The liberation of Italy proved to be the beginning of a five year long conflict between various political groups over the destiny of the country. The first free parliamentary elections were held in 1948, out of which the newly established Christian Democrats (Democrazia Cristiana, DC) emerged as the major victors over the Italian Communist Party (Partito Communista Italiano, PCI). The major political issue during these years was the drafting of the postwar constitution and the competing visions on democracy which this process entailed.
Much historical attention has been devoted to the conception of democracy of the PCI. Less attention has been devoted on the equally crucial developments on the conservative side of the political spectrum. Although fascism was not only morally discredited after the war but would also be outlawed by the 1948 constitution, neo-fascist, populist and radical right parties soon blossomed in the wake of the Italian defeat. Two parties in particular managed to establish themselves as forces in the democratic framework: the neo-fascist Social Italian Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano, MSI) and the short-lived but highly successful Common Man’s Front (Fronte per l’Uomo Qualunque, UQ). The MSI tried to assert itself as a party of law and order within the democratic framework, whilst the second is commonly regarded as a populist movement and anti-political force that wanted to avoid confrontations with the recent past.
These parties all sought to develop democratic ideals that were both compatible with the retribution of fascism and the rejection of communism. While these parties played within the rules of the democratic game and agreed on parliamentary democracy as such, their interpretations of what democracy was and how it should be implemented in a country characterised by two decades of fascism differed sharply. This paper will explain how the MSI and the UQ developed a political discourse that claimed adherence to democratic thought and how we should conceive the relationship of the newly founded Christian Democrats to these forces in the face of both anticommunism and antifasism. The prime minister and leader of the DC, De Gasperi, was caught between reformists and the Vatican to formulate his own party’s vision on the postwar order. Whilst the conservative forces such envisioned more authoritarian democracy with an emphasis on strong government and anticommunism, the reformist elements in the DC, emphasised importance of representative democracy. This demonstrates that ‘democracy’ was, for all the forces on the Italian Right, not a neutral concept or form of government with a peaceful solution of conflicts, but a highly contested concept which meaning must be reformulated in a crucial period in Italian history.
This paper discusses and compares the conceptions of democracy visible in the three conservative forces that attempted to establish themselves as main antagonists of the communists. The paper is based upon an intensive study of primary sources in party archives conducted between February and May 2013 during a stay at the Royal Dutch Institute in Rome.
