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The Spectacle Blog
Silvio Berlusconi has just annnounced his resignation as Prime Minister of Italy. Berlusconi had promised to resign once the Italian parliament had passed debt reforms. A new coalition government is expected to form under former EU commissioner Mario Monti. MSNBC is calling Berlusconi’s resignation an “end of an era.”
I’m not so sure. Even in the best of times, most Italian governments have a life of a year. Since the end of WWII, Italy has had 60 coalition governments. I don’t expect this new coalition under Monti to last appreciably longer than its predecessors. In fact, I expect to see several coalition governments come and go over the next 18 to 24 month. In which case, it would come as no shock to me if Berlusconi were to make his way back into power.
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More Blog Posts by Aaron Goldstein
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/11/12/berlusconi-will-be-back
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C Bowen | 11.12.11 @ 6:54PM
He will only be back if Umberto Bossi wants to go that direction.
The idea that a bankster with internationalist pedigree is going to keep to Bossi in the fold might be wishful thinking on the part of the Establishment.
Marcantonio C.| 11.12.11 @ 8:04PM
I beg your pardon, but this post is stupid. There is no other word. The author of this post Sr Goldstein does not know what he is talking about, so I must ask why do you post this? It has no news. It has no information. It simply expresses a blunt, stupid ( forgive me if I repeat myself) ignorance of Italian politics. If you look at Italian government since 1945, you are struck above all by the continuity of its principal actors and the policies which they promoted. There have been periods of frequent changes in the ministerial portfolios, not in the personnel and the parties of government. And since the 1990s, Italian government has seen changes from left of center to right of center and back (with a fourth Berlusconni government coming to power in 2006), but under the aegis of a remarkably stable system -- which may in fact be the problem, in terms of my country's inability to enact certain long 0verdue reforms.
Santo| 11.13.11 @ 7:49AM
The post is not "stupid" (to use your words) but perhaps an overgeneralization. For sure, there is no alternative majority to Berlusconi's coalition and Monti will need its support to be appointed and stay in power. Monti will also need Berlusconi's coalition's support to enact any of the much heralded "reforms". And new elections are slated for 2012 anyway. Therefore, the future is not certain or stable at all and one cannot exclude that Berlusconi's coalition (even if not Berlusconi himself as prime minister) may end up in power again.
Please also allow me to disagree on your view as to the Italian governments' uniformity of policies since 1945. Without going into details, a major shift, with far-reaching consequences (for instance on the labor market and national debt...), occurred in 1962 (with the advent of the center-left coalition) and another one in the 70's, with the extreme left substantially controlling most of the regional power and influencing heavily also the national government. Let's not forget, also, that, until the fall of communism, the logic of the cold war ensured a certain level of continuity. But it is absolutely true that Italian politics are fractious: Berlusconi himself presided over a coaliton that has somewhat disintegrated from within and the major opposition party (the PD, led by the former communists) is itself an assembly of more that 15 fractions. Is this not enough for a detached observer to argue that Berlusconi (or his party) may well return to power?