1184 Ch. 29 • Democracy and the Collapse of Communismin Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Facing a high unemployment rate and
a growing economic deficit, reductions in health, retirement, and other ben
efits followed. Strikes forced the government to make some concessions. In
1997, however, Chirac called elections a year early in hopes of receiving a
sweeping mandate. Socialists dominated the elections, forcing Chirac to
name the Socialist Lionel Jospin as prime minister, bringing another uncom
fortable period of “cohabitation” with a conservative president and a Social
ist prime minister.
In Italy, instability and corruption continued to characterize political life.
Despite a general increase in prosperity, inflation and high unemployment
left many Italians still dissatisfied with all political parties. The government
of Bettino Craxi (1934-2000) from 1983 to 1986 was the longest and in
many ways the most stable of the post-war period. Socialists replaced the
Communists as Italy’s second largest party, forcing the Christian Democ
rats to accept them as coalition partners in 1986. Craxi himself was con
victed of corruption, however, and fled in 1993 to Tunisia. Giulio Andreotti
(1919- ), Christian Democrat prime minister on six different occasions,
stood accused not only of corruption, but was eventually found guilty of
arranging the murder of a journalist who had uncovered evidence of wrong
doing. More than 2,500 Italian politicians and businessmen were arrested
for corruption over an eighteen-month period. Campaigns against the Mafia
have been periodic (most energetically following the assassination in 1992
of a public prosecutor who had devoted himself to the difficult legal war
against the Mafia). In the 1994 elections, conservative financier and media
tycoon Silvio Berlusconi (1936- ) became prime minister of Italy. His new
right-wing party, Forza Italia, came out of the elections as Italy’s most suc
cessful party, with two parties of the extreme right as allies, both denounc
ing the increase in the immigrant population: the Northern League, which
campaigned on a program of independence for northern Italy, provocatively
describing the south as a weight around the neck of the north, and the neo
fascist National Alliance. Cynicism and mistrust of politicians became even
more prevalent in Italy.
In every Western country, a new political force began to be felt. “Green”
parties, political groups of militant environmentalists angered by the deteri
oration of the environment, emerged in Western Europe during the 1980s.
In the German Federal Republic, the Greens, Europe’s largest environmen
tal party, were alarmed by industrial pollution, which was slowly killing their
country’s forests. Environmental parties stridently opposed nuclear power,
even before a deadly Soviet nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine in
- Greens helped push for agreements that have led to some cleaning up
of the Rhine River and Mediterranean beaches.
Finally, in almost all Western states, economic slumps have accentuated
complaints that state-subsidized programs are too expensive. In Sweden
and Denmark, Social Democratic parties were ousted after decades of rule
by conservatives calling for sharp reductions in the tax rates that financed