Italy moves to the right

ITALIAN VOTERS have made a pronounced move to the right by giving  Silvio Berlusconi and his allies a clear victory in their parliamentary  elections. In doing so they have dramatically simplified their party  political system by giving the two main parties such a dominant role.  Reacting to the fragmentation and policy drift of Romano Prodi's  unstable outgoing coalition they have also responded with hostility to  his unpopular efforts to balance the budget by tighter taxation laws.

The great question arising from this result is whether the decisive step they have taken towards a necessary political reform will see wider socio-economic ones delivered upon by Mr Berlusconi's new right-wing majority.

Instead of the 26 parties in the 2006 Chamber of Deputies and Senate there will be six in all for this parliamentary term. Between them Mr Berlusconi's new Party of Freedom and Walter Veltroni's new Democratic Party command some 80 per cent of the parliamentary seats. Both men forced through changes in their political constellations which gave them more command and discarded more radical or troublesome elements. As a result Mr Berlusconi has absorbed the previously separate neo-fascist Allianze Nazionale, whose dissenting rump failed to gain any seats, while Mr Veltroni parted company with the neo-communists and Greens, whose rainbow coalition is equally unrepresented, having seen their vote collapse to 3 per cent compared to 11 per cent in 2006. It is the first time there are no communists in Italy's parliament since the second World War.

Mr Berlusconi's party benefited from the partisan electoral law he forced through in 2005 before losing the 2006 election. Combining generous proportional representation with regional majority bonuses it replaced a previously much more majoritarian system. The new system spancelled Mr Prodi's highly fragmented majority which duly collapsed this year, but it has given Mr Berlusconi a real mandate. He will exercise it in alliance with the resurgent Northern League which has nearly doubled its vote to 8 per cent on a racist populist programme pitched against immigrants and southern Italians in nearly equal measure. Mr Veltroni has a smaller and weaker flank of centrists.

This means Italy will be governed decidedly from the right. Despite a consensus among thoughtful Italians and most of its voters on the measures needed to tackle their country's deep structural problems the indications are that Mr Berlusconi's addiction to personal power and private interests, together with a growing corporatism and protectionism in the face of economic difficulties will prevail. Lower and simplified tax rates that are actually paid, more effective government regulation, less onerous bureaucracy, better civil jurisdiction, labour market and public utilities liberalisation, welfare and pension system reforms, education based on merit and competition, and research and development funds are among the widely canvassed desiderata. They may be as difficult to attain with this majority as by Mr Prodi's dysfunctional one.

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times