The Italian Communist Party in the 1980s and the denouement of the Italian party system

ABSTRACT The role of the Italian Communist Party (P.C.I.) in the denouement of the Italian party system in the early 1990s was decisive, its dissolution helping to trigger the organizational and electoral collapse of the existing parties. If so, the question that arises is what triggered the dissolution of the P.C.I. A conventional wisdom has developed in the literature that puts the dissolution down to the collapse of the communist regimes in central and eastern Europe, effectively removing the P.C.I. as an agent of its own destiny. Yet, an analysis of the P.C.I.’s final decade reveals a different picture, one that still recognizes the role of international events but as a catalyst to an existing programme of dramatic change which began in the late 1980s in response to an existential crisis of the party. The role of the P.C.I. as an independent agency in charge of its own destiny can be reasserted in revisting this critical period in the party’s and Italy’s history. In doing so, it casts new light on the causes of the denouement of the Italian party system in the early 1990s, contextualizing the role of international events in a longer-term analysis of an enveloping crisis of the P.C.I. in its final decade.