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Italian Liberal Party
The Italian Liberal Party (Italian: Partito Liberale Italiano, PLI) was a liberal political party in Italy.
The PLI, which was heir to the liberal currents of both the Historical Right and the Historical Left, was a minor party after World War II, but also a frequent junior party in government, especially after 1979. It originally represented the right wing of the Italian liberal movement, while the Italian Republican Party the left wing. The PLI disintegrated in 1994 following the fallout of the Tangentopoli corruption scandal and was succeeded by several minor parties. The party's most influential leaders were Giovanni Giolitti, Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Malagodi.
The origins of liberalism in Italy are with the Historical Right, a parliamentary group formed by Camillo Benso di Cavour in the Parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia, following the 1848 revolution. The group was moderately conservative and supported centralised government, restricted suffrage, regressive taxation, and free trade. They dominated Italian politics following the country's unification in 1861, but never formed a party. The Liberals were indeed a loose coalition of local leaders, whose sources of strength were census suffrage and the first-past-the-post voting system.
The Right was opposed by its more progressive counterpart, the Historical Left, which overthrew Marco Minghetti's government during the so-called "parliamentary revolution" of 1876, which brought Agostino Depretis to become Prime Minister. However, Depretis immediately began to look for support among Rightists MPs, who readily changed their positions, in a context of widespread corruption. This phenomenon, known in Italian as trasformismo (roughly translatable in English as "transformism" — in a satirical newspaper, the PM was depicted as a chameleon), effectively removed political differences in Parliament, which was dominated by an undistinguished liberal bloc with a landslide majority until World War I.
Two liberal parliamentary factions alternated in government, a conservative one led by Sidney Sonnino and a progressive one led by Giovanni Giolitti, who started as a member of the Historical Left and served as prime minister in 1892–1893, 1903–1905, 1906–1909, 1911–1914 and 1920–1921. Giolitti, whose faction was by far the largest, sought to unify the liberal establishment into a united party, the Liberals, in 1913, also with the participation of Sonnino. The Liberals governed in alliance with the Radicals, the Democrats and, eventually, the Reformist Socialists.
At the end of World War I, universal suffrage and proportional representation were introduced. These reforms caused big problems to the Liberals, who found themselves unable to stop the rise of two mass parties, the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and the Italian People's Party (PPI), which had taken the control of many local authorities in northern Italy even before the war. Through the Christian-democratic PPI, Catholics, who were long inactive due to the trauma of the capture of Rome and the struggles between the Holy See and the Italian state, started to be involved in politics, in opposition to both the PSI and the liberal establishment, which had governed the country for virtually sixty years.
The Parliament was thus fundamentally divided in three different blocs and fragmentation brought about instability, with the Socialists and the rising Fascist instigators of political violence on opposite sides. In this chaotic situation, in 1922 the Liberals re-grouped within the Italian Liberal Party (PLI), which immediately joined an alliance led by the National Fascist Party and formed with it a joint list for the 1924 general election, transforming the Fascists from a small political force into an absolute-majority party. The PLI, which failed to subdue the Fascists, was banned by Benito Mussolini in 1926, along with all the other parties, while many old Liberal politicians were given prestigious, but not influential, political posts, such as seats in the Senate, which was stripped of any real power by the Fascist reforms.
The PLI was re-established in 1943 by Benedetto Croce, a prominent intellectual and senator, whose international recognition and parliamentary membership allowed him to remain a free man during the Fascist regime, despite being an anti-fascist himself, and joined the National Liberation Committee. After the end of World War II, Enrico De Nicola, a Liberal, became "provisional Head of State" and another one, Luigi Einaudi, who as Minister of Economy and Governor of the Bank of Italy between 1945 and 1948 had reshaped Italian economy, succeeded him as President of Italy.
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Italian Liberal Party
The Italian Liberal Party (Italian: Partito Liberale Italiano, PLI) was a liberal political party in Italy.
The PLI, which was heir to the liberal currents of both the Historical Right and the Historical Left, was a minor party after World War II, but also a frequent junior party in government, especially after 1979. It originally represented the right wing of the Italian liberal movement, while the Italian Republican Party the left wing. The PLI disintegrated in 1994 following the fallout of the Tangentopoli corruption scandal and was succeeded by several minor parties. The party's most influential leaders were Giovanni Giolitti, Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Malagodi.
The origins of liberalism in Italy are with the Historical Right, a parliamentary group formed by Camillo Benso di Cavour in the Parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia, following the 1848 revolution. The group was moderately conservative and supported centralised government, restricted suffrage, regressive taxation, and free trade. They dominated Italian politics following the country's unification in 1861, but never formed a party. The Liberals were indeed a loose coalition of local leaders, whose sources of strength were census suffrage and the first-past-the-post voting system.
The Right was opposed by its more progressive counterpart, the Historical Left, which overthrew Marco Minghetti's government during the so-called "parliamentary revolution" of 1876, which brought Agostino Depretis to become Prime Minister. However, Depretis immediately began to look for support among Rightists MPs, who readily changed their positions, in a context of widespread corruption. This phenomenon, known in Italian as trasformismo (roughly translatable in English as "transformism" — in a satirical newspaper, the PM was depicted as a chameleon), effectively removed political differences in Parliament, which was dominated by an undistinguished liberal bloc with a landslide majority until World War I.
Two liberal parliamentary factions alternated in government, a conservative one led by Sidney Sonnino and a progressive one led by Giovanni Giolitti, who started as a member of the Historical Left and served as prime minister in 1892–1893, 1903–1905, 1906–1909, 1911–1914 and 1920–1921. Giolitti, whose faction was by far the largest, sought to unify the liberal establishment into a united party, the Liberals, in 1913, also with the participation of Sonnino. The Liberals governed in alliance with the Radicals, the Democrats and, eventually, the Reformist Socialists.
At the end of World War I, universal suffrage and proportional representation were introduced. These reforms caused big problems to the Liberals, who found themselves unable to stop the rise of two mass parties, the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and the Italian People's Party (PPI), which had taken the control of many local authorities in northern Italy even before the war. Through the Christian-democratic PPI, Catholics, who were long inactive due to the trauma of the capture of Rome and the struggles between the Holy See and the Italian state, started to be involved in politics, in opposition to both the PSI and the liberal establishment, which had governed the country for virtually sixty years.
The Parliament was thus fundamentally divided in three different blocs and fragmentation brought about instability, with the Socialists and the rising Fascist instigators of political violence on opposite sides. In this chaotic situation, in 1922 the Liberals re-grouped within the Italian Liberal Party (PLI), which immediately joined an alliance led by the National Fascist Party and formed with it a joint list for the 1924 general election, transforming the Fascists from a small political force into an absolute-majority party. The PLI, which failed to subdue the Fascists, was banned by Benito Mussolini in 1926, along with all the other parties, while many old Liberal politicians were given prestigious, but not influential, political posts, such as seats in the Senate, which was stripped of any real power by the Fascist reforms.
The PLI was re-established in 1943 by Benedetto Croce, a prominent intellectual and senator, whose international recognition and parliamentary membership allowed him to remain a free man during the Fascist regime, despite being an anti-fascist himself, and joined the National Liberation Committee. After the end of World War II, Enrico De Nicola, a Liberal, became "provisional Head of State" and another one, Luigi Einaudi, who as Minister of Economy and Governor of the Bank of Italy between 1945 and 1948 had reshaped Italian economy, succeeded him as President of Italy.