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The Center-Right: Conflict, Unity, and Permanent Mobilization

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The Center-Right: Conflict, Unity, and Permanent Mobilization 2 THE CENTER-RIGHT: CONFLIct, UNITY, AND PERMANENT MOBILIZATION Mark Donovan On 18 November 2007, in the midst of a rally calling for early elec- tions, Silvio Berlusconi announced the formation of a new party, to be known tentatively as “the Party of the People of Freedoms … into which Forza Italia 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 moderates 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 Democratic Party (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 taxes, which was held in Rome 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 Italy, 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 Umberto Bossi’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 the Union of Christian Democrats and Center Democrats (UDC)—had been replaced by the House of Freedoms (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 the left 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 the right. 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 the Olive Tree alliance and its electoral success in 1996; the formation of the Margherita-Democracy Is Liberty (Margherita) in 2000–2002; and Romano Prodi’s proposal to form single lists for the 2004 European Parliament 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 party system 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.
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