Italian bipolarism 1994–2008

Between 1992 and 1994 the Clean Hands investigation swept away the parties that had governed for forty years. The DC and PSI dissolved, while the PCI had already transformed into the PDS. In this vacuum, the 1993 referendum and the electoral law that followed — the 'Mattarellum', named after its rapporteur Sergio Mattarella — introduced a largely majoritarian system: 75% of seats assigned in single-member, single-round constituencies.

The majoritarian system rewarded those able to build broad coalitions. The political system, fragmented among dozens of parties, was forced to organise around two opposing poles: centre-right and centre-left. The bipolarism of the Second Republic was born.

The new system immediately produced what the First Republic had never known: changes of government between opposing camps. In 1994 the centre-right coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi — who had entered politics with Forza Italia only months earlier — won the election. That government, however, fell within the year.

In 1996 it was the centre-left Olive Tree coalition, led by Romano Prodi, that won a majority. In 2001 the pendulum swung back to the centre-right House of Freedoms. Three elections, three different outcomes: alternation had become the rule, not the exception.

The 2006 election was the most closely fought of the Second Republic. With proportional representation just reintroduced (the 'Porcellum'), Prodi's Olive Tree obtained 31.3% of the vote in the Chamber against Forza Italia's 23.7%, within a coalition contest decided by a few tenths of a point. Prodi formed a government, but with an extremely fragile Senate majority.

In 2008, after the fall of the second Prodi government, the picture simplified drastically. Two large majority-seeking parties emerged: Berlusconi's People of Freedom took 37.4% in the Chamber, Walter Veltroni's Democratic Party 33.2%. For the first time two single parties together exceeded 70% of the vote: it was the peak of Italian bipolarism.

The bipolarism of 2008 seemed destined to last, but it was instead its highest and almost final point. The 2011 economic crisis, the season of technocratic governments and the irruption of the Five Star Movement in 2013 would fragment the system again, turning it from bipolar to tripolar.

What remains is the legacy of fifteen years in which Italian voters learned something new: that their vote could send one government home and bring in another. An experience that the First Republic, with its blocked democracy, had never allowed.