National Alliance (Italy)

National Alliance
Alleanza Nazionale
President Gianfranco Fini
(1995–2008)
Regent Ignazio La Russa
(2008–2009)
Founded 27 January 1995
Dissolved 22 March 2009
Preceded by Italian Social Movement[1]
Merged into The People of Freedom
Newspaper Secolo d'Italia
Membership  (2004) 250,000[2]
Ideology Conservatism[3]
National conservatism[4]
Political position Right-wing[1]
National affiliation Pole of Good Government (1994)
Pole for Freedoms
(1996–2001)
House of Freedoms
(2001–2008)
European affiliation Alliance for Europe of the Nations
International affiliation none
European Parliament group Union for Europe of the Nations

National Alliance (Italian: Alleanza Nazionale, AN) was a conservative[5][6][7][8] political party in Italy. It was the successor of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement that distanced itself from its former ideology on its convention in Fiuggi ("Fiuggi turning point") and dissolved in favour of the new National Alliance.[9][10]

Gianfranco Fini was the leader of the party following its foundation in 1995, however he stepped down in 2008 after being elected to the nominally non-partisan post of President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and was succeeded by Ignazio La Russa, who managed the merger of the party into The People of Freedom (PdL), which happened in 2009.

The AN's official newspaper was Secolo d'Italia.

History

Foundation

National Alliance, launched in 1994, was officially founded in January 1995, when the Italian Social Movement (MSI), the former neo-fascist party, merged with conservative elements of the former Christian Democracy, which had disbanded in 1994 after two years of scandals and various splits due to corruption at its highest levels, exposed by the Mani pulite investigation, and the Italian Liberal Party, disbanded in the same year. Former MSI members were however still the bulk of the new party and former MSI leader Gianfranco Fini was elected leader of the new party.

The AN logo followed a template very similar to that of the Democratic Party of the Left, with the logo of the direct predecessor party in a small circle, as a means of legally preventing others from using it. The name was suggested by an article on the Italian newspaper Il Tempo written in 1992 by Domenico Fisichella, a prominent conservative academic. Starting in the 1990s, the MSI gradually transformed into a mainstream right-wing party, culminating in its 1995 dissolution into AN.

Government participation

Gianfranco Fini in 2004.

The party was part of all three House of Freedoms coalition governments led by Silvio Berlusconi. Gianfranco Fini was notably nominated Deputy Prime Minister after the 2001 general election and was Foreign Minister from November 2004 to May 2006.

When Gianfranco Fini visited Israel in late November 2003 in the function of Italian Deputy Prime Minister, he labeled the racial laws issued by the fascist regime in 1938 as "infamous", as also Giorgio Almirante, historic leader of MSI, had done before.[11] He also referred to the Italian Social Republic as belonging to the most shameful pages of the past, and considered fascism part of an era of "absolute evil", something which was hardly acceptable to the few remaining hardliners of the party. As a result, Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who had been at odds with the party on a number of issues for a long time, and some hardliners left the party and formed Social Action.[7][12]

In occasion of the 2006 general election, AN ran within the House of Freedoms, with new allies. The centre-right lost by 24,000 votes in favour of the centre-left coalition The Union. Individually AN received nearly 5 million votes, amounting to 12.3%. In July 2007 a group of splinters led by Francesco Storace formed The Right, which was officially founded on 10 November. Seven MPs of AN, including Teodoro Buontempo and Daniela Santanchè, joined the new party.

The People of Freedom

In November 2007 Silvio Berlusconi announced that Forza Italia would have soon merged or transformed into The People of Freedom (PdL) party.[13][14][15]

After the sudden fall of the second Prodi government in January 2008, the breakup of The Union and the subsequent political crisis which led to a fresh general election, Berlusconi hinted that Forza Italia would have probably contested its last election and the new party would have been officially founded only after that election. In an atmosphere of reconciliation with Gianfranco Fini, Berlusconi also stated that the new party could see the participation of other parties.[16] Finally, on 8 February, Berlusconi and Fini agreed to form a joint list under the banner of the "The People of Freedom", allied with Lega Nord.[17] After the victory of the PdL in the 2008 general election, AN was merged into the PdL in early 2009.[18]

Ideology

National Alliance's political program emphasized:

Distinguishing itself from the MSI, the party distanced itself from Benito Mussolini and Fascism and made efforts to improve relations with Jewish groups.[7] With most hardliners leaving the party,[7][12] it sought to present itself as a respectable conservative party and to join forces with Forza Italia in the European People's Party and, eventually, in a united party of the centre-right.

Although the party approved the market economy and held favourable views on liberalizations and the privatization of state industries, however AN was to the left of Forza Italia on economic issues and sometimes supported statist policies.[19] That is why the party was strong in Rome and Lazio, where most civil servants live. Moreover, AN presented itself as a party promoting national cohesion, national identity and patriotism.

Regarding institutional reforms, the party was a long-time supporter of presidentialism and a plurality voting system, and came to support also federalism and to fully accept the alliance with Lega Nord, although the relations with that party were tense at times, especially about issues regarding national unity.

Gianfranco Fini, a moderniser who saw Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron as role-models, impressed an ambitious political line to the party, combining the pillars of conservative ideology like security, family values and patriotism with a progressive approach in other areas such as stem cell research and supporting voting rights for legal aliens. Some of these positions were not shared by many members of the party, most of whom staunchly opposed stem cell research and artificial insemination.[12]

Factions

National Alliance was a heterogeneous political party and within it members were divided in different factions, some of them very organized:

In the party there was also a group named Ethic-Religious Council, whose board members included Gaetano Rebecchini (founder, ex-DC), Riccardo Pedrizzi (president), Franco Tofoni (vice president), Luigi Gagliardi (secretary-general), Alfredo Mantovano, Antonio Mazzocchi and Riccardo Migliori. This was not a faction but an official organism within the party and expressed the official position of the party on ethical and religious matters. Sometimes the group criticized Gianfranco Fini for his liberal views on abortion, artificial insemination and stem-cell research, which led some notable ex-DC members as Publio Fiori to leave the party. Some members of the Council, such as Pedrizzi and Mantovano were described as members of an unofficial Catholic Right faction.

The party had roughly 10–15% support across Italy, having its stongholds in Central and Southern Italy (Lazio 18.6%, Umbria 15.2%, Marche 14.3%, Abruzzo 14.3%, Apulia 13.2%, Sardinia 12.9%, Tuscany 12.6% and Campania 12.6% in the last general election), scoring badly in Lombardy (10.2%) and Sicily (10.9%), while competing in the North-East (Friuli-Venezia Giulia 15.5% and Veneto 11.3%).

The party had a good showing in the first general election to which it took part (13.5% in 1994) and reached 15.7% in 1996, when Fini tried for the first time to replace Silvio Berlusconi as leader of the centre-right. From that moment the party suffered an electoral decline, but remained the third force of Italian politics.

In the 2006 general election, the final election to which the party participated with its own list, AN won 12.3% of the vote, securing 71 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 41 in the Senate. In the 2008 general election the party got 90 deputies[20] and 48 senators[21] elected.

The electoral results of National Alliance in the 10 most populated regions of Italy are shown in the table below.

1994 general1995 regional1996 general1999 European2000 regional2001 general2004 European2005 regional2006 general
Piedmont8.311.212.17.511.99.28.89.511.8
Lombardy5.810.09.06.09.78.67.28.710.2
Veneto7.710.711.78.39.88.59.08.111.3
Emilia-Romagna9.010.311.58.611.49.78.48.910.2
Tuscany10.913.115.810.914.913.010.910.912.6
Lazio25.324.528.920.323.120.418.423.9[22]18.6
Campania20.318.318.710.711.213.113.210.612.6
Apulia27.5[23]20.417.912.715.515.316.012.113.2
Calabria17.216.323.410.210.415.215.59.911.0
Sicily14.014.1 (1996)16.412.111.3 (2001)10.714.510.6 (2006)10.9
ITALY13.5-15.710.3-12.011.3-12.3

Election results

Italian Parliament

Chamber of Deputies
Election year # of
overall votes		 % of
overall vote		 # of
overall seats won		 +/– Leader
1994 5,214,133 (#3) 13.5
109 / 630
–
 Gianfranco Fini
1996 5,870,491 (#3) 15.7
92 / 630
Decrease 17
 Gianfranco Fini
2001 4,463,205 (#5) 12.0
99 / 630
Increase 7
 Gianfranco Fini
2006 4,706,654 (#3) 12.3
71 / 630
Decrease 18
 Gianfranco Fini
Senate of the Republic
Election year # of
overall votes		 % of
overall vote		 # of
overall seats won		 +/– Leader
1994 with PBG –
48 / 315
–
Gianfranco Fini
1996 with PpL –
43 / 315
Decrease 5
Gianfranco Fini
2001 with CdL –
45 / 315
Increase 2
Gianfranco Fini
2006 4,234,693 (#3) 12.2
41 / 315
Decrease 4
Gianfranco Fini

European Parliament

European Parliament
Election year # of
overall votes		 % of
overall vote		 # of
overall seats won		 +/– Leader
1994 4,108,670 (#3) 12.5
11 / 87
–
 Gianfranco Fini
1999 3,202,895 (#3) 10.3
9 / 87
Decrease 2
 Gianfranco Fini
2004 3,736,606 (#3) 11.5
9 / 78
–
 Gianfranco Fini

Leadership

Symbols

Factions

Stephen Roth Institute

References

  1. 1 2 Ruzza, Carlo; Fella, Stefano (2009), Re-inventing the Italian right: Territorial politics, populism and 'post-fascism', Routledge, p. 1
  2. ↑ http://www.cattaneo.org/archivi/adele/iscritti.xls
  3. ↑ Mareš, Miroslav (2006), Transnational Networks of Extreme Right Parties in East Central Europe: Stimuli and Limits of Cross-Border Cooperation (PDF), p. 4
  4. ↑ Tarchi, Marco (2007), "Recalcitrant Allies: The Conflicting Foreign Policy Agenda of the Alleanza Nazionale and the Lega Nord", Europe for the Europeans, Ashgate, p. 188
  5. ↑ Chiara Moroni, Da Forza Italia al Popolo della Libertà, Carocci, Roma 2008, pp. 75-77
  6. ↑ Oreste Massari, I partiti politici nelle democrazie contemporanee, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2004, p. 90
  7. 1 2 3 4 Luciano Bardi - Piero Ignazi - Oreste Massari, I partiti italiani, Egea 2007, pp. 151, 173n.
  8. ↑ Slomp, Hans (30 September 2011). Europe, A Political Profile: An American Companion to European Politics: An American Companion to European Politics. ABC-CLIO. p. 407. ISBN 978-0-313-39181-1. Retrieved 19 August 2012.
  9. ↑ Catellani, Patrizia; Milesi, Patrizia; Crescentini, Alberto (2006). One root, different branches: Identity, injustice and schisms. Extreme Right Activists in Europe: Through the Magnifying Glass. Routledge. p. 204.
  10. ↑ Moliterno, Gino, ed. (2002). "National alliance". Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture. Routledge. p. 562. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  11. ↑ Il Domenicale
  12. 1 2 3 4 Piero Ignazi, Partiti politici in Italia, Il Mulino, Bologna 2008, pp. 27-31.
  13. ↑ Sky tg24 - Tutte le notizie in formato video
  14. ↑ «Oggi nasce il partito del popolo italiano». Corriere della Sera
  15. ↑ Archived 17 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine.
  16. ↑ «Via l'Ici e stretta sulle intercettazioni» Corriere della Sera
  17. ↑ Svolta di Berlusconi, arriva il Pdl: "Forza Italia-An sotto stesso simbolo" - LASTAMPA.it
  18. ↑ Mussolini's heirs merge with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party The Telegraph. 23 March 2009
  19. ↑ Agnew, John (February 1997). "The dramaturgy of horizons: geographical scale in the 'Reconstruction of Italy' by the new Italian political parties, 1992–1995". Political Geography, special issue: Political Geography of Scale. Elsevier. 16 (2): 99–121. doi:10.1016/s0962-6298(96)00046-7.
  20. ↑ Excluding Fiamma Nirenstein, Alessandro Ruben and Souad Sbai, whose election was supported both by Forza Italia and National Alliance, http://download.alleanzanazionale.it/Elezioni2008/DeputatiPDLinXVIlegislatura.pdf
  21. ↑ Archived 21 November 2011 at the Wayback Machine.
  22. ↑ Combined result of National Alliance (16.9%) and Lista Storace (7.0%), personal list of AN regional leader Francesco Storace.
  23. ↑ Forza Italia failed to present a list and thus most centre-right voters voted for National Alliance.
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