Italy's Turmoil Spells Trouble For Europe

Having survived for 225 days until it collapsed last week in scenes worthy of a Roman farce, Silvio Berlusconi's government comes in 26th on the longevity table of Italy's 53 post-World War II administrations. Mind you coming in first on that table is not necessarily a sign of merit and distinction. Italy's longest-serving government since 1945 was headed by Bettino Craxi, a Socialist who is now a fugitive in Tunisia.


The breakdown of Italy's political order is so complete that it is impossible to predict with confidence what the future holds. One year from now Berlusconi may be prime minister again. Or he may have retreated into the baffling and complicated web of multi-billion lire enterprises that makes up his Fininvest business empire. Or he may be in jail, like his brother.


To some extent, Berlusconi was the architect of his own downfall. After he led his right-wing Forza Italia movement to victory last March, he did nothing to resolve the conflict of interest between his position as prime minister and his role as head of Fininvest and controller of most of Italy's private television companies. He committed a serious blunder by attempting to throttle the investigations by Italy's magistrates into official corruption. Having burst from nowhere to become the symbol of a fresh, reforming Italy, he rapidly became identified with the old order that he had pledged to replace.


Yet in some ways, it was the system, not Berlusconi himself, that consigned his government to oblivion. The electoral coalition that projected him into power was made up of reformed fascists and northern regionalists as well as Forza Italia, and it had an in-built capacity to self-destruct. In particular, the Northern League under Umberto Bossi always recognized that it would have to break with Berlusconi if it was to retain popular support in its electoral bases of Piedmont and Lombardy.


The endless disputes in his coalition meant that Berlusconi was never likely to succeed in pushing through effective economic reforms. In fact, Italy's enormous state budget deficits and post-1945 tradition of "clientelismo," or government by patronage and evasion of the law, are such entrenched problems that it is open to debate if any prime minister will be able to master them. Berlusconi approached his task like a businessman asked to sort out an inefficient, debt-ridden conglomerate, but in the end he could not break free from the chains of Italy's political culture.


Berlusconi may not yet be finished as a political force. The lesson of last March's vote was that the Italian left still cannot put together an electoral majority. On the right, Berlusconi remains one of the country's most dominant figures. His political prospects hang greatly on the pace and depth of the judicial investigations into his business affairs.


For Italy as a whole, the lesson of the last year is that the national revolution that began in 1992 still has some way to go. Italy is giving birth to a new republic, but the labor is proving long and arduous.


Unless progress is made to overcome this crisis, Italy will lose its chance to be in the fast lane of European integration along with France, Germany, the Benelux countries and one or two others. Already it is doubtful that Italy will be able to join a currency union before the end of the century. However, Italy's absence from the process of integration would create serious imbalances. It ought to be every European's New Year's wish that Italy overcomes its difficulties.