Italian Radical Party Partito Radicale Italiano
Leaders	Ettore Sacchi Francesco Saverio Nitti
Founded	27 May 1904; 121 years ago (1904-05-27)
Dissolved	26 April 1922; 103 years ago (1922-04-26)
Preceded by	Historical Far Left
Merged into	Social Democracy
Headquarters	Rome, Italy
Ideology	Radicalism
Political position	Centre-left
National affiliation	Agreed Lists of Liberals, Democrats and Radicals (1919–1921)
Colours	Dark green[1]
Politics of Italy Political parties Elections

TheItalian Radical Party (Italian:Partito Radicale Italiano), also known as theHistorical Radical Party (Partito Radicale storico), was a political party in Italy. Heir of theHistorical Far Left and representative of Italy'spolitical left in its beginning, with the rise of theItalian Socialist Party, it came to representcentre-left politics. The party was associated withradicalism,^[2]republicanism,secularism,social liberalism, andanti-clericalism.^[3]

Since 1877, the Radical Party was active as a loose parliamentary group grown out from theHistorical Far Left. The group was later organised as a full-fledged party in 1904 under the leadership ofEttore Sacchi. Leading Radicals includedErnesto Nathan (mayor of Rome with the support of theItalian Socialist Party and theItalian Republican Party from 1907 to 1913),Romolo Murri (aCatholic priest who was suspended from his ministry for having joined the party and who is widely considered in Italy the precursor ofChristian democracy), andFrancesco Saverio Nitti. The Radicals were originally strong inLombardy, notably in the northernProvince of Sondrio, the southeasternProvince of Mantua, northernVeneto andFriuli,Emilia-Romagna, andcentral Italy, especially around Rome. Later on, they lost votes to the Socialists inEmilia and to the Republicans inRomagna but strengthened their position in Veneto, notably holding for almost twenty years the single-seat constituencies ofVenice andPadua, which had also Radical mayors, andsouthern Italy, where they were previously virtually non-existent.^[4]

In the1913 Italian general election, the Radicals obtained their best result with 10.4% of the vote and 62 seats in theChamber of Deputies. With Nitti, a southerner, the Radicals became part of the governing coalition dominated by theLiberal Union ofGiovanni Giolitti, who had positioned his party in the centre-left and supported many Radical reforms, while the Radicals had moved toward the centre. Nitti himself was theItalian Minister of the Treasury from 1917 to 1919 andPrime Minister of Italy from 1919 to 1920.^[5][6] In the1919 Italian general election, the Radicals filed joint candidates with the Liberals in 54% of the constituencies.^[4] For the1921 Italian general election, they joined forces with several minor liberal parties to form theDemocratic Liberal Party. The joint list gained 15.9% of the vote and 96 seats, doing particularly well inPiedmont and the South.^[4]

AfterWorld War II, some former Radicals led by Nitti joined theNational Democratic Union, along with theItalian Liberal Party and other elements of the political bloc that governed Italy from the years of Giolitti until the rise ofBenito Mussolini'sItalian fascist regime. The Radicals, who were once the far left of the Italian political spectrum, were finally associated with the old Liberal establishment, which was replaced byChristian Democracy as the leading political force in the country. Someleft-wing elements of the old Radicals took part to the foundation of theAction Party in 1942, while a newRadical Party was launched in 1955 by the left-wing of the former Liberals. These new Radicals, whose longtime leader wasMarco Pannella, claimed to be the ideological successors of the Historical Far Left, such asAgostino Bertani andFelice Cavallotti, and the Radicals.^[5][6]

Election	Leader	Chamber of Deputies
		Votes	%	Seats	+/–	Position
1904	Ettore Sacchi	128,002	8.4	37 / 508	37	4th
1909		181,242	9.9	48 / 508	11	3rd
1913		522,522	10.4	62 / 508	14	3rd
1919	Francesco Saverio Nitti	110,697	2.0	12 / 508	50	7th

• Secretary: Giovanni Amici (1904–1914), Mario Cevolotto (1919–1920), Gino Bandini (1920–1921), Ernesto Pietriboni (1921–1922)

• Radical parties in Italy
• Political parties established in 1877
• Defunct political parties in Italy
• Liberal parties in Italy
• Defunct liberal political parties
• 1877 establishments in Italy
• Anti-clerical parties

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