Italy: A New Tactic

Having run its full five-year course, the Italian Parliament dissolved itself last week, opening up a fresh season of politics, Italian-style. No fewer than 73 political parties have already registered their wish to run in the May 19 elections for seats in a new Parliament, among them such far-out groups as the World Sacred Idealism Party, the Movement for Divorce & Solidarity and the Friends of the Moon. As usual, however, the elections will be primarily a collision between Italy's two largest parties: the Christian Democrats and the Communists.

The Christian Democrats, led by Premier Aldo Moro, have played a major role in all of Italy's postwar governments; they received 38% of the vote in the 1963 elections. The Communists, headed by Secretary-General Luigi Longo, won 25% of the vote in the last elections but have regularly been excluded from a share in the government coalition, in which the Christian Democrats have recently been partners with the Democratic Socialists, the Socialists and the Republicans. This time, the Communists have decided to take a new campaign tack: instead of asking for votes only for themselves, they are working to elect a Parliament that would produce a ruling coalition in which the leftists would have much more clout.

Nibbling Away. One reason for the Communist switch in tactics is the belief that Italy has become too prosperous to care much about Communist chimeras, yet just bothered enough to believe that a change of government might be good. In recent weeks, students protesting overcrowded classrooms have closed down or paralyzed eleven Italian universities, and Roman students waged a pitched battle with police that left hundreds wounded. Sicilian earthquake victims marched through the capital's streets in anger against the government's delay in providing relief. Every major Italian city was hit this month by massive walkouts of workers.

Yet the protests have so far failed to stir the mass of Italians—and so have the elections. Reason: the average Italian has never had it so good, Italy last year boasted a growth rate of 6%, sec ond only to Japan among industrialized countries. One Italian family in two now has its own car; virtually all have a television set, and often a refrigerator and washing machine to boot. The nationwide impact of television is relentlessly nibbling away at Italian regionalism, making Italians in the south more like Italians in the north, and making both of them hunger for the good things of the consumer life. For this prosperity, the Christian Democrats, as the dominant partner in the Center Left coalition of Premier Moro during the past five years, rightly claim considerable credit.

Post-Conciliar Split. The Communist strategy is aimed at producing a mere 2% shift in votes. After the 1963 elections, the Christian Democrats could have turned either left or right to seek partners to form a coalition government.

If they had combined with rightist parties, they would have had 52% of the votes; instead, they turned left to the Socialists. Two things held the marriage together: 1) the fact that the Christian Democrats contain virtually the entire spectrum from left to right within their own ranks, and 2) the Christian Democrats' threat to dissolve the coalition and form a center-right government if the Socialists pressed too hard.