n governments and governmental and para governmental patronage. It is these six parties that are considered in this study.
All are players in a game which changes surprisingly little. For all practical purposes, Italy has been governed by a single governing coalition since the present democratically elected Italian republic came into being after World War II. Italy has never had the sort of election which the United States had in 1992, whereby the whole executive leadership is turned out of office, with the previous "outs" becoming the "ins." On the two occasions on which such a turnover seemed conceivable, the challenging "out" party was the Italian Communist Party (PCI). And on both occasions, a majority of the Italian public rallied however reluctantly around the largest party, the Christian Democrats, so as to prevent a Communist victory. Italian voters have thus indicated that they prefer "gridlock" to Communist rule. The failure of non Communist Italians to either align more firmly with the Christian Democrats or wit
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