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6. Conclusion
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6 Conclusion The closeness of the 2006 election after earlier expectations of an easy center-left victory has reinforced the idea of Berlusconi as Italy’s electoral superman. Particularly when seen in the light of the subsequent local elections in May 2006 and the constitutional referendum in June 2006 (when in the absence of much active campaigning by Berlusconi, the center-right appeared unappealing and lost heavily), the role of Berlusconi in turning national elections into referenda about himself seems hard to refute. However, our point is different. Rather than focusing on his leadership as if it entailed an automatic response from an otherwise apathetic electorate, we have emphasized the geographically uneven nature of the “followership” that Berlusconi has stimulated for the center-right. This is the major theme of the book. Even as Berlusconi has created an electorate for the center-right, it also seems clear that his “toxic” leadership (to borrow a term that has been applied to him by Lipman-Blumen (2006)), while contributing to the polarization of Italian electoral politics into two more-or-less equal bipolar blocs, has also had several other effects. One much noted effect has been to give priority to managing his own legal difficulties over conducting the country’s business, particularly its failing economic competitiveness and massive public deficit. During the period from 2001 to 2006, the Berlusconi government did next to nothing to revitalize the Italian economy, leaving the difficult choices to the Prodi government after 2006 (Barber 2006). Without the ability to devalue the currency now that Italy is part of the Eurozone, Italian governments can no longer have recourse to the previously favorite means of reestablishing the competitiveness of the country’s exports by lowering prices in foreign currencies. The enormous public debt (107.6 percent of GDP as of 2006) threatens to undermine affiliation with the Euro and disrupt relations with the EU. Doing something serious about it would require no longer pandering to interests, both petty and great, which insist on seeing Italian politics as all about enhancing or protecting their “slice” of the governmental pie (Cartocci 2002;Golden 2003). Another much less noted effect of the toxic leader has been the entrapment of the center-right alliance between the two distinctive geographical coalitions upon which Berlusconi has built his electoral presence since 1994, with the Northern League in the North and with the National Alliance and the UDC (which saw its vote double in 2006 over 2001) everywhere else but particularly in the peninsula South. This is an entrapment because the various elements have persisting policy and personality differences with one another to which Berlusconi has had to devote inordinate attention. If the Northern League and its allies in Forza Italia have had a continuing romance with “devolution” and tax cuts, the other parties in the center-right coalition have wished to either strengthen central government (AN) or while doing this also seek to build once more a “grande spazio al centro” akin to DC (UDC) making them vulnerable to siren songs from their erstwhile colleagues in DC now in the Margherita or elsewhere on the center-left. Consequently, even with the fragile and unstable center-left government in place as of summer 2007 it is not clear after twelve years as leader of the center-right,with others such as Casini (UDC) and Fini (AN) circling to replace him,that Berlusconi can successfully reinstate his coalition. But absent his particular role, particularly his 124 C H A P T E R 6 [34.231.229.59] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 08:58 GMT) appeal to those elements in Italian society probably not equally drawn to the leaders of the other center-right parties, it is not clear what would hold the coalition together. As a result, Italy’s emerging bipolarity has owed much to Berlusconi,not because of his singularity as a media baron/politician, but because of his ability to put together a geographical “followership” that would otherwise have remained fragmented by party and place. Place Configurations and Italian Electoral Geography, 1994–2006 Throughout the book we have contrasted two perspectives with our own. If one emphasizes the role of the media (and their Italian maestro ,Berlusconi) in creating a single national space for electoral competition , the other focuses on the declining and even residual role of other spatial contexts (regions, in particular) as a variety of social forces (the media,nationwide political preferences,civic traditions,social capital...