interests of the homeland itself. Where there is an apparent choice nowadays,
the complexity of international politics and the geographical spread and
intermixing of alliances, particularly in a nuclear context, makes isolationism
scarcely feasible. Furthermore, the increasing role of the UN, offering for the
first time a real possibility of collective security, increases both the practical and
moral incentives for countries to be fully engaged in world politics, as was
demonstrated by the 1991Gulf War, and by the active involvement by the
European Union in Eastern European affairs, and more broadly, in world
foreign policy.
Italian Second Republic
Technically there is no Italian Second Republic. The current constitution of
Italy is their first republican constitution, promulgated in 1948 after the
overthrow of the fascist state previously led byMussolini. The document
was amended in April 1993, however, during the course of a massive
investigation by the Italian magistracy (known asmani pulite—clean hands)
which revealed corruption, largely through the granting of building and other
contracts in return for contributions to party funds, so widespread that all the
major parties at very high official levels were clearly implicated. The extent of
the political change caused by the investigation and the consequent trials and
constitutional amendments so transformed Italian expectations of politics, and
to a lesser extent their practices, that many journalists took to describing the
post-1993 political system as the ‘Second Republic’, and the phrase has entered
the terminology of political science. The idea that Italy is now living under a
second constitution arises from the sense that the changes were so extreme as to
amount to a peaceful revolution. A further root of the political changes was the
end of thecold war, and thereby the disappearance of much of the rationale of
the dominance of the Christian Democrat Party (DC), which had been in
control of every government from the beginning of the Republic, and which
kept the Italian Communist Party (PCI) out of government despite its roughly
similar level of voting support. With the removal of cold war fears and the
consequent unlocking of voters from these traditional orientations, other
political tendencies, especially the regional and semi-separatist Northern
League were able to gain real support.
In a series of referendums, voters opted for a radical change in the electoral
system, owing to disillusion with the endless succession of DC-led, but highly
fragile, coalitions and the rampant inefficiency and corruption of the public-
service sector. Italy had suffered from an extreme form of the multi-party
system caused by its near perfect proportional electoral system. The new
elections, first used in 1994, moved sharply—though not completely—towards
an Anglo-American style plurality system. Much of the idea that there is a
Italian Second Republic