full-blooded a multi-party system is one with at least three and usually more,
often many more, political parties, each of them significant.
Therefore, some criteria need specifying for the significance of a party
before it gets counted. The best test of this significance is that the inclusion or
exclusion of a party from government coalitions makes a real difference, and is
a real possibility. However, even this definition is inadequate where there is a
party, theParti Communiste Franc ̧ais (PCF)in the 1950s, for example,
which has no chance of winning an election by itself, and is excluded as a
possible coalition partner by all parties likely to be forming a government, but
is nevertheless sizeable (seeFrench party system). Much of this would be
pedantry, were it not that the characteristics of party systems, among which,
clearly, the ‘multi-partyness’ or otherwise of them is important, have major
consequences for the nature of politics, policy and government. What is most
important is to realize that there is a spectrum from truesingle-party systems
to true multi-party systems, with no sharp divisions. Even apparent one-party
systems can vary in the extent to which the single party is actually a coalition of
competing interests, as opposed to being a monolithic and disciplined entity. In
some multi-party systems the links between certain parties are so intense as to
make it absurd to count them both as separate entities; in Germany the
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU)
are effectively one party, and are counted as such. Political scientists have, in
fact, developed complex counting rules to take account not only of the
number, but also of the relative political power, of parties in any system.
Mussolini
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) was the forerunner of Europeanfascism,
becoming prime minister of Italy in 1922, assuming dictatorial powers asIl
Duce(‘the leader’—Hitler’sofficial title ofDer Fu ̈hrermeant the same thing)
from 1926. He died in 1945 when captured by the Italian partisans, though he
had been out of power, except as a puppet ruler in German-occupied northern
Italy, from 1943. Originally a socialist, indeed an influential agitator and left-
wing journalist, he left the socialists in the First World War because he
supported Italy’s joining the allied powers against Austria. From then on he
created and led the Italian fascist movement which, like the German Nazi party
(seenational socialism), was a curious mixture of right and left attitudes,
amounting, in theory at least, to a radical andpopulistmovement. Like the
German equivalent, however, very little in the way of redistribution of wealth,
or any other socialist policies, was attempted, and the capitalist system func-
tioned perfectly happily under him. His fascist movement was even more
corrupt, but considerably less violent, than Hitler’s, and the worst excres-
cences, such asanti-Semitism, were very much milder. He came to power
Mussolini