Italy

H

Transport

Italy has a large merchant fleet; its total displacement in 1995 was about 11.8 million deadweight tonnes. The country’s chief seaports include Genoa, Trieste, Taranto, and Venice. Italy is served by about 16,751 km (10,409 mi) of operated railway track, more than half of which is electrified. The government operates most of the railway lines. The country has about 484,688 km (301,171 mi) of roads, including some 6,301 km (3,915 mi) of limited-access motorways (autostrade). One of the longest road tunnels in the world, the Mont Blanc Tunnel linking Italy and France, was opened in 1965. The two countries are also linked via the Mount Fréjus vehicular tunnel, opened in 1980. In 2004 there were around 590 passenger cars for every 1,000 people. Alitalia, the state airline, provides both domestic and international service. The country’s busiest airport is near Rome (Leonardo da Vinci International Airport); the largest international airport is Malpensa Airport near Milan. There is a number of other important centres: at Bologna (Marconi), Genoa (Cristoforo Colombo), Milan (Linate), Naples (Capodichino), Pisa (Galileo Galilei), Turin (Torino), and Venice (Marco Polo).

I

Communications

Since the abolition in 1976 of the Italian government’s monopoly on broadcasting, the number of radio and television stations in the country has increased from less than 100 to more than 1,000. As the radio and television industries have grown, the print media, especially national publications, have declined, although local and regional publications, including those produced by political parties and by the Roman Catholic Church, remain an important part of Italy’s communications network. Influential dailies include Corriere della Sera, issued in Milan, and La Stampa, published in Turin. In 1997 approximately 51 million radios and 28 million television sets were in use in the country; telephones numbered approximately 427 per 1,000 people in 2005.

V

Government

Italy has been a democratic republic since June 2, 1946, when the monarchy was abolished by popular referendum. By the terms of the constitution that became effective on January 1, 1948, the re-establishment of the Fascist party is prohibited; direct male heirs of the House of Savoy are ineligible to vote or hold any public office and are, in fact, banished from Italian soil; and recognition is no longer accorded to titles of nobility, although titles in existence prior to October 28, 1922, may be used as part of the bearer’s name. Although Italy’s tumultuous politics have produced more than 50 different governments since the advent of the democratic system, order is maintained through a well-established bureaucracy that supports the elected offices. The constitution is currently under review, with reform proposals including a reduction in parliamentary seats and a directly elected presidency.

A

Executive and Legislature

The president of Italy is elected for a seven-year term by a joint session of parliament augmented by three delegates from each of the 20 regional councils, except that of Valle d’Aosta, which sends only one. The president, who must be at least 50 years old, is ordinarily elected by a two-thirds majority. The president has the right to dissolve the Senate and Chamber of Deputies at any time except during the last six months of his tenure. The president usually has little to do with the actual running of the government. This is in the hands of the prime minister—who is chosen by the president and must have the confidence of parliament—and the Cabinet of ministers. The prime minister (sometimes called the premier) is generally the leader of the party that has the largest representation in the Chamber of Deputies.

The Italian parliament consists of a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies elected by popular suffrage for five-year terms of office. For many years, Italian citizens voted for political parties, and individual representatives were appointed by party leaders in a proportional manner. But as a result of corruption scandals in the early 1990s, a number of public referendums was passed in April 1993 that mandated a more direct electoral system. Beginning with the elections of March 1994, three quarters of the 630 seats in the lower-house Chamber of Deputies and an identical proportion of the 315 elected seats in the upper-house Senate are now filled by direct candidate ballot. The other 25 per cent of representatives continue to be appointed by party leaders according to each party’s electoral success. There are also life members in the Senate, a group made up of past presidents and their honorary nominees (each president is entitled to make up to five such appointments). Citizens must be 25 years of age or older to vote for senators; in all other elections, all citizens over age 18 are eligible to vote.

B

Political Parties

During the first half of the 1990s, in the face of widespread political scandal, Italy moved from a coalition system of politics in which a single party had long dominated to a more splintered system of powerful new parties and alliances. In January 1994 the Partito Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democratic Party), a part of 52 consecutive coalitions that had ruled Italy since 1948, was dissolved into two separate parties, the Popular Party and the Christian Democratic Centre Party. In the reorganization, Forza Italia (“Go, Italy”) emerged as a leading political party, along with the federalist Northern League and the neo-Fascist National Alliance; these three parties make up the right-wing Freedom Alliance, which won the March 1994 and May 2001 elections. The Democratic Party of the Left, one of the largest Communist parties in Western Europe, along with the Italian People’s Party, the Italian Renewal Party, Refounded Communists, and several smaller parties, leads the left-wing Olive Tree Alliance, which won the April 1996 elections. The country’s minor parties include the Green Party, the Liberal Party of Italy, several Socialist parties, the Republican Party of Italy, the Radical Party, and the Anti-Mafia Network Party. Popolo della Libertà (People of Freedom), the successor party to Forza Italia, formed by Silvio Berlusconi in 2007, won the 2008 general election.