Italy

Somebody was asking explanations about Italy's politics.
I wrote down this and now I post it here for future memory.
-------------------------------------------------------------

During the first half century of republican life, we had the cold war at home: a good third of the country was sympathising with the eastern block, while a half was pro West.
Only the latter were 'allowed' to power because we all knew that if the communist party won the elections and claimed power CIA would have imposed a dictatorship (as in Chili, Greece, etc.). -> no alternance -> corruption.

When the wall came down in '89 the centre-right parties in power lost their main argument and crashed down under trials of corruption.
Half the country found themselves politically 'orphans' and scared that the old 'communist' (who had not been such for decades already) came to power.

Berlusconi (who had lost his protector -Craxi- who died on the run from justice, and who had nobody anymore to protect him against his huge debts and several coming trials) smelt the opportunity, made of himself the 'paladin of anticommunism' and 'adopted' that important part of the electorate that was unable to think out of the schemes that had ruled the republic since its very beginning (Communists vs.- pro-westerners) while giving access to parliament to those political forces that could not be presented as viable until then (the heirs of Mussolini, the regional separatists...).

All serious politicians of any colours were therefore obliged to ally against him, despite the fact that they were extremely distant from one another (from the former republicans, to the former communists, from the former socialists to the former Christian parties...).
The result is that the several parties of the opposition have been fighting one-another for visibility much more than they have ever been countering Berlusconi.

In the meantime, he could strengthen his grip on media and also grab the public media when got to power.
I've been in Italy recently and I realise that they really live in a bubble with very little access to normal info, while the few normal newspapers and TV programmes remaining are tagged as 'militant' by mainstream info.

Berlusconi doesn't have the problems that centre-left have, because his allies can only access power together with him. He only needs to satisfy their requests on the easy slogans (e.g. security -> patrols, against all real crime statistics) and in exchange they let him satisfy his own agenda for himself and his electorate (de-classification of financial and fiscal crimes, etc.)