Election results maps for the Chamber of Deputies (on the left) and for the Senate (on the right). Light Blue denotes provinces with a Christian Democratic plurality, Red a Popular Front plurality, and Gray an Autonomist plurality.
Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km2 (116,350 sq mi) and has a largely temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe.
The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union with its satellite states, and the United States with its allies after World War II. A common historiography of the conflict begins between 1946, the year U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow cemented a U.S. foreign policy of containment of Soviet expansionism threatening strategically vital regions, and the Truman Doctrine of 1947, and ending between the Revolutions of 1989, which ended communism in Eastern Europe, and the 1991 collapse of the USSR, when nations of the Soviet Union abolished communism and restored their independence. The term "cold" is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany and its allies, leaving the USSR and the US as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences.
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized. The country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Alma-Ata, and Novosibirsk. It spanned over 10,000 kilometres east to west across 11 time zones, and over 7,200 kilometres north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, taiga, steppes, desert and mountains.
After the communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, the US became alarmed about Soviet intentions and feared that, if the leftist coalition were to win the elections, the communist Left would draw Italy into the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. As the last month of the election campaign began, the magazine Time pronounced the possible leftist victory to be "the brink of catastrophe".[4]
In the field of international relations, a sphere of influence (SOI) is a spatial region or concept division over which a state or organization has a level of cultural, economic, military, or political exclusivity, accommodating to the interests of powers outside the borders of the state that controls it.
Time is an American weekly news magazine and news website published in New York City. It was founded in 1923 and originally run by Henry Luce. A European edition is published in London and also covers the Middle East, Africa, and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong. The South Pacific edition, which covers Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands, is based in Sydney. In December 2008, Time discontinued publishing a Canadian advertiser edition.
Christian Democracy was a Christian democratic political party in Italy.
Italian is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. Italian, together with Sardinian, is by most measures the closest language to Vulgar Latin of the Romance languages. Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino and Vatican City. It has an official minority status in western Istria. It formerly had official status in Albania, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro (Kotor) and Greece, and is generally understood in Corsica and Savoie. It also used to be an official language in the former Italian East Africa and Italian North Africa, where it plays a significant role in various sectors. Italian is also spoken by large expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia. In spite of not existing any Italian community in their respective national territories and of not being spoken at any level, Italian is included de jure, but not de facto, between the recognized minority languages of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Romania. Many speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both standardized Italian and other regional languages.
The Popular Democratic Front, shortened name of the Popular Democratic Front for Freedom, Peace, Labour was a political alliance of political parties in Italy.
The Christian Democrats went on to form a government without the Communists, who had been in government from June 1944, when the first post-war government was formed, until May 1947.
Electoral system
The pure party-list proportional representation chosen two years before for the election of the Constituent Assembly, was definitely adopted for the Chamber of Deputies. Italian provinces were divided into 31 constituencies, each electing a group of candidates.[5] In each constituency, seats were divided between open lists using the largest remainder method with the Imperiali quota. Remaining votes and seats transferred to the national level, where special closed lists of national leaders received the last seats using the Hare quota.
Party-list proportional representation systems are a family of voting systems emphasizing proportional representation (PR) in elections in which multiple candidates are elected through allocations to an electoral list. They can also be used as part of mixed additional member systems.
Open list describes any variant of party-list proportional representation where voters have at least some influence on the order in which a party's candidates are elected. This as opposed to closed list, which allows only active members, party officials, or consultants to determine the order of its candidates and gives the general voter no influence at all on the position of the candidates placed on the party list. Additionally, an open list system allows voters to select individuals rather than parties. Different systems give voter different amounts of influence. Voter's choice is usually called preference vote.
The largest remainder method is one way of allocating seats proportionally for representative assemblies with party list voting systems. It contrasts with various divisor methods.
For the Senate, 237 single-seat constituencies were created. The candidates needed a two-thirds majority to be elected, but only 15 aspiring senators were elected this way. All remaining votes and seats were grouped in party lists and regional constituencies, where the D'Hondt method was used: Inside the lists, candidates with the best percentages were elected.
The D'Hondt method or the Jefferson method is a highest averages method for allocating seats, and is thus a type of party-list proportional representation. The method described is named in the United States after Thomas Jefferson, who introduced the method for proportional allocation of seats in the United States House of Representatives in 1791, and in Europe after Belgian mathematician Victor D'Hondt, who described it in 1878 for proportional allocation of parliamentary seats to the parties. There are two forms: closed list and an open list.
This electoral system became standard in Italy, and was used until 1993.
Campaign
The elections remain unmatched in verbal aggression and fanaticism in Italy's period of democracy. According to the historian Gianni Corbi the 1948 election was "the most passionate, the most important, the longest, the dirtiest, and the most uncertain electoral campaign in Italian history".[6] The election was between two competing visions of the future of Italian society. On the one hand, a Roman Catholic, conservative and capitalist Italy, represented by the governing Christian Democrats of De Gasperi; on the other, a secular, revolutionary and socialist society, represented by the Popular Front.[6]
The Christian Democrat campaign claimed that in communist countries, "children send parents to jail", "children are owned by the state", "people eat their own children", and assured voters that disaster would strike Italy if the Left were to take power.[7][8] Another slogan was "In the secrecy of the polling booth, God sees you - Stalin doesn't."[9]
The PCI was de facto leading the FDP and had effectively marginalised the PSI, which thus eventually suffered because in the elections, in terms of parliamentary seats and political power;[10] The Socialists also had been hurt by the secession of a social-democratic faction led by Giuseppe Saragat, which contested the election with the concurrent list of Socialist Unity.
The PCI had difficulties in restraining its more militant members, who, in the period immediately after the war, had engaged in violent acts of reprisals. The areas affected by the violence (the so-called "Red Triangle" of Emilia, or parts of Liguria around Genoa and Savona, for instance) had previously seen episodes of brutality committed by the Fascists during Benito Mussolini's regime and the Italian Resistance during the Allies' gradual advance through Italy.
"We had bags of money that we delivered to selected politicians, to defray their political expenses, their campaign expenses, for posters, for pamphlets," according to CIA operative F. Mark Wyatt.[14]
In order to influence the election, the US agencies undertook a campaign of writing ten million letters, made numerous short-wave radio broadcasts and funded the publishing of books and articles, all of which warned the Italians of what was believed to be the consequences of a communist victory. Time Magazine backed the campaign and featured the Christian Democrat leader and Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi on its cover and in its lead story on 19 April 1948.[8] Overall, the US funneled $10 million to $20 million into the country for specifically anti-PCI purposes. Additionally, millions of dollars from the Economic Cooperation Administration affiliated with the Marshall Plan were spent on anti-communist "information activities." [15]
It is claimed that the PCI was being funded by the Soviet Union.[16] According to CIA operative Wyatt, "The Communist Party of Italy was funded…by black bags of money directly out of the Soviet compound in Rome; and the Italian services were aware of this. As the elections approached, the amounts grew, and the estimates [are] that $8 million to $10 million a month actually went into the coffers of communism. Not necessarily completely to the party: Mr. Di Vittorio and labor was powerful, and certainly a lot went to him," according to the former CIA operative.[13] Although the numbers are disputed, there is evidence of some financial aid, described as occasional and modest,[17] from the Kremlin.[18] PCI official Pietro Secchia and Stalin discussed financial support.[19]
The Christian Democrats eventually won the 1948 election with 48% of the vote, and the FDP received 31%. The CIA's practice of influencing the political situation was repeated in every Italian election for at least the next 24 years.[14] A leftist coalition would not win a general election for the next 48 years, until 1996. That was partly because of Italians' traditional bent for conservatism and, even more importantly, the Cold War, with the US closely watching Italy, in their determination to maintain a vital NATO presence amidst the Mediterranean and retain the Yalta-agreedstatus quo of western Europe.[20]
Christian Democracy won a sweeping victory, taking 48.5 percent of the vote and 305 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 131 seats in the Senate. With an absolute majority in both chambers, DC leader and premier Alcide De Gasperi could have formed an exclusively DC government. Instead, he formed a "centrist" coalition with Liberals, Republicans and Social Democrats. De Gasperi formed three ministries during the parliamentary term, the second one in 1950 after the defection of the Liberals, who hoped for more rightist politics, and the third one in 1951 after the defection of the Social-democrats, who hoped for more leftist politics.
The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.
Palmiro Togliatti was an Italian politician and leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death. He was nicknamed by his supporters Il Migliore. In 1930 he became a citizen of the Soviet Union and later he had a city in the country named after him: Tolyatti.
Alcide Amedeo Francesco De Gasperi was an Italian statesman who founded the Christian Democracy party.
Amintore Fanfani was an Italian politician and the Prime Minister of Italy for five separate runs. He was one of the best-known Italian politicians after the Second World War, and a historical figure of the left-wing section of the Christian Democracy party; he is also considered to have been one of the founders of the Italian centre-left.
After World War II and the overthrow of Mussolini's fascist regime, Italy's history was dominated by the Christian Democracy political party for 48 years—from the 1946 election until the 1994 election—while the opposition was led by the Italian Communist Party (PCI).
Mario Scelba was an Italian Christian Democratic politician who served as the 33rd Prime Minister of Italy from February 1954 to July 1955. He was also President of the European Parliament from 1969 to 1971.
The Historic Compromise, called also Third Phase or Democratic Alternative, was an Italian historical political alliance and accommodation between the Christian Democrats (DC) and the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in the 1970s.
General elections were held in Italy on Sunday 25 May 1958, to select the Third Republican Parliament. The number of MPs to be elected was calculated upon the population's size for the last time.
General elections were held in Italy on 20 June 1976, to select the Seventh Republican Parliament. They were the first after the voting age was lowered to 18.
General elections were held in Italy on 3 June 1979, to select the Eighth Republican Parliament. This election was called just a week before the European vote: the failure to hold the two elections at the same time caused much criticism for wasting public money.
The 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état – in the Communist era known as "Victorious February" – was an event late that February in which the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, with Soviet backing, assumed undisputed control over the government of Czechoslovakia, marking the onset of four decades of communist rule in the country.
Italy–United States relations are the bilateral relations between the Italian Republic and the United States of America.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been involved in Italian politics since the end of World War II. The CIA intervened in the 1948 general election and would go on to provide covert aid until the early 1960s.
In the May 1947 crises, the Communists were excluded from government in Italy and France. The crises are commonly reckoned to be the start of the Cold War in Western Europe.
The Italian regional elections of 1975 were held on June 15. The fifteen ordinary regions, created in 1970, elected their second assemblies. Following the 1971 census, Piedmont, Veneto and Latium had ten more seats each.
Lombardy elected its first delegation to the Italian Senate on April 18, 1948. This election was a part of national Italian general election of 1948 even if, according to the newly established Italian Constitution, every senatorial challenge in each Region is a single and independent race.
Lombardy elected its second delegation to the Italian Senate on June 7, 1953. This election was a part of national Italian general election of 1953 even if, according to the Italian Constitution, every senatorial challenge in each Region is a single and independent race.
Centrism was a centrist anti-communist coalition of four Italian political parties that formed governments throughout the 1940s and the late 1950s. This period is known as "The Years of Centrism". The founder of this coalition was Alcide De Gasperi, Christian Democratic leader and Prime Minister of Italy. Another key figures of the Centrist coalition was the Liberal Luigi Einaudi, who was elected President of Italy in 1948 and remained in office until 1955.
↑ CIA memorandum to the Forty Committee (National Security Council), presented to the Select Committee on Intelligence, United States House of Representatives (the Pike Committee) during closed hearings held in 1975. The bulk of the committee's report that contained the memorandum was leaked to the press in February 1976 and first appeared in book form as CIA – The Pike Report (Nottingham, England, 1977). The memorandum appears on pp. 204-5 of this book.
Blum, William (2000). Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower. Common Courage Press. ISBN978-1-56751-194-9. Chapter 16 Perverting elections
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