Liberals Liberali | |
|---|---|
| Leader | Giovanni Giolitti |
| Other leaders | Sidney Sonnino Antonio Salandra Vittorio Emanuele Orlando Luigi Facta |
| Founded | 1913 |
| Dissolved | 1922 |
| Merger of | Historical Left Historical Right |
| Succeeded by | Italian Liberal Party |
| Ideology | Liberalism (Italian)[1] Classical liberalism Conservative liberalism[2] Monarchism |
| Political position | Centre[3] tocentre-right[4] |
| Election symbol | |
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TheLiberals (Italian:Liberali),[5] also known asLiberal Party (Italian:Partito Liberale,PL) orGiolittian Liberals (Italian:Liberali Giolittiani) from the name of their leader, was apolitical alliance formed in the first years of the 20th century by the ItalianPrime Minister and leader of theHistorical LeftGiovanni Giolitti. The alliance was formed when the Left and theRight merged in a singlecentrist andliberal coalition which largely dominated theItalian Parliament.
The origins ofliberalism in Italy are in theHistorical Right, a parliamentary group formed byCamillo Benso, Count of Cavour in the Parliament of theKingdom of Sardinia following the1848 revolution. The group was moderatelyconservative and supportedcentralised government, restrictedsuffrage,regressive taxation andfree trade. They dominated politics followingItalian unification in 1861, but never formed a party, basing their power oncensus suffrage andfirst-past-the-post voting system. The Right was opposed by the moreprogressiveHistorical Left, which overthrewMarco Minghetti's government during the so-called Parliamentary Revolution of 1876, which broughtAgostino Depretis to becomePrime Minister. However, Depretis immediately began to look for support among Rightist Members of Parliament, who readily changed their positions, in a context of widespreadcorruption. This phenomenon, known in Italian astrasformismo (roughly translatable in English as transformism—Prime MinisterGiovanni Giolitti was depicted as achameleon in a satirical newspaper), effectively removed political differences in Parliament, which was dominated by an undistinguished liberal bloc with a landslide majority until afterWorld War I. Two parliamentary factions alternated in government, one led bySidney Sonnino and the other, by far the largest of the two, by Giolitti. At that time, the Liberals governed in alliance with theRadicals, theDemocrats and eventually theReform Socialists.[6] This alliance governed against two smaller opposition, namely the Clericals composed by someVatican-oriented politicians andThe Extreme formed by thesocialist faction which represented a real left in a present-day concept.[6]
Giolitti was a master in the political art oftrasformismo, the method of making a flexiblecentrist coalition of government which isolated the extremes of theleft and theright in Italian politics after the unification. Under his influence, the Liberals did not develop as a structured party. They were instead a series of informal personal groupings with no formal links to political constituencies.[7] The period between the start of the 20th century and the start ofWorld War I, when he was Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior from 1901 to 1914 with only brief interruptions, is often called the Giolittian Era.[8][9]
Aleft liberal[8] with strong ethical concerns,[10] Giolitti's periods in office were notable for the passage of a wide range of progressive social reforms which improved the living standards of ordinary Italians, together with the enactment of several policies of government intervention.[9][11] Besides putting in place severaltariffs, subsidies and government projects, Giolitti also nationalized the private telephone and railroad operators. Liberal proponents offree trade criticized the Giolittian System, although Giolitti himself saw the development of the national economy as essential in the production of wealth.[12]
In the1913 general election, the Liberals were voted by more than two millions people, with 47.6% of votes and gaining 270 out 508 seats, therefore becoming by far the first party of the country.[13] Under the premiership ofAntonio Salandra, a member of the right-wing faction of the Liberals, Italy declared war toAustria-Hungary andGermany in 1915, entering inWorld War I. This decision was against the thought of Liberal leader Giolitti, who was a strong supporter of neutrality. In 1917, a member of the party's left-wing,Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, became Prime Minister and during his government Italy defeated Austria, earning him the title Premier of Victory.
At the end of World War I,universal suffrage andproportional representation were introduced. These reforms caused big problems to the Liberals which found themselves unable to stop the rise of two mass parties, theItalian Socialist Party and theItalian People's Party which had taken the control of many local authorities inNorthern Italy even before the war. The Italian particularity was that although theCatholic party opposed the Socialists in accordance with European standards, it was also in contrast with the Liberals and generally the right under the consequences of thecapture of Rome and the struggles between theHoly See and the Italian state which the Liberals had ruled for more than fifty years. Thegeneral election in 1919 saw success for the Socialist Party led byFilippo Turati, which gained the 32.3% of the vote. Giolitti's Liberals came only fifth, with 8.6% of the vote and 41 seats, behind the Italian People's Party ofDon Luigi Sturzo, with 20.5%.[13] The Parliament was thus divided into three different blocks with huge instability while the Socialists and the risingFascists instigators of political violence on opposite sides.
In this chaotic situation, the Liberals founded theItalian Liberal Party in 1922 which joined an alliance led by Fascists and formed a joint list for the1924 general election, transforming the Fascists from a small political force into an absolute-majority party. Albeit banned byBenito Mussolini in 1925, many old Liberal politicians were given prestigious yet not influential political posts such as seats in the Senate, which was stripped of any real power by Fascist reforms.
| Election | Leader | Chamber of Deputies | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Votes | % | Seats | +/– | Position | ||
| 1913 | 2,387,947 | 47.6 | 270 / 508 |  270 | 1st | |
| 1919 | 490,384 | 8.6 | 41 / 508 |  229 | 5th | |
| 1921[a] | IntoNational Bloc | 101 / 508 | 60 | – | ||
470,605 | 7.1 |  5th | ||||
