speculated that Berlusconi had engineered the whole event. His allies’ highly critical reaction to the failure of the government to fall had given him the opportunity to respond in a dramatically charged, thoroughly prepared fashion,45 offering precisely what Fini and Casini had said was lacking: leadership and political strategy. Indeed, Berlus- coni’s allies claimed that he was offering exactly what Fini, in particu- lar, had demanded—the unification of the center-right. And opinion polls suggested that the public supported the idea: in March 2007, 62 and 60 percent had supported unification for the right and the left, respectively. Those figures were lower than they had been previously,46 The Center-Right: Conflict, Unity, and Permanent Mobilization 81 perhaps due to the low expectation of it actually happening (38 and 41 percent, respectively, in January 2007)47 and the more widespread, general disillusionment with politics and, in particular, with the par- ties.48 Thus, Berlusconi, like Veltroni, was offering innovation and a simplified politics, characterized by some as a move toward two-party politics instead of fragmented bipolar, or even multi-polar, politics. Some even spoke of “bi-leaderism” based on Veltroni and Berlusconi. The response of Berlusconi’s allies varied primarily according to their size. The three larger allies rejected dissolving their organiza- tions into the new party. Fini was the most forceful, allegedly arguing: “The target here is us, just us. He wants to get rid of us.”49 He openly described Berlusconi’s proposal as “plebiscitary and confused,” a “per- sonalist shortcut.”50 Speaking for the League, affirmed: “It’s a novelty for the press. Not for us. Just as it’s no news that the League isn’t interested.”51 The UDC was more circumspect, even wel- coming Berlusconi’s return to constructive politics, especially since his strategic shift suggested a renewed dialogue on electoral reform, perhaps including the German system favored by the UDC. Under such a system, the UDC was expected to be one of just five or six political forces and very possibly the one holding the balance of power.52 The minor parties, quasi-parties, and party fragments, by contrast, rushed to affirm their interest in Berlusconi’s proposal. Among them were Storace and Mussolini, both ex-AN (and MSI); the New PSI; Raf- faele Lombardo’s southern Autonomy Movement (MpA); Rotondi’s DCA; , the former secretary (2001– 2006), who had left his party earlier in the month after long criticiz- ing the inadequacy of the government’s achievements; the Liberal Reformists (Riformatori liberali); and Michele Brambilla.53 In sum, this mix of forces—from the nationalist right, to the loosely Christian Democratic groupings of southern notables, to the business-oriented and libertarian right—was a motley array quite in contrast to the project proposed by Adornato and his “Manifesto of Values.” Indeed, Adornato dissociated himself from this new project, declaring that the clubs linked to his foundation would not join it.54 Confusion on the right was widespread and intense. For all the clamor over the formation of a new party, within days it seemed that for financial and legal reasons it was not actually possible to dissolve Forza Italia or other parties in any short period of time. Talk thus shifted to the construction of a federation or confederation of par- ties. A rumored alternative alliance between Fini and the UDC went nowhere, apparently due to opposition within the AN, strengthened by the fact that over-identification with the center would reinforce the appeal of Storace’s new party to AN voters, whose identity was 82 Mark Donovan precisely with “the right.”55 Instead, a national assembly of the AN backed a project to broaden the party’s appeal, while further changing its name to Alliance for Italy.56 Berlusconi went ahead with the ballot on the name of the new party, using the booths that had been used to collect signatures calling for the government to resign, and on 12 December it was announced that the new party would be called Popolo della Libertà (People of Freedom). By mid-December, Berlusconi was hypothesizing a membership drive to take place from 15 February to 15 March 2008, followed by the elec- tion of local representatives at the municipality, province, and regional levels, ending with the meeting of the constituent assembly of the new party on 27 March—the date of his 1994 electoral victory. Once again, the timetable was geared more toward mobilization than practicality, for throughout 2006–2007 Berlusconi was mobilizing to fight the next elec- tion. The government’s defeat on 24 January 2008, then, was perfect. The CdL voted against the government, which fell mainly due to its abandonment by the UDEUR and a small group of centrists led by Lam- berto Dini from the Margherita—more or less as Berlusconi had always predicted. Initially, the UDC maintained its independence regarding what should happen next, backing the idea of an interim government to enable electoral reform. Very rapidly, however, Casini aligned his party once more with the rest of the center-right in calling for early elections.

Conclusions

As was made clear by Lazar in his chapter, the process of party unifica- tion on the center-left left more questions unanswered than answered. On the center-right, party unification was even less a substantial reality. Nonetheless, the idea and its invocation, alongside the constant mobili- zation of center-right voters, together with the formation of clubs open to all center-right voters, enabled Berlusconi to reassert dramatically his leadership over the center-right in late 2007. With the prospect of early elections, formal unification was dropped from the immediate agenda. However, it seemed possible that some form of federation or confedera- tion would be formed at a later date, although the larger of Berlusco- ni’s allies remained protective of their independence and feared being absorbed into another party. Another prospect was that the various fragments that expressed interest in Berlusconi’s project would fuse with Forza Italia, just as, in 1998, several fragments on the center-left fused with the post-Communist PDS to produce the DS. In other words, the Popolo della Libertà might comprise an enlarged “Forza Italia plus,” allied with the League, the Alliance for Italy, and the UDC. The Center-Right: Conflict, Unity, and Permanent Mobilization 83

Whatever happened subsequently, at the end of 2007 it was clear that Berlusconi had reasserted his leadership of the center-right and had shaken it up considerably. What would happen next depended on a number of things, in particular, the nature and outcome of the next election, with regard to the balance of forces on the center-right; whether the national electoral system was reformed, and, if so, how; and whether the regulation of parliamentary procedure was revised. In the absence of reforms that would encourage unification and cohe- sion, the danger was that the center-right, like the center-left, would remain a coerced, negative, heterogeneous alliance, better able to win elections than to govern.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Daniele Albertazzi of Birmingham University and Gianfranco Baldini for their helpful comments on the first draft of this chapter. The errors that remain are my own.

Notes

1. , 19 November 2007. 2. Ibid. 3. On 18 September 2007, the Senate Committee on Elections and Immunity (Giunta delle elezioni e delle immunità del Senato) reported that its investiga- tion into the handling of the vote showed it to have been fully proper and the outcome entirely legitimate. 4. Corriere della Sera, 24 April 1998. 5. In fact, two smaller parties, or party fragments, the New PSI (Italian Social- ist Party) and the PRI (), were included in the new alliance. 6. Corriere della Sera, 24 April 1998, referring to a statement made on 11 March 1994. 7. See M. Donovan, “The Governance of the Center-Right Coalition,” in Italian Politics: Italy between Europeanization and Domestic Politics, ed. S. Fabbrini and V. Della Sala (Oxford: Berghahn, 2004), 80–98; M. Donovan, “Intra- and Inter-alliance Relations after the 2004 European and Provincial Elections,” in Italian Politics: Quo Vadis? ed. C. Guarnieri and J. L. Newell (Oxford: Berghahn, 2005), 47–64; and I. Diamanti and E. Lello, “The Casa della Libertà: A House of Cards?” Modern Italy 10, no. 1 (2005): 9–35. 84 Mark Donovan

8. J.-L. Briquet and A. Mastropaolo, “Fine della transizione?” in Politica in Italia: I fatti dell’anno e le interpretazioni. Edizione 2007, ed. J.-L. Briquet and A. Mastropaolo (: Il Mulino, 2007). 9. L. Bardi, “Electoral Change and Its Impact on the Party System in Italy,” West European Politics 30, no. 4 (2007): 711–732. 10. F. Bertinotti with Alfonso Gianni, Le due sinistre (Milan: Sperling and Kupfer, 1997). 11. “La Sinistra l’Arcobaleno,” Corriere della Sera, 5 December 2007. 12. For a less historically encumbered view, see, for example, S. Folli, “Casa delle Libertà: Due destre ormai senza sintesi,” , 8 April 2005. 13. Corriere della Sera, 5 April 2002. 14. Corriere della Sera, 5–6 August 2003. 15. , 12 April 2005. 16. See, for example, Corriere della Sera, 18 November 2004. 17. For the full document, dated 7 May 2005, see http://www.forza-italia.co.it/ varie/index.cfm?fuseaction=view&pid=221 (accessed 10 January 2008). 18. C. Baccetti, I postdemocristiani (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), 239–251; Corriere della Sera, 2 July 2005. 19. ANSA report hosted on the “Partito Unico” Web site, http://www.partitounico.it (accessed 10 January 2008). 20. Corriere della Sera, 30 July 2005. 21. Il Giornale, 19 August 2005. 22. La Stampa, 8 November 2005. 23. Il Giornale, 9 November 2005. 24. See the unrelated Web forum, http://politicaonline.net/forum/showthread.php ?t=205509. 25. Corriere della Sera, 28 June 2006; Il Sole 24 Ore, 5 May 2006 and 6 December 2007. 26. Il Sole 24 Ore, 30 June 2006. 27. La Repubblica, 7 July 2006. 28. La Repubblica, 11 October 2006. 29. Il Sole 24 Ore, 12 October 2006. 30. Baccetti, I postdemocristiani, 250–251. 31. C. Paolucci, “Forza Italia,” in I partiti italiani, ed. L. Bardi, P. Ignazi, and O. Massari (Milan: Università Bocconi, 2007), 97–148. 32. See http://www.forzaitalia.it/silvioberlusconi/pdf/ilPopolodellaLiberta.pdf. 33. Corriere della Sera, 25 January 2007; La Stampa, 20 August 2007. On Il Circolo, see http://www.marcellodellutri.it/articolo.asp?pag=Il%20Circolo (accessed 23 January 2008). 34. Il Sole 24 Ore, 22 August 2007. 35. Il Messagero, 21 August 2007. 36. Il Riformista, 28 March 2007. 37. La Repubblica, 15 April 2007. 38. Corriere della Sera, 15 April 2007. 39. Il Sole 24 Ore, 16 May 2007. 40. Paolucci, “Forza Italia,” 105, reports 2,300 FI clubs in existence in 2006. 41. L’occidentale, 8 November 2007, http://www.loccidentale.it/node/8843. 42. La Repubblica, 18 November 2007. 43. Ibid. The Center-Right: Conflict, Unity, and Permanent Mobilization 85

44. Corriere della Sera, 19 November 2007. The speech was made in the heart of Milan’s fashion district, Piazza san Babila. See http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=mtW3wV08xao. 45. Corriere della Sera, 19 November 2007; La Repubblica, 19 November 2007. 46. La Repubblica, 25 March 2007. 47. La Repubblica, 2 January 2007. 48. Corriere della Sera, 22 May 2007; La Repubblica, 20 May 2007 and 18 Novem- ber 2007. 49. La Repubblica, 20 November 2007. 50. Corriere della Sera, 20 November 2007. 51. La Repubblica, 19 November 2007. 52. Il Sole 24 Ore, 31 January 2008. 53. Il Giornale, 19 November 2007. 54. Corriere della Sera, 22 November 2007. 55. La Repubblica, 23 November 2007. 56. La Repubblica, 10 December 2007.