The nature of Forza Italia and the Italian transition

As the chief political actor of the last decade, Silvio Berlusconi has seemingly introduced fundamental innovations in many fields of politics: new campaign methods, a new leadership style and language, new coalition strategies and ideological contents. All of these innovations have had a considerable impact on the party and the political system, political communication, party platforms and governmental programmes, the contents of legislative output and, arguably, also the quality of Italian democracy. Among these innovations, one in particular will be the focus of this analysis, namely, the creation of a political party exhibiting a new organisational model. Traces of this model began emerging in Italy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but it displayed itself fully with Forza Italia, the party founded by Berlusconi in 1993. The study of party change has been largely inspired by the groundbreaking work of Otto Kirchheimer, who highlighted the reasons, dynamics and consequences of the transition from the mass party to a new type of party, the catch-all party, which has indeed characterised post-war 20th-century party politics in Europe. It is probable that most mainstream parties today would fit at least to some degree into Kirchheimer’s party model, also thanks to the fact that it has been defined with rather broad, comprehensive categories. In a nutshell, the catch-all party arises because of unprecedented affluence, mass education and the scope of the media. Its main organisational characteristics, as elaborated also by later authors, include distancing from ideology; leadership centrality; organisational centralisation; lack of bureaucratic structures; fewer members and activists; financing through external sources; use of the media to reach out to the electorate and greater professionalism of party functions. The consequences of the predominance of this party type are unanimously considered to be quite negative. Parties present themselves as catch-all organisations, which concentrate mainly on winning as many votes as possible, rather than performing traditional party functions. The party system, previously stabilised by the presence of permanent, entrenched parties with enduring electoral linkages, as a result becomes a disordered arena, characterised by