Frederic Spotts & Theodor Wieser

Cambridge University Press, printed in Canada, first published in 1986

The radical cousins (pages 94-95)

Out of the lay-party traditions has come what is one of Europe most exotic parties - the colorful, unorthodox, tumultuous, silly-serious Radicals. Founded in 1955 as a secessionist offshoot of the Liberal party following its shift to the right under Malagodi, the Radicals share with the lay parties a political outlook that is liberal, secularist, and Europeanist. Like the lay parties, they have an impact beyond their electoral strenght. Also like the lay parties, they have been dominated by one man, in their case Marco Pannella. Beyond that, however, they are a unique - and in the view of the other parties a uniquely troublesome - phenomenon in Italian politics.

Originally the Radicals were a coterie of essentially upper-middle class intellectuals who aspired to bring together the Socialists and lay parties in a centrist bloc that would take the government away from the "clericalist Christian Democrats" while keeping it out of the hands of the "totalitarian Communists;" Reorganized in the early 1970s by Pannella, today's Radical party is a younger, rougher group of libertarians who are determined to replace 'partitocrazia' with participatory democracy and to force reforms on a political system it reguards as unwilling to respond to social change. Far too small to launch a frontal assault on an entrenched system, the Radicals have simultaneously tried to shake up system while working through it to bring about social and political reforms.

Radical aims and tactics have changed in emphasis over the years but there are a number of constants. No party ever practiced more firmly the political dictum that the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. Their most consistent cause has been the advancement of civil liberties and minority rights. Virtually the only opponents of the harsh law-and-order measures passed by parliament in the 1970s, they are also the strongest promoters of rights for conscientious objectors, homosexuals, feminists, and various social minorities. They played a vital role in mobilizing public opinion behind divorce and abortion legislation and in defeating the referenda to repeal those laws.

With the governing institutions in the control of the establishmed parties, the Radicals have appealed directly to the public through mass demonstrations, sit-ins, hunger strikes, an astute use of the media, and national referenda. The referendum in particular has been reguarded as a way of imbuing Italians with a sense of popular democracy. Parliamentary activity was long regarded as secondary, and only in 1976 did the Radicals enter a national election, to wide surprise winning four seats. During the late seventies the Radicals capitalized on a widespread libertarian mood among youth and made themselves a poll of attraction for nonviolent protesters and social outsiders, especially of the far left. They also appealed to floating voters, social outsiders, and a sprinkling of intellectuals and artists, such as the Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia. Trebling their vote - largely at Communist expense - they were the biggest winner in the 1979 election. In subsequent elections the Radicals scarcely bothered to

campaign but held on to much of their support.

In parliament the Radicals proved to be both a friend and an enemy of that body. They did their best to make it a forum for genuine debate of national issues rather than a front for decisions taken in committees and party headquarters. But they also made unprecedented use of the filibuster to block legislation they opposed, leaving it difficult at times for the chamber to function.

The Radicals have disproved the common wisdom that they could not long survive, though it is not clear they have the coherence and self-discipline to maintain themselves in the longer run. Nonetheless they have already made a contribution to Italian democracy. In a country with almost no public interest groups for social causes, the party has given tens of thousands of Italians a sense of participation in the political process and offered unorthodox youth the possibility of legitimate political activity - at a time when the alternative for some might have been terrorism.