How The Catholic Parties Formed In Italy

In Italy, as well as in Germany, the significant party is the Christian Democrat (DC), which was created in 1943. It dominated in the Italian government, intended to be the ‘catch-all’ party and succeeded in aiming that. The DC was even supported by the Catholics in different working positions, industrialists and farmers. The Christian Democratic party is mostly the centrist right, supporting mainly social programs and capitalism, even though, some of the aspects that went more to the right or to the left. The focus of this party was mainly tri-syllabic. Firstly, among all Italian parties, this party is clearly seemed as religious; therefore, it became very popular among Catholics. Secondly, since the DC party is somewhat balancing between

However, it is not the only party existing in Italy, there are smaller parties, for example, on the center of the right, there are two: Italian Liberal Party (PLI) and the Italian Republican Party (PRI). Both, PRI and PLI are concentrated on the secular population in controversy to the Christian Democrats. The liberal parties were on top of the Italian politics only before the World War I, and due to the cooperation with Benito Mussolini, liberal parties were brought into discredit after the end of the war. Another type of parties formed in Italy, the Republicans, which in the post-war period were brought back due to the support of the industrialists and huge business leaders. Economically speaking, the Liberals in most cases explicitly belonged to the right of the DC. The extreme right position of the Christian Democracy in most of the aspects was occupied by the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), formed in 1946. Being one of the strongest in the south of Italy, the MSI party looked back to Mussolini regime, hence, supporting social and economic ultra-conservatism and spending on defense. Actually, it seemed to be unacceptable castaway by the regime

Those two parties – the Socialist and the Communistic ones took part in all-party coalitions that governed Italy since 1945 till early 1947. Nevertheless, due to the Cold War, the PCI party was expelled from the Christian Democrat led-government. In order to oppose the DC-led government regime, the majority of the Socialists decided to join the Communists, creating the new one – the People’s Democratic Front (FDP) in 1948. Since not all Socialists expressed their will to form a joint alliance with the Communists, also inspired by the United States of America, in 1947 the PSI segregated to form the Italian Social Democratic Party (PSDI). Even though, being in alliance until 1956, in the 1953 elections the PSI and the PCI contested separately. The Communistic party has gained the control over the main leftist organs, such as trade unions, mass media and almost twice the support of the PCI. From 1953, the PSI would always continue to be the 3rd largest party in Italy after the PCI. The Communist Party reconsidering its ideology, distanced from the Soviet Union, which gave the roots for the emergence of such paradigm as “Euro-communism” by