Italian Liberal Party Partito Liberale Italiano | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Abbreviation | PLI |
| Leaders |
|
| Founded | 8 October 1922 |
| Dissolved | 6 February 1994 |
| Preceded by | Liberals |
| Succeeded by | Federation of Liberals[1] (legal successor) Union of the Centre[1] (split) |
| Newspaper | L'Opinione |
| Youth wing | Italian Liberal Youth |
| Membership(1958) | 173,722 (max)[2] |
| Ideology | Liberalism (Italian) |
| Political position | Centre[3] tocentre-right[4][5] |
| National affiliation | National Bloc (1922–24) National List (1924–26) CLN (1943–47) UDN (1946–48) National Bloc (1948–49) Centrism (1947–58) Pentapartito[6] (1980–91) Quadripartito (1991–94) |
| European affiliation | ELDR Party |
| European Parliament group | ELDR Group |
| International affiliation | Liberal International |
| Colours | Blue |
TheItalian Liberal Party (Italian:Partito Liberale Italiano,PLI) was aliberalpolitical party in Italy.
The PLI, which was heir to the liberal currents of both theHistorical Right and theHistorical Left, was a minor party afterWorld 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 theItalian Republican Party the left-wing. The PLI disintegrated in 1994 following the fallout of theTangentopoli corruption scandal and was succeeded by several minor parties. The party's most influential leaders wereGiovanni Giolitti,Benedetto Croce andGiovanni Malagodi.
The origins ofliberalism in Italy are with theHistorical Right, a parliamentary group formed byCamillo Benso di Cavour in the Parliament of theKingdom of Sardinia, following the1848 revolution. The group was moderatelyconservative and supported centralised government, restrictedsuffrage,regressive taxation, andfree trade. They dominated Italian politics following the country'sunification in 1861, but never formed a party. The Liberals were indeed a loose coalition of local leaders, whose sources of strength werecensus suffrage and thefirst-past-the-post voting system.
The Right was opposed by its moreprogressive counterpart, theHistorical 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 Rightists MPs, who readily changed their positions, in a context of widespreadcorruption. This phenomenon, known in Italian astrasformismo (roughly translatable in English as "transformism" — in a satirical newspaper, the PM was depicted as achameleon), effectively removed political differences in Parliament, which was dominated by an undistinguished liberal bloc with a landslide majority untilWorld War I.
Two liberal parliamentary factions alternated in government, a conservative one led bySidney Sonnino and a progressive one led byGiovanni 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, theLiberals, in 1913, also with the participation of Sonnino. The Liberals governed in alliance with theRadicals, theDemocrats and, eventually, theReformist Socialists.[7]
At the end of World War I,universal suffrage andproportional representation were introduced. These reforms caused big problems to the Liberals, who found themselves unable to stop the rise of two mass parties, theItalian Socialist Party (PSI) and theItalian People's Party (PPI), which had taken the control of many local authorities innorthern Italy even before the war. Through theChristian-democratic PPI,Catholics, who were long inactive due to the trauma of thecapture of Rome and the struggles between theHoly 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 theItalian Liberal Party (PLI), which immediately joined an alliance led by theNational Fascist Party and formed with it a joint list for the1924 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 byBenito 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 byBenedetto 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 ananti-fascist himself, and joined theNational Liberation Committee. After the end ofWorld 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 theBank of Italy between 1945 and 1948 had reshaped Italian economy, succeeded him asPresident of Italy.
In the1946 general election the PLI, as part of theNational Democratic Union, won 6.8% of the vote, which was somewhat below expectations for a coalition representing the pre-Fascist political establishment. Indeed, the Union was supported by all the survivors of the Italian political class before the rise of Fascism, fromVittorio Emanuele Orlando to RadicalFrancesco Saverio Nitti. In its first years, the PLI was home to very different ideological factions and, for instance, it was successively led byLeone Cattani, a representative of the internal left, and then byRoberto Lucifero, amonarchist-conservative. In 1948Bruno Villabruna, a moderate, was elected secretary and sought to re-unite all the Liberals under the party (also Cattani, who had left the party after Lucifero's election, returned into the fold).
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InGiovanni Malagodi the PLI found a consequential leader. Under his 18 years at the head, Malagodi moved the party further to the right on economic issues. This caused in 1956 the exit of the party's left-wing, including Cattani, Villabruna,Eugenio Scalfari andMarco Pannella, who established theRadical Party. In particular, the PLI opposed the new centre-left coalition which also included theItalian Socialist Party, and presented itself as the mainconservative party in Italy.
Malagodi managed to draw some votes from theItalian Social Movement, theMonarchist National Party and especiallyChristian Democracy, whose electoral base was mainly composed of conservatives suspicious of the Socialists, increasing the party's share to a historical record of 7.0% in the1963 general election. After Malagodi's resignation from the party's leadership, the PLI was defeated with a humiliating 1.3% in the1976 general election, but tried to re-gain strength by repositioning in the political centre and supporting social reforms supported by the Radicals, such asdivorce.
AfterValerio Zanone took over as party secretary in 1976, the PLI adopted a morecentrist and, to some extent,social-liberal approach. The new secretary opened to theSocialists, hoping to put in action a sort of "lib–lab" cooperation, similar to theLib–Lab pact experimented in theUnited Kingdom from 1977 to 1979 between theLabour Party and theLiberals. In 1983 the PLI finally joined thePentapartito coalition composed also of theChristian Democracy (DC), theItalian Socialist Party (PSI), theItalian Democratic Socialist Party (PSDI) and theItalian Republican Party (PRI). In the 1980s the party was led byRenato Altissimo andAlfredo Biondi.
In 1992–1994 the Italian party system was shaken by the uncovering of thecorruption system nicknamedTangentopoli by theMani pulite investigation. In the first months, the PLI seemed immune to investigation. However, as the investigations further unravelled, the party turned out to be part of the corruption scheme, along with its coalition partners.Francesco De Lorenzo, the LiberalMinister of Health, was one of the most loathed politicians in Italy for his corruption, that involved stealing funds from the sick and allowing commercialisation of medicines based on bribes.
The party was disbanded on 6 February 1994 and at least four heirs tried to take its legacy:
In a few years after 1994, most Liberals migrated to FI, while others joined thecentre-left coalition, especiallyDemocracy is Freedom – The Daisy (DL).
The party was re-founded in 1997 byStefano De Luca and re-took its original name in 2004. The new PLI gathered some of the former right-wing Liberals, but soon distanced itself from thecentre-right coalition, led by FI, to follow an autonomous path and try to unite all the Liberals, from left to right, in a single party.
The party's ideological tradition wasliberalism,[8][9][10][11][12][13][14] including different variants and factions. Indeed, as the party was at times the bulwark of secular conservatism and monarchism, it has been variously described asclassical-liberal,[14][15]conservative-liberal,[16]liberist[11][14][17] (meaningeconomically liberal and/orright-libertarian),liberal-conservative,[18][19] andconservative.[20][21][22] The party's political position has been usually described ascentre-right[23][5] and to the right ofChristian Democracy, but sometimes alsocentrist.[24][25] The party always included more progressive factions, chiefly including the one that broke away to form theRadical Party in 1956, and, under the leadership ofValerio Zanone, it arguably became acentre-left party: while underGiovanni Malagodi the PLI refused any cooperation with theItalian Socialist Party, under Zanone and the "lib-lab" pact the party became a close ally of the Socialists.[26][27][28] Additionally it heldlaicist positions more similar to the other two centrist parties in thePentapartito,Italian Republican Party andItalian Democratic Socialist Party.[25][29][30]
Before World Wars the Liberals constituted the political establishment that governed Italy for decades. They had their main bases inPiedmont, where many leading liberal politicians of theKingdom of Sardinia and theKingdom of Italy came from, andsouthern Italy. The Liberals never gained large support afterWorld War II as they were not able to become a mass party and were replaced byChristian Democracy (DC) as the dominant political force. In the1946 general election, the first after the war, the PLI gained 6.8% as part of theNational Democratic Union. At that time they were strong especially in the South, as DC was mainly rooted in theNorth: 21.0% inCampania, 22.8% inBasilicata, 10.4% inApulia, 12.8% inCalabria and 13.6% inSicily.[31]
However, the party soon found its main constituency in the industrial elites of the "industrial triangle" formed by the metropolitan areas ofTurin,Milan andGenoa. The PLI had its best results in the 1960s, when it was rewarded by conservative voters for its opposition to the participation of theItalian Socialist Party (PSI) in government. The party won 7.0% of the vote in1963 (15.2% in Turin, 18.7% in Milan and 11.5% in Genoa) and 5.8% in1968. The PLI suffered a decline in the 1970s and settled around 2–3% in the 1980s, when its strongholds were reduced to Piedmont, especially the provinces ofTurin andCuneo, and, to a minor extent, western Lombardy, Liguria and Sicily.[32] By the end of the 1980s, similarly to the other parties of thePentapartito coalition (Christian Democrats, Socialists,Republicans andDemocratic Socialists), the Liberals strengthened their grip on the South, while in the North they lost some of their residual votes toLega Nord. In the1992 general election, the last before theTangentopoli scandals, the PLI won 2.9% of the vote, largely thanks to the increase of votes from the South.[32] After the end of the "First Republic" former Liberals were very influential withinForza Italia (FI) in Piedmont, Liguria and, strangely enough, inVeneto, where a former Liberal,Giancarlo Galan, was three times electedpresident.
The electoral results of the PLI in general (Chamber of Deputies) andEuropean Parliament elections since 1913 are shown in the chart below.
 | This graph was using thelegacy Graph extension, which is no longer supported. It needs to be converted to thenew Chart extension. |
| Election | Leader | Chamber of Deputies | Senate of the Kingdom | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Votes | % | Seats | +/– | Position | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | Position | ||
| 1924 | 233,521 | 3.3 | 15 / 535 |  15 | 6th | No election | |||||
| 1929 | None | Banned | 0 / 400 |  15 | – | No election | |||||
| 1934 | Banned | 0 / 400 |  0 | – | No election | ||||||
| Election | Leader | Constituent Assembly | No upper house | ||||||||
| Votes | % | Seats | +/– | Position | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | Position | ||
| 1946 | 1,560,638[a] | 6.8 | 31 / 535 | 31 | 4th | No election | |||||
| Election | Leader | Chamber of Deputies | Senate of the Republic | ||||||||
| Votes | % | Seats | +/– | Position | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | Position | ||
| 1948 | 1,003,727[b] | 3.8 | 14 / 574 | 17 | 4th | 1,222,419[b] | 5.4 | 7 / 237 | 7 | 4th | |
| 1953 | 815,929 | 3.0 | 13 / 590 | 1 | 7th | 695,816 | 2.9 | 3 / 237 | 5 | 7th | |
| 1958 | 1,047,081 | 3.5 | 17 / 596 | 4 | 6th | 1,012,610 | 3.9 | 4 / 246 | 1 | 6th | |
| 1963 | 2,144,270 | 7.0 | 39 / 630 | 22 | 4th | 2,043,323 | 7.4 | 18 / 315 | 14 | 4th | |
| 1968 | 1,850,650 | 5.8 | 31 / 630 | 8 | 4th | 1,943,795 | 6.8 | 16 / 315 | 2 | 4th | |
| 1972 | 1,300,439 | 3.9 | 20 / 630 | 11 | 6th | 1,319,175 | 4.4 | 8 / 315 | 8 | 6th | |
| 1976 | 480,122 | 1.3 | 5 / 630 | 15 | 8th | 438,265 | 1.4 | 2 / 315 | 6 | 8th | |
| 1979 | 712,646 | 1.9 | 9 / 630 | 4 | 8th | 691,718 | 2.2 | 2 / 315 | 0 | 8th | |
| 1983 | 1,066,980 | 2.9 | 16 / 630 | 7 | 7th | 834,771 | 2.7 | 6 / 315 | 4 | 7th | |
| 1987 | 809,946 | 2.1 | 11 / 630 | 5 | 9th | 700,330 | 2.2 | 3 / 315 | 3 | 9th | |
| 1992 | 1,121,264 | 2.9 | 17 / 630 | 6 | 8th | 939,159 | 2.8 | 4 / 315 | 1 | 8th | |
| Election | Leader | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | Position | EP Group |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1979 | 1,271,159 | 3.6 | 3 / 81 | 3 | 7th | LDR | |
| 1984 | 2,140,501[a] | 6.1 | 3 / 81 | 0 | 5th | ||
| 1989 | 1,532,388[b] | 4.4 | 4 / 81 | 1 | 5th |
| Regions of Italy | |||||
| Election year | Votes | % | Seats | +/− | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | 1,290,715 (6th) | 4.8 | 27 / 720 | – | |
| 1975 | 749,821 (7th) | 2.5 | 11 / 720 | 16 | |
| 1980 | 816,418 (7th) | 2.7 | 15 / 720 | 4 | |
| 1985 | 702,273 (7th) | 2.2 | 13 / 720 | 2 | |
| 1990 | 630,242 (9th) | 2.0 | 13 / 720 | - | |
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 1946–1994 main political parties in Italy | |
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