This is the end of Berlusconi, right? Probably, yes

by Duncan McDonnell (EUI) 

(This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.) 

Colpevole. Guilty. On a hot August Thursday evening in Rome, after two decades of investigations and trials – many of which he escaped due to laws passed by his own governments – Silvio Berlusconi was finally and definitively convicted of a crime. It is a massive moment in modern Italian history. The man who has dominated the country’s politics since he formed his own party and won the 1994 general election is, according to Italy’s legal system, a criminal.

At a quarter to eight, several hours later than anticipated, the judges of the Court of Cassation – the final level of the justice system to which Berlusconi could appeal previous rulings in the case – confirmed the conviction for his role in tax fraud by his Mediaset group in the early part of the last decade (while he was prime minister). He won’t go to jail, but it seems certain he will spend a year either under house arrest or doing community service. He gets to choose which and has previously indicated that he would prefer house arrest.

The irony of this outcome is that Berlusconi has been undone by his failure to tackle his huge personal conflict of interests. If he really had given up control of his media empire when he entered politics in early 1994, he would not find himself liable now for its actions. Instead, the judges decided that he had retained a level of involvement in his companies which made him responsible for their misdeeds. His need to be the boss – the only real boss of his businesses and his political party – ultimately undid him.

Huge political problems

What the wider effects on Italian politics of this verdict will be remains to be seen. A second part of the sentence, barring him from public office, has been sent back to a lower court due to a technical issue over the ban’s length (this is likely to be reduced to no more than three years). But whatever the result of this, the verdict and sentence already pose huge problems not only for his own party – the Popolo della Libertà (PDL – People of Freedom) – but also for the centre-left Partito Democratico (PD – Democratic Party) which has been a reluctant coalition partner of the PDL since February’s inconclusive general election. Two parties which have despised one another for years have been forced to govern together.

It is hard to overstate Berlusconi’s influence on Italy’s political system during the past 20 years. He has been its fulcrum, with elections at national and even regional level based on whether you were for or against him. As the most recent centre-left coalition election slogan “L’Italia giusta” (“a just Italy”) suggested, their main unifying point has been that they are opposed to Berlusconi. On much else, they are bitterly divided. Likewise, for the smaller parties of the centre and right-wing, the key question in alliance strategies has been whether they could stomach standing alongside Berlusconi. Taking him out of the party system is therefore a bit like removing the bottom block of a jenga tower. We have no idea how the pieces might fall.

End of the PDL?

One possible outcome is that we are moving towards the end of the PDL. As a personal party, it has never had a “plan B” in which the “B” does not stand for “Berlusconi”. In a recent articlefor the academic journal Political Studies, I discussed what makes up a “personal party” and presented material from interviews conducted across Italy between 2009 and 2010 with PDL elected representatives and members. From these, two things were abundantly clear. The first was that Berlusconi’s authority was unquestioned and that no other party figures came even close to him. The second was that many in the party felt it was unlikely to survive the end of his time in politics. Even those that were more optimistic acknowledged that there was no obvious replacement for the founder-leader. As the 2008 campaign song “Thank goodness for Silvio” underlined, the spotlight has always been firmly on the leader, with little room for anyone else.

In the short term in Italy, we will see outpourings of joy from some and indignation from others. Berlusconi is an extremely divisive figure who attracts strong emotions, both negative and positive. Those who thought that he was a crook will see their views vindicated by this verdict. But so too will those who thought he was a dynamic individual persecuted by left-wing judges. This is a perception of Berlusconi which finds little favour abroad where he is better known for his gaffes and sexual antics. But it is one that is firmly rooted among a considerable minority of Italians for whom Berlusconi is a victim, not an offender.

So, as someone rang to ask me earlier, “this is the end of Berlusconi, right?” Probably, yes. But you can be sure he will go down fighting. Whether it is an appeal to the European Courts, orchestrated political turmoil or some other ingenious strategy entirely, he will come up with something. Because, for all his flaws, what Berlusconi has – and has always had in abundance compared to his weak-willed adversaries – are guts, stamina and invention. Expect to see these out in force in the weeks ahead. The Italian summer just got even hotter.

2013 Italian General Election – Italian politics at a crossroads?

One-day conference, 17 January 2014, University of Birmingham

Organised with the support of the Political Studies Association, the PSA’s Italian Politics Specialist Group and the Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Italian general election of February 2013 can fairly be described as a watershed event, resulting as it did in a political stalemate. With the country more or less divided into three equal segments among which there appeared to be no viable governing combination it was not until the end of April that a government could be formed, and then it was only thanks to the fact that the election’s aftermath coincided with the need to elect a new President of the Republic. The centre-left appeared to have won the election by a wafer-thin margin – but it had no Senate majority and, most importantly, it emerged in front only by virtue of the fact that the haemorrhage in its votes was slightly smaller than the haemorrhage of votes for the centre right. Support for the populist Five-star Movement (M5s), at its first general-election outing, exploded dramatically, to make it the largest single party. As a consequence of the outcome, neither of the logics on which government formation had been based in the ‘First’ and ‘Second Republics’, the consensual and the majoritarian respectively, was any longer available. If therefore, the election seemed to mark the end of an era, the one that appeared to be being ushered in pointed in the direction of a highly uncertain future. The grand coalition that was eventually formed had as its main protagonists two parties that had hitherto found it difficult in the extreme to accord each other legitimacy as potentially governing actors while they were under pressure as never before to bring about reform of the institutions whose mal-functioning had to a significant degree been responsible for the 2013 crisis in the first place.

Against this background papers are invited which in one way or another provide reflection on the effects that such a momentous election have had and are likely to have on the Italian political system and beyond. The organisers are keen to encourage submissions focussing on a wide range of perspectives/topics, but conceivably proposals might offer to examine:

• specific parties, their performances and prospects, the most obvious example to mention here being the M5s;

• political campaigns – e.g. strategies (including the use of new-media) and impact;

• the party system as a whole – bearing in mind the extent to which the events leading up to the election, and its outcome, were so closely bound up with the parties’ loss of authority thanks to disappointment of the expectations that had arisen from the political upheavals of the early 1990s and the initiation of the so-called ‘Second Republic’;

• popular attitudes – and especially the anti-political sentiments to which the parties’ loss of authority had given rise;

• government and policy-making, including the formation and programmes of the governments that immediately preceded and followed the election – both executives, in their different ways, representing novelties;

• the role of Italy’s place in Europe (and beyond) – both from the perspective of its significance as a campaign issue and a factor in the election run-up and from the perspective of the implications for it of the election outcome.     

Paper proposals (max 300 words) should be submitted by 18 October to Jim Newell (j.l.newell@salford.ac.uk), Arianna Giovannini (a.giovannini@leedsmet.ac.uk) and Daniele Albertazzi  (d.albertazzi@bham.ac.uk) from either of whom further details about the conference can be obtained. The event is supported by the Italian Politics Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association (PSA), the Department of Modern Languages of the University of Birmingham and the Political Studies Association (special activities fund). Journalists from the Italian, the UK and international media will be invited to attend, together with prestigious keynote speakers.

The electoral roots and the political consequences of the 24-25 February 2013 Italian elections

The journal Contemporary Italian Politics has just published a Special Issue on the 2013 Italian elections, edited by Sergio Fabbrini and Marc Lazar.

The papers offer a fascinating insight into the 2013 Italian election and a timely analysis of the key issues at stake. 
Here's the table of contents of the Special Issue:

Editorial:
The (apparent) calm after the storm (J.L. Newell and M. Carbone)

Foreword: 
Still a difficult democracy? Italy between populist challenges and institutional weakness
(S. Fabbrini and M. Lazar)

Articles:
The Italian election of February 2013: the end of the Second Republic? (R. D'Alimonte)
The election campaign and the 'last-minute' deciders (L. Ceccarini and I. Diamanti)
The 2013 Italian elections in historical perspective (L. Giugni and M. Lazar)
Negative Europeanisation: European issues in the Italian electios (R. Dehousse)
Leader and parties after the Italian elections (S. Ventura)
Solving the government's puzzle: the controversial consequences of the Italian elections (S.Ventura)

Afterword:
Desperately seeking a middleman (T. Boeri)


The Special Issue is available at this link.