AS ITALY enters a second year of rule by an unelected government observers may be forgiven for thinking that the biggest threat to democracy comes from the parties of the centre rather than the right.
Unable to replace the Christian Democrats as the centre pole of politics Italy's goverment remains prone to sharp changes and sudden crises.
President Oscar Scalfaro had to consult with 20 groups in parlament before appointing lawyer Antonio Maccanico as prime minister in Janu ary. Some like to pass the present period off as a passing probiem of "transition". or as a temporary re-emergence of old ways that will soon pass.
Nothing could be further from the truth. While the government's crisis and the rise of the right has deep roots in Italy's post-war political arrangements, it is also a product of very mod. cru verco ncns RIFONDAZIONE must act simulOn the face of things the right should be weak after the wave of corruptson scandals. After the mass mobilisations of tast yeat, Ine mass movememt should casily be able to veto the austerity policy currentiy being put together by the tough-talking Maccanico. But this is not the case.
In the post-war period Italy's parties had to operate through a methodically organised system of patronage. Party members were given privileged relations with public institutions.
This "Assistenziale" gave weak parties both a mass base and permanent government deliberately designed to cxctuoc tne raman communist Party: The Cold War provided a bogey man to keep the bloc together. But it was not only the "thaw" after 1989 that threw che order into crisis.
The patronage system cost a lot of money, it piled debt onto debt-two housand trillion lira at last countinal, when comolco with largo-scalc unpersued tax evasion by the middle classes, stored up massive economic of radical social transformation. We Berlusconi has his television - Itollans reply with demonstrations problems.
On top of this Italy went through a process of capitalist restructuring in the 1980s that undermined public provision in ducation. health and housing tol the benefit of individual consumption. and in each district.
This particular combination of assistenziaic ano cconomic restructuring gave the mass movement of last year a special form.
The general hostility to corruption was combined with a widespread discontent not only to established parties of all shades, but also to the very notion of public intervention into the econneto i mon cul But the right remains strong.
Bonusom sno caeiso gives them a mouthpiece to translate the monetarist message into popular language-in the same way Murdoch gave Thatcher The Sun.
ane stregin of tar mam domonicar ian popularism needs an urgent response the left. ex-communis: PDS has moved mas-