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195 8 Italy: The Godfather’s Party Political finance in liberal-democratic countries is often by its nature a domain of unresolved ambiguities and embarrassment. The organization of any political activity—especially during electoral campaigns, when political financing is more intense—has an economic cost. But the rhetoric of popular participation, politics as vocation, and mobilization in the pursuit of high values conflicts logically and symbolically with this material and monetary dimension of “politics as a business.” When the friction between ideological appeals to long-term collective purposes, on the one hand, and everyday political needs and practice, on the other, is too forceful and becomes manifest to the public, some scandal or “purification ritual” is practically inevitable. The consequences of the mani pulite (clean hands) investigations in Italy during the early 1990s—with the collapse of the party system and the dramatic eclipse or transformation of all major parties—may be considered a paradigmatic case of this potential short circuit between two distinct spheres of political activity: the public sphere and the hidden sphere.1 In the public sphere politicians operate overtly, their acts aimed at being recognized—and judged—by the public. The hidden sphere, however, is often the most relevant: “It’s the 1. Mani pulite investigations started on February 17, 1992, in Milan, when Mario Chiesa, Socialist city councilor and president of a municipal old people’s home, was arrested while accepting a bribe. Chiesa began to collaborate with the magistrates, setting off a chain of confessions by businessmen , bureaucrats, and politicians. In its development, the mani pulite investigation brought about the most serious political crisis in the history of the Italian Republic, quickly extending to the uppermost levels of the political and economic system. In a matter of months, the magistracy opened a breach on a scene of corruption and political illegality without precedent in the history of the Western democracies: more than 500 parliamentarians were implicated, dozens of former ministers , five former premiers, thousands of local administrators and public functionaries, the army, the customs service (responsible for investigating financial crimes in general), the main publicly owned companies, and even sectors of the magistracy itself. donatella della porta and alberto vannucci 196 Donatella della Porta and Alberto Vannucci daily practice of individuals, politicians and their clients, entering in exchanges, agreements, [and] transactions. In this activity favours are offered, which are repaid with other favours, or votes, or money, destined to the politicians, to their group, faction, party, movement.”2 Obviously, these practices are kept secret, as their going beyond restricted circles would involve loss of consent, political defeat, or legal prosecution; nevertheless, they are often tolerated by common political morality. The diffusion of irregular financing amplifies the friction between purposes officially pursued in the political arena and the concrete motives and interests that come into play. Two vicious cycles reinforce the demand for irregular political financing. Transparent and voluntary donations and the mobilization of supporters in the maintenance of party machines are substitutes for the search for underground funding sources. Such internal contributions (from political party membership fees, voluntary work, and other donations) are however discouraged precisely by the delegitimization of political actors, which derives from their current practice of irregular financing as well as their possible involvement in scandals .3 The recourse to irregular contributions may then feed upon itself, making incentives to search for them stronger—ceteris paribus—while the potential of other traditional sources evaporates. The second vicious cycle is associated with the prisoner’s-dilemma logic of irregular financing, which may induce inflationary dynamics in political competition. As soon as a political party or candidate gets periodic access to irregular sources and contributions, he or she obtains a surplus of resources and therefore a competitive advantage against his or her rivals. Political competitors, therefore, have an incentive to collect hidden financing as well. This dynamic emerges either when opponents lack evidence to denounce the transgressor or when opponents have something to fear in case of mutual defection from an implicit conspiracy of silence, which often includes the implicit agreement among cartel parties. We can see these vicious cycles developing in the Italian case. Illegal financing to parties rooted in Italy since the end of World War II, when the country was contested territory between the United States and the Soviet Union, and conspicuous flows of money came from abroad to Christian Democrats and other pro-Western parties, on the one side, and to the Communist and Socialist Parties , on the other...

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