Disappeared on June 12, the former Italian head of government Silvio Berlusconi was entitled to a day of national mourning. Apart from the Presidents of the Republic, these Heads of State elected by indirect suffrage, only one other personality had been entitled to this honor in Italy: Pope John XXIII. It means how much Il Cavaliere marked the practice of politics in Italy and elsewhere.
The outsider
Not being a career politician, Berlusconi asserted himself on the Italian political scene by relying on his personal skills and on a storytelling, at the time innovative, of his own character. A wealthy businessman, he always presented himself as a self-made man, a man who started from nothing and who built his empire alone. This effective narrative promotes its own myth, which it propels into the public space thanks to its great richness and, above all, to the many media it controls.
It is therefore as an outsider thatIl Cavaliere won his first elections in 1994. In fact, he took over the reins of the Italian government only two months after the founding of his own centre-right party, Forza Italia.
PHOTO GUGLIELMO MANGIAPANE, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni
This effective way of telling stories has been emulated, including the current head of government, Giorgia Meloni. In her recent autobiography, she presents a fictionalized story of herself, a Christian Italian mother from poverty, who managed to recover from this difficult situation. It doesn’t matter that several passages of his biography are fictionalized, because like Berlusconi, his goal is to build an inspiring myth.
The populist model
Thanks to his media especially, Berlusconi was a pioneer of the direct relationship between the politician and the voters, which gradually became a model in Italy and elsewhere in the world. In this approach, the political leader is mythologized and practically freed from the party: the popular nomination (even if Italy remains a parliamentary republic and not a presidential one) allowed Berlusconi to define himself as the anointed of the Lord .
This very personalized conception of power has given rise to conflicting relations with the other institutions of the political system when these impede the exercise of power. On several occasions, Berlusconi complained of the impossibility of governing the country because of the Parliament which modified laws presented by the government. Deeming the country “ungovernable”, he changed the electoral law in 2006 in order to reintroduce the proportional system with closed lists and thus have more control over elected parliamentarians.
This approach to Parliament, seen as an obstacle to the proper functioning of government, influenced his successors.
Over the past 15 years, the vote of confidence to approve laws more quickly and prevent parliamentarians from making changes to them has been used more and more often.
Berlusconi had repeatedly mentioned a modification of the constitution to increase the powers of the President of the Council of Ministers (the head of government). This wish to have a stronger Prime Minister was notably shared by Matteo Salvini, Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Renzi.
The other institution with which Berlusconi most often came into conflict was the judiciary. Il Cavaliere was the subject of numerous criminal investigations: corruption, links with the mafia, abuse of power, tax evasion… According to him, who described the judiciary as a “cancer”, he was systematically targeted: judges ( of the left) pursued him to weaken him politically. For Berlusconi, all the means were legitimate to escape the verdict: to use the excuse of his institutional functions to obtain the postponement of the trials and to arrive at the prescription, or to resort to the vote of Parliament to change the law, story that the heads of charge become null and void. If he was convicted only once, it must be remembered that he was able to escape a guilty verdict about fifteen times thanks to the statute of limitations, amnesty and changes in the law.
Here again, his approach has inspired several influential politicians. Matteo Renzi, Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni have all attacked the magistrates on several occasions.
The future of government
Will the party founded in 1994 by Berlusconi, Forza Italia, survive him? We can doubt it as he was modeled by and around himself. The party’s former coordinator, Gianfranco Micciché, declared that the party would die with its founder.
In the last elections, in 2022, the party only elected 44 deputies. They are certainly part of the government coalition, but their number has only decreased during the last legislative elections. Omens that may prove Gianfranco Micciché right.