Italian general election, 1948
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General elections were held in Italy on 18 April 1948 to elect the first Parliament of the Italian Republic. After the Soviet-backed coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, the U.S. became alarmed about Soviet intentions in Central Europe. The U.S. feared that Italy would be drawn into the Soviet sphere of influence if the leftist Popular Democratic Front (Italian
abbr. An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
: FDP), which consisted of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), were to win the 1948 general election. As the last month of the election campaign began, '' Time'' magazine published an article which argued that an FDP victory would push Italy to "the brink of catastrophe". The U.S. consequently intervened in the election by heavily funding the centrist coalition led by
Christian Democracy Christian democracy (sometimes named Centrist democracy) is a political ideology that emerged in 19th-century Europe under the influence of Catholic social teaching and neo-Calvinism. It was conceived as a combination of modern democratic ...
(, DC) and launching an
anti-communist Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, w ...
propaganda campaign in Italy. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) claims that the Soviet Union responded by sending exorbitant funds to the FDP coalition. However, the PCI refuted this claim and, in contrast, expressed its discontent with what it perceived as a lack of support from the Soviets. The DC coalition won the election by a comfortable margin and defeated the FDP coalition. The Christian Democrats went on to form a government without the leftists, who had been expelled from the government coalition in the May 1947 crises and remained frozen out.


Electoral system

The pure party-list proportional representation chosen two years before for the election of the Constituent Assembly was adopted for the Chamber of Deputies. Italian provinces were divided into 31 constituencies, each electing a group of candidates. In each constituency, seats were divided between open lists using the largest remainder method with the
Imperiali quota The Imperiali quota is a formula used to calculate the minimum number, or quota, of votes required to capture a seat in some forms of single transferable vote or largest remainder method party-list proportional representation voting systems. It i ...
. Remaining votes and seats transferred to the national level, where special
closed list Closed list describes the variant of party-list systems where voters can effectively only vote for political parties as a whole; thus they have no influence on the party-supplied order in which party candidates are elected. If voters had some inf ...
s of national leaders received the last seats using the
Hare quota The Hare quota (also known as the simple quota) is a formula used under some forms of proportional representation. In these voting systems the quota is the number of votes that guarantees a candidate, or a party in some cases, captures a seat. Th ...
. For the Senate, 237 single-seat constituencies were created. The candidates needed a two-thirds majority to be elected, but only 15 aspiring senators were elected this way. All remaining votes and seats were grouped in party lists and regional constituencies, where the D'Hondt method was used: Inside the lists, candidates with the best percentages were elected. This electoral system became standard in Italy, and was used until 1993.


Campaign

The election remain unmatched in verbal aggression and fanaticism in Italy's period of democracy. According to the historian Gianni Corbi the 1948 election was "the most passionate, the most important, the longest, the dirtiest, and the most uncertain electoral campaign in Italian history".Ventresca, ''From Fascism to Democracy''
p. 4
/ref> The election was between two competing visions of the future of Italian society. On the right, a Roman Catholic, conservative and capitalist Italy, represented by the governing Christian Democrats of De Gasperi. On the left a secular, revolutionary and socialist society, linked to the Soviet Union and represented by the FDP coalition led by the PCI. The Christian Democrat campaign pointed to the recent communist coup in Czechoslovakia. It warned that in Communist countries, "children send parents to jail", "children are owned by the state", and told voters that disaster would strike Italy if the Communists were to take power.
TIME Magazine, 12 April 1948

TIME Magazine, 19 April 1948
Another slogan was "In the secrecy of the polling booth, God sees you – Stalin doesn't.""Fertility vote galvanises Vatican"
BBC News, 13 June 2005
The FDP campaign focused on living standards and avoided embarrassing questions of foreign policy, such as UN membership (vetoed by the Soviet Union) and Yugoslav control of Trieste, or losing American financial and food aid. The PCI led the FDP coalition and had effectively marginalised the PSI, which suffered loss in terms of parliamentary seats and political power. The PSI had also been hurt by the secession of a social-democratic faction led by
Giuseppe Saragat Giuseppe Saragat (; 19 September 1898 – 11 June 1988) was an Italian politician who served as the president of Italy from 1964 to 1971. Early life Born to Sardinian parents, he was a member of the Unitary Socialist Party (Italy, 1922), Unita ...
, which contested the election with the concurrent list of Socialist Unity. The PCI had difficulties in restraining its more militant members, who, in the period immediately after the war, had engaged in violent acts of reprisals. The areas affected by the violence (the so-called "Red Triangle" of
Emilia Emilia may refer to: People * Emilia (given name), list of people with this name Places * Emilia (region), a historical region of Italy. Reggio, Emilia * Emilia-Romagna, an administrative region in Italy, including the historical regions of Emi ...
, or parts of Liguria around Genoa and Savona, for instance) had previously seen episodes of brutality committed by the
Fascist Fascism is a far-right, Authoritarianism, authoritarian, ultranationalism, ultra-nationalist political Political ideology, ideology and Political movement, movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and pol ...
s during
Benito Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...
's regime and the Italian Resistance during the Allied advance through Italy.


Foreign interference

The 1948 general election was greatly influenced by the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
that was underway between the Soviet Union and the United States.Brogi, ''Confronting America''
pp. 101–110
/ref> After his defeat in the election, PCI leader Palmiro Togliatti stated on 22 April that: "The elections were not free... Brutal foreign intervention was used consisting of a threat to starve the country by withholding ERP aid if it voted for the Democratic Front... The menace to use the atom bomb against towns or regions" that voted pro-communist. The U.S. government's '' Voice of America'' radio began broadcasting anti-Communist propaganda to Italy on 24 March 1948. The CIA, by its own admission, gave US$1 million (equivalent to $ in ) to what they referred to as "center parties" and was accused of publishing forged letters to discredit the leaders of the PCI. The
National Security Act of 1947 The National Security Act of 1947 ( Pub.L.br>80-253 61 Stat.br>495 enacted July 26, 1947) was a law enacting major restructuring of the United States government's military and intelligence agencies following World War II. The majority of the pro ...
, that made foreign covert operations possible, had been signed into law about six months earlier by the American President
Harry S. Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...
. U.S. agencies also sent ten million letters, made numerous short-wave radio broadcasts, and funded the publishing of books and articles, all of which warned Italians of the "consequences" of a communist victory. Overall, the U.S. funnelled $10 million to $20 million (equivalent to $ to $ in ) into the country for specifically anti-PCI purposes. The CIA also made use of off-the-books sources of financing to interfere in the election: millions of dollars from the Economic Cooperation Administration affiliated with the Marshall Plan and more than $10 million in captured Nazi money were steered to anti-communist propaganda. In this regard, CIA operative
F. Mark Wyatt Felton Mark Wyatt (May 23, 1920 – June 29, 2006) was a CIA agent. He was raised in Woodland, California and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1942. During World War II, he served as a communications officer on board of the d ...
claimed: "We had bags of money that we delivered to selected politicians, to defray their political expenses, their campaign expenses, for posters, for pamphlets."F. Mark Wyatt, 86, C.I.A. Officer, Is Dead
The New York Times, 6 July 2006
Wyatt also claimed that, in the lead up to the election, the PCI received exorbitant funds of up to $10 million per month from the Soviet Union and that Italian authorities were aware of the Soviets' activities. This was refuted by the PCI itself, which voiced its frustration at the Soviets' lack of support for the FDP campaign.Brogi, ''Confronting America''
p. 109
/ref> Italian historian Alessandro Brogi dismisses the CIA's claims as "overexaggerated" and notes that the Soviets only undertook "ad hoc last minute diplomatic ndfinancial action" because it feared that inaction in Italy would set a precedent for U.S. intervention in Eastern Europe. Despite amicable meetings in the postwar years between top PCI official Pietro Secchia and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin,Pons, Silvio (2001)
"Stalin, Togliatti, and the Origins of the Cold War in Europe"
''Journal of Cold War Studies'', Volume 3, Number 2, Spring 2001, pp. 3–27
the Soviets were apprehensive about committing to Italy financially and only provided "occasional and modest" funds to the PCI.Ventresca, ''From Fascism to Democracy''
p. 269
/ref>Callanan, ''Covert Action in the Cold War''
pp. 41–45
/ref> The Christian Democrats eventually won the 1948 election with 48 per cent of the vote, and the FDP received 31 per cent. The CIA's practice of influencing the political situation was repeated in every Italian election for at least the next 24 years. No leftist coalition won a general election until 1996. That was partly because of Italians' traditional bent for conservatism and, even more importantly, the Cold War, with the U.S. closely watching Italy, in their determination to maintain a vital NATO presence amidst the Mediterranean and retain the Yalta-agreed status quo in western Europe. The Irish government, motivated by the country's devout Catholicism, also interfered in the election by funnelling the modern day equivalent of €2 million through the Irish Embassy to the Vatican, which then distributed it to Catholic politicians.
Joseph Walshe Joseph (Joe) Walshe (2 October 1886 – 6 February 1956) was an Irish civil servant and diplomat. As Secretary of the Department of External Affairs of the Irish Free State from 1923 to 1946, he was the department's most senior official. Early ...
, Ireland's ambassador to the Vatican, had privately suggested secretly funding Azione Cattolica."Irish state secretly intervened in Italian 1948 general election"
''Irish Times''


Parties and leaders


Results

Christian Democracy won a sweeping victory, taking 48.5 per cent of the vote and 305 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 131 seats in the Senate. With an absolute majority in both chambers, DC leader and premier Alcide De Gasperi could have formed an exclusively DC government. Instead, he formed a "centrist" coalition with Liberals, Republicans and Social Democrats. De Gasperi formed three
ministries Ministry may refer to: Government * Ministry (collective executive), the complete body of government ministers under the leadership of a prime minister * Ministry (government department), a department of a government Religion * Christian mi ...
during the parliamentary term, the second one in 1950 after the defection of the Liberals, who hoped for more rightist politics, and the third one in 1951 after the defection of the Social-democrats, who hoped for more leftist politics. Following a provision of the new republican constitution, all living democratic deputies elected during the 1924 general election and deposed by the National Fascist Party in 1926, automatically became members of the first republican Senate.


Chamber of Deputies


By constituency


Senate of the Republic


By constituency


Maps


Notes


References


Further reading

* Chapter 2 Italy 1947–1948
Free elections: Hollywood style
* Brogi, Alessandro (2011).
Confronting America: The Cold War Between the United States and the Communists in France and Italy
', Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, * Callanan, James (2010).
Covert Action in the Cold War: US Policy, Intelligence and CIA Operations
', London/New York: I.B. Tauris, * Del Pero, Mario
"The United States and 'psychological warfare' in Italy, 1948–1955"
''Journal of American History'' 87.4 (2001): 1304–1334. * Luconi, Stefano. "Anticommunism, Americanization, and ethnic identity: Italian Americans and the 1948 parliamentary elections in Italy." ''Historian'' 62.2 (1999): 285–302
online
* Lundestad, Geir. "Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945–1952." ''Journal of peace research'' 23.3 (1986): 263–277. * Miller, James E. "Taking off the gloves: The United States and the Italian elections of 1948." ''Diplomatic History'' 7.1 (1983): 35–56
Online
* Mistry, Kaeten. "The case for political warfare: Strategy, organization and US involvement in the 1948 Italian election." ''Cold War History'' 6.3 (2006): 301–329. * Mistry, Kaeten. ''The United States, Italy and the origins of cold War: Waging political warfare, 1945–1950'' (Cambridge UP, 2014). * Pedaliu, Effie G. H. "The 18 April 1948 Italian election: seventy years on." ''LSE European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) Blog'' (2018
online
* Pedaliu, Effie G. H. "The 'British Way to Socialism': British Intervention in the Italian Election of April 1948 and its Aftermath." in Pedaliu, ''Britain, Italy and the Origins of the Cold War'' (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2003) pp. 58–95. * Pons, Silvio. "Stalin, Togliatti, and the origins of the cold war in Europe." ''Journal of Cold War Studies'' 3.2 (2001): 3–27
online
* Ventresca, Robert A.
From Fascism to Democracy: Culture and Politics in the Italian Election of 1948
', (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004).


External links

* Pedaliu, Effie GH.
The 18 April 1948 Italian election: seventy years on
LSE European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) Blog (2018) {{Italian elections Italy
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