1992 Italian general election

1992 Italian general election

← 1987 5–6 April 1992 1994 →
outgoing members elected members
Chamber of Deputies
All 630 seats in the Chamber of Deputies 316 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	87.36% ( 1.47 pp)
Party Leader % Seats +/– DC Arnaldo Forlani 29.65 206 −28 PDS Achille Occhetto 16.10 107 New PSI Bettino Craxi 13.62 92 −2 Lega Nord Umberto Bossi 8.65 55 +54 PRC Sergio Garavini 5.61 35 New MSI Gianfranco Fini 5.37 34 −1 PRI Giorgio La Malfa 4.39 27 +6 PLI Renato Altissimo 2.86 17 +6 Greens Carlo Ripa di Meana 2.79 16 +3 PSDI Franco Nicolazzi 2.72 16 −1 Network Leoluca Orlando 1.86 12 New Pannella List Marco Pannella 1.24 7 −6 SVP Roland Riz 0.51 3 0 UfS Several leaders 0.39 1 −1 LAV Mario Rigo 0.39 1 New Aosta Valley Several leaders 0.11 1 +1 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.
Senate of the Republic
All 315 seats in the Senate of the Republic 163[a] seats needed for a majority
Turnout	86.80% ( 1.57 pp)
Party Leader % Seats +/– DC Arnaldo Forlani 27.27 107 −18 PDS Achille Occhetto 17.05 67 New PSI Bettino Craxi 13.57 49 +13 Lega Nord Umberto Bossi 8.20 25 +24 PRC Sergio Garavini 6.52 20 New MSI Gianfranco Fini 6.51 16 0 PRI Giorgio La Malfa 4.70 10 +2 Greens Carlo Ripa di Meana 3.08 4 +1 PLI Renato Altissimo 2.82 4 +1 PSDI Franco Nicolazzi 2.56 3 −2 Network Leoluca Orlando 0.72 3 New LAL Roberto Gremmo 0.58 1 New UfS Several leaders 0.52 1 0 SVP Roland Riz 0.50 3 +1 LAV Mario Rigo 0.43 1 New Aosta Valley Several leaders 0.10 1 0 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Seat distribution for the Chamber of Deputies (left) and Senate (right). Leading party by region for the Chamber and Senate Prime Minister before Prime Minister after the election Giulio Andreotti DC Giuliano Amato PSI

The 1992 Italian general election was held on 5 and 6 April 1992.^[1] They were the first without the traditionally second most important political force in Italian politics, the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which had been disbanded in 1991. Most of its members split between the more democratic-socialist oriented Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), while a minority who did not want to renounce the communist tradition became the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC); however, between them they gained around 4% less than what the already declining PCI had obtained in the 1987 Italian general election, despite PRC absorbing the disbanded Proletarian Democracy (DP).

The other major feature was the sudden rise of the federalist Northern League, which increased its vote from 0.5% of the preceding elections to more than 8%, increasing from a single member both in the Chamber and the Senate to 55 and 25, respectively. The "long wave" (onda lunga) of Bettino Craxi's now centrist-oriented Italian Socialist Party, which in the past elections had been forecast next to overcome PCI, seemed to stop. Christian Democracy and the other traditional government parties, with the exception of the Republicans and the Liberals, also experienced a slight decrease in their vote.

Electoral system

The pure

For the Senate, 237 single-seat constituencies were established, even if the assembly had risen to 315 members. The candidates needed a landslide victory of two thirds of votes to be elected, a goal which could be reached only by the German minorities in South Tirol. All remained votes and seats were grouped in party lists and regional constituencies, where a D'Hondt method was used: inside the lists, candidates with the best percentages were elected.

Background

In February 1991, the

On 17 February 1992, judge Antonio Di Pietro had Mario Chiesa, a member of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), arrested for accepting a bribe from a Milan cleaning firm. The Socialists distanced themselves from Chiesa. Bettino Craxi called Chiesa mariuolo, or "villain", a "wild splinter" of the otherwise clean PSI. Upset over this treatment by his former colleagues, Chiesa began to give information about corruption implicating his colleagues. This marked the beginning of the Mani pulite investigation; news of political corruption began spreading in the press.

In February 1991, the Northern League, which was first launched as an upgrade of the Northern Alliance in December 1989, was officially transformed into a party through the merger of various regional parties, notably including Lombard League and Venetian League, under the leadership of Umberto Bossi. These continue to exist as "national" sections of the federal party.^[4][5][6]

The Northern League exploited resentment against

The Northern League's first electoral breakthrough was at the 1990 regional elections, but it was with the 1992 general election that the party emerged as a leading political actor. Having gained 8.7% of the vote, 56 deputies, and 26 senators,[8] it became the fourth largest party of the country and within the Italian Parliament.

Parties and leaders

Results

Christian Democracy (DC) suffered a significant swing against it, but the coalition it had led prior to the elections managed to retain a small majority. Opposition parties won a significant amount of support; however, the largest opposition party, the Italian Communist Party (PCI), had suffered an internal crisis after the fall of the Soviet Union, with the bulk of the party reforming into the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) and a minority forming the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC). Collectively, they suffered a 4% swing against them, with the PDS losing a third of its seats compared to 1987, and the opposition was divided. The biggest winner of the election was Northern League, which was not inclined to alliances at the time due to its separatist leanings.

The resulting parliament was therefore weak and difficult to bring to an agreement, and lasted only two years before new elections were held in 1994. This was accelerated by the mani pulite scandal, which began shortly before the election and expanded in scope throughout 1992 and 1993. The scandal implicated vast sections of almost every major political party in Italy in extensive corruption. This had catastrophic consequences for the political landscape as the governing parties became extremely unpopular.

The 1992–1994 parliamentary term also saw the first major change to the Italian electoral system since the late 1940s, with a

References