Forza Italia - Factions

Factions

Members of Forza Italia were divided in factions, which were sometimes mutable and formed over the most important political issues, despite previous party allegiances. However it is possible to distinguish some patterns. The party was divided basically over ethical (between social conservatives and progressives), economic (between social-democrats and some Christian-democrats on one side and liberals on the other one) and institutional issues.

Regarding the latter issue, generally speaking, northern party members were staunch proposers of political, fiscal federalism and autonomy for the Regions (in some parts of Veneto and Lombardy, it was sometimes difficult to distinguish a member of FI from a leghista), while those coming from the South were more cold on the issue. Also some former Liberals, due to their role of unifiers of Italy in the XIX Century, were more centralist.

A scheme of the internal factions within Forza Italia could be this:

• Liberals. Supporters of free-market, deregulation, economic freedoms, civil rights and, in general, personal responsibility and freedom. This group was basically formed by two wings: classical liberals (former members of the Italian Liberal Party, most of them organized in Popular Liberalism, as Alfredo Biondi, Raffaele Costa, Egidio Sterpa and Enrico Nan); former Socialists, as Renato Brunetta and Paolo Guzzanti; others like Stefania Prestigiacomo and Simone Baldelli) and liberatarians, as Antonio Martino (ex-PLI), Dario Rivolta, Benedetto Della Vedova (ex-Radical) and his Liberal Reformers. The latter were more staunchly pro-United States than the former and supported the idea of transforming Italy into a federal State.
• Liberal-centrists. They were more moderate than Martino and Della Vedova on economic issues, and more social-conservative on ethical issues, although not being totally sided with the Catholic Church. To this broad group belong people of various origin: former Socialists (as Giulio Tremonti, Franco Frattini, Giampiero Cantoni, Amalia Sartori and Jole Santelli), former Republicans (as Luigi Casero, Denis Verdini and Donato Bruno), former Liberals (as Giancarlo Galan, Giuseppe Vegas and Paolo Romani), some former liberal Christian Democrats (Giuseppe Cossiga and Basilio Germanà) and many others (as Giorgio Jannone, Antonio Leone, Gianfranco Micciché and Aldo Brancher). They were strong in Northern Italy and strong supporters of political and fiscal federalism.
• Christian democrats. They believed in the social market economy model and were supporters of Catholic stances over ethical issues. Most former members of Christian Democracy were identifiable with this tendency (from Roberto Formigoni to Giuseppe Pisanu, from Claudio Scajola to Enrico La Loggia, from Guido Crosetto to Angelo Sanza, from Maurizio Lupi to Giuseppe Gargani, from Antonio Palmieri to Mario Mantovani), but also ex-Communists, such as Sandro Bondi and Fernando Adornato, and an ex-Socialist as Gianni Baget Bozzo, a Catholic priest who is in charge of cultural formation, fitted the category, along with former Liberals, as Isabella Bertolini. Some were more socially conservative than others (for example Formigoni and theoconservatives like Marcello Pera) and many of them were close to Giulio Tremonti, indeed this group and that described before were very close on most political issues, so that the two factions were often undistinguishable. They are probably the most europeanist wing of the party, along with former Socialists, but many of them were also the most atlanticists within it, as Adornato and Pera. In 2007 Adornato, Pisanu and Formigoni launched a faction named Liberal-Popular Union, but, the faction soon was disbanded as Adornato left Forza Italia to join UDC. Formigoni had also his own group, Network Italy, mainly composed of Catholics active in Communion and Liberation, to which group both Crosetto and Fitto showed closeness.
• Social democrats. The most progressive wing of the party, especially about ethical issues. They were basically former Socialists, as Fabrizio Cicchitto, Francesco Colucci, Maurizio Sacconi, Margherita Boniver, Giorgio Stracquadanio, Chiara Moroni and Stefania Craxi, or former Social Democrats, as Carlo Vizzini, Nicola Cosentino and Paolo Russo. They considered themselves the true heirs of Pietro Nenni, Giuseppe Saragat and Bettino Craxi, continued to declare themselves 'Socialists' and were sided with Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right because they saw the Italian centre-left as too much hegemonized by the Democrats of the Left, heir of the Italian Communist Party, which was the harshest rival of the Italian Socialists from the Fifties to the Nineties. These Forza Italia's social democrats were organized in four sub-factions: We Blue Reformers, Free Foundation, Young Italy and Circles of Reformist Initiative.

Christian democrats and liberal-centrists were undoubtedly the strongest factions within the party, but all four were mainstream for a special issue: for example liberals and liberal-centrists were highly influential over economic policy, Christian democrats led the party over ethical issues (although there was a substantial minority promoting a more progressive outlook), while social democrats had their say in defining the party's policy over labour market reform and, moreover, it is thanks to this group (and to those around Tremonti, he himself a former Socialist) that constitutional reform was at the top of Forza Italia's political agenda. It is difficult to say to what faction Berlusconi was closer, what is sure is that his political record was a synthesis of all the political tendencies within the party.