Giovanni Giolitti

Giovanni Giolitti (Mondovì, October 27, 1842 – Cavour, July 17, 1928) was an Italian statesman. He was the Prime Minister of Italy five times between 1892 and 1921. He is the second-longest serving Prime Minister in Italian history, after Benito Mussolini.

Giolitti was a master in the political art of Trasformismo, the method of making a flexible, centrist coalition of government which isolated the extremes of the left and the right in Italian politics after the unification. Under his influence, the Italian Liberals did not develop as a structured party. They were, instead, a series of informal personal groupings with no formal links to political constituencies. The period between the start of the 20th century to the start of Word War I, when he was Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior from 1901-1914 with only brief interruptions, is often called the Giolittian Era.

A left-wing liberal, with strong ethical concerns, Giolitti's periods in office were notable for the passage of a wide range of progressive social reforms which improved the living standards of ordinary Italians, together with the enactment of several policies of government intervention. Besides putting in place several tariffs, subsidies and government projects, Giolitti also nationalized the private telephone and railroad operators. Liberal proponents of free trade criticized the "Giolittian System," although Giolitti himself saw the development of the national economy as essential in the production of wealth.