The UK has come perilously close to the political/media monopoly enjoyed until this week by Silvio Berlusconi; here's an article which provides an overview of his political career, and a particular section I'll copy in first:
For as long as Bossi withheld his support, Berlusconi was to remain out of office. He lost the 1996 general election and might well have been reduced to political insignificance subsequently had the centre-left taken the opportunity to blunt his most formidable political weapon. But, in the late 1990s, Berlusconi tricked the leader of the ex-communists, Massimo D'Alema, into believing he would back a grand project for constitutional reform in exchange for a promise not to dismantle his near-monopoly of commercial television. D'Alema never got his reform, but Berlusconi kept effective control of his TV channels.
His apologists mock the idea that Italians would take their instructions from his three channels, and point out that Berlusconi's ownership of the Mediaset network did not stop him from twice being defeated at the polls. But it is also true that his sway over television (reinforced when he was in office to include all but two of the seven main national channels) helped create an environment in which he could thrive (and later survive).
If Italians were unable to grasp the seriousness of the financial misdemeanours of which he was accused, if they were willing to give the benefit of the doubt to his claim that he was a victim of politically motivated prosecutors, if they were untroubled by his anachronistic sexism, and if latterly they failed to grasp the extent to which Berlusconi was held in contempt outside Italy, it was to a large extent because of what was said – and not said – on their small screens.
Silvio Berlusconi: a story of unfulfilled promises
The most influential Italian politician since Mussolini has done much to damage his country's standing and prospects
Silvio Berlusconi has weakened the rule
of law in Italy, but failed to keep his promise to make his compatriots
rich. Photograph: Giuseppe Lami/EPA
The resignation of Silvio Berlusconi has very likely put an end to the most colourful, eventful, improbable and destructive career in Italy's recent political history.
No Italian since Mussolini has made such a lasting impression on his country. And none has done as much to damage its prospects and standing in the rest of the world.
The story of Berlusconi's involvement with the public life of his country was one of repeatedly unfulfilled promises. He entered politics vowing to transform and unify the Italian right. And, as recently as 2009 when he founded his Freedom People movement, it looked as if he might realise his dream. Yet he is going at a time when Italy's conservatives have never been as divided or demoralised.
Berlusconi also promised to make his compatriots rich. Seeing how rich he had made himself, many believed he could. Yet the 10 years from 2001 to 2010, in which he was in charge for all but two, gave Italy one of the world's lowest economic growth rates. In early 2010 the only countries that had fared worse were Zimbabwe and Haiti.
Finally, Berlusconi pledged to reform his country's notoriously cumbersome and unpredictable system of justice. But whenever he tackled the issue it appeared to be from the standpoint of his personal interest in dodging the law.
Though he was prevented from enacting what many feared would be his most damaging plans, he nevertheless succeeded in weakening significantly the rule of law in Italy. This was particularly true of financial misdemeanour: Berlusconi leaves behind a country in which anyone who cooks the books or seeks to embezzle or defraud can do so knowing that either their activities are no longer deemed illegal or their offences will most likely be scratched from the record by the swift application of a statute of limitations.
His relationship with the courts is central to the still-unresolved debate over why Berlusconi entered politics in the first place. Back in the early 1990s, an entire order was crumbling. The cold war was over, and with it had gone much of the raison d'être for Italy's biggest political movement, the Christian Democrat party, which had been set up as a counterbalance to the country's mighty Communist party, the largest in western Europe. At the same time, prosecutors based in Milan were overseeing a series of interlinked inquiries known as the "Clean Hands" investigation that was laying bare the means by which the Christian Democrats and their allies had funded themselves, with myriad illegally levied commissions.
Did Berlusconi – as he claimed – run for office to block the Communists' successors? Or was he trying to block the Clean Hands inquiry? It had already prompted his patron, the former Socialist prime minister Bettino Craxi, to flee the country. Berlusconi would later be put on trial, accused of illegally paying the Socialists more than €11m – an alleged offence that, like several others in his long judicial history, was "timed out".
From the outset, Berlusconi was more than just a unique figure on the political scene. He can take the credit for inventing a wholly novel form of political interaction.
His first party, Forza Italia, was created in a few months using the resources and techniques of the media age, which its self-appointed leader could muster in abundance. The party's earliest officials were executives of the advertising arm of his business empire, Publitalia. Its branches were set up by their local representatives. The name of the party, which means "come on Italy", neatly fused patriotism with the national passion for football. And, when Berlusconi was ready to throw his hat into the ring (or "take the field", as he astutely termed it), he did so in a video recording made at his home and distributed to the national television networks.
Forza Italia, which was to become Italy's biggest political movement, was profoundly undemocratic. Berlusconi or his lieutenants decided who should fill the key posts and, in the whole of its 15-year existence, the party held only two national congresses.
Two months after showing his hand, Berlusconi swept to victory in the 1994 general election. His allies were, on the one hand, Umberto Bossi's Northern League and, on the other, the National Alliance, a party led by Gianfranco Fini and composed largely of self-styled post-fascists.
By bringing them into the mainstream, their rehabilitation will remain one of Berlusconi's most controversial achievements. It unquestionably helped moderate a strain of political thought that, in the 1970s and 80s, had offered a justification for murderous violence. But, by incorporating into his coalition a party that was resolutely statist, Berlusconi prevented Italy from evolving an economically liberal right of the sort that had emerged in the previous decade in the US and Britain. Though he presented himself as a free-market campaigner, and consistently referred to himself as a liberale, Berlusconi never paid more than lip service to promoting competition or the creating of a meritocracy.
His first government lasted less than a year. It was brought down by the withdrawal of the Northern League, which was not yet a party of the hard right and had become increasingly uncomfortable with both the National Alliance and a prime minister whose legal problems were mounting daily.
For as long as Bossi withheld his support, Berlusconi was to remain out of office. He lost the 1996 general election and might well have been reduced to political insignificance subsequently had the centre-left taken the opportunity to blunt his most formidable political weapon. But, in the late 1990s, Berlusconi tricked the leader of the ex-communists, Massimo D'Alema, into believing he would back a grand project for constitutional reform in exchange for a promise not to dismantle his near-monopoly of commercial television. D'Alema never got his reform, but Berlusconi kept effective control of his TV channels.
His apologists mock the idea that Italians would take their instructions from his three channels, and point out that Berlusconi's ownership of the Mediaset network did not stop him from twice being defeated at the polls. But it is also true that his sway over television (reinforced when he was in office to include all but two of the seven main national channels) helped create an environment in which he could thrive (and later survive).
If Italians were unable to grasp the seriousness of the financial misdemeanours of which he was accused, if they were willing to give the benefit of the doubt to his claim that he was a victim of politically motivated prosecutors, if they were untroubled by his anachronistic sexism, and if latterly they failed to grasp the extent to which Berlusconi was held in contempt outside Italy, it was to a large extent because of what was said – and not said – on their small screens.
Having reunited with Bossi the year before, Berlusconi returned to office in 2001 at the head of a coalition not unlike the one he had led seven earlier. The period that followed was, in one respect, a triumph. Berlusconi became the first prime minister since Alcide De Gasperi after the second world war to see out a full, five-year legislature, giving Italy a period of historically exceptional stability.
Yet his governments – technically, there were two because of a reshuffle in 2005 – achieved surprisingly little. They approved more restrictive legislation on immigration, drugs and in vitro fertilisation. They introduced an electoral law that even its sponsor later called a "load of rubbish". And they endorsed a string of planning and tax amnesties that helped to weaken further respect for the rule of law.
But then Berlusconi's second and third governments will be remembered above all for endless clashes with the opposition over bills his critics said were drawn up exclusively to protect or further his interests. One, which would have shielded him from prosecution, was declared unconstitutional. But others made it on to the statute book, including measures to decriminalise false accounting, time out offences even more quickly and lift restrictions on the volume of Mediaset's advertising sales.
By 2006, Berlusconi's credibility was in shreds. It is a tribute to his campaigning skills that he only narrowly lost the general election of that year to his old adversary, Romano Prodi. But it is an indictment of the centre-left's capacity for self-destruction by infighting that Berlusconi was back in power by 2008.
His fourth government started confidently. But, just as his previous term of office had been swamped by conflict of interest issues, so this one was also engulfed by scandal. Starting in 2009, with the discovery of his still-unexplained friendship with an 18-year-old girl, Berlusconi was gradually pulled deeper into a mire of his own making as claims were made of quasi-orgies at his homes in Rome and near Milan. In April, 2011, his standing in the eyes of the world fell to a new low when he was put on trial, accused of paying an underage prostitute.
Berlusconi's poll ratings held up to the scandals remarkably well. But they were unable to withstand a growing realisation among voters that they had been misled by their prime minister over the state of the economy. Ever the salesman, his instinctive reaction to a crisis was always to radiate optimism.
The 2008 credit crunch, he declared, had left Italy in better shape than any other European nation. The following year, its GDP plunged by 5.2%, wiping out the scant economic progress of a decade. The effects of that year's recession triggered a slide in Berlusconi's popularity that never reversed.
His government's faltering reaction when Italy was infected by the spreading eurozone crisis in mid-2011 reinforced a growing public belief that he was out of his depth in a macroeconomic emergency. It was the ultimate irony: the man who was happy to let his compatriots believe he could deliver a "new economic miracle" – the man who was voted into power because of his Midas touch – was finally brought to earth by his failure to make the Italian economy grow.
No Italian since Mussolini has made such a lasting impression on his country. And none has done as much to damage its prospects and standing in the rest of the world.
The story of Berlusconi's involvement with the public life of his country was one of repeatedly unfulfilled promises. He entered politics vowing to transform and unify the Italian right. And, as recently as 2009 when he founded his Freedom People movement, it looked as if he might realise his dream. Yet he is going at a time when Italy's conservatives have never been as divided or demoralised.
Berlusconi also promised to make his compatriots rich. Seeing how rich he had made himself, many believed he could. Yet the 10 years from 2001 to 2010, in which he was in charge for all but two, gave Italy one of the world's lowest economic growth rates. In early 2010 the only countries that had fared worse were Zimbabwe and Haiti.
Finally, Berlusconi pledged to reform his country's notoriously cumbersome and unpredictable system of justice. But whenever he tackled the issue it appeared to be from the standpoint of his personal interest in dodging the law.
Though he was prevented from enacting what many feared would be his most damaging plans, he nevertheless succeeded in weakening significantly the rule of law in Italy. This was particularly true of financial misdemeanour: Berlusconi leaves behind a country in which anyone who cooks the books or seeks to embezzle or defraud can do so knowing that either their activities are no longer deemed illegal or their offences will most likely be scratched from the record by the swift application of a statute of limitations.
His relationship with the courts is central to the still-unresolved debate over why Berlusconi entered politics in the first place. Back in the early 1990s, an entire order was crumbling. The cold war was over, and with it had gone much of the raison d'être for Italy's biggest political movement, the Christian Democrat party, which had been set up as a counterbalance to the country's mighty Communist party, the largest in western Europe. At the same time, prosecutors based in Milan were overseeing a series of interlinked inquiries known as the "Clean Hands" investigation that was laying bare the means by which the Christian Democrats and their allies had funded themselves, with myriad illegally levied commissions.
Did Berlusconi – as he claimed – run for office to block the Communists' successors? Or was he trying to block the Clean Hands inquiry? It had already prompted his patron, the former Socialist prime minister Bettino Craxi, to flee the country. Berlusconi would later be put on trial, accused of illegally paying the Socialists more than €11m – an alleged offence that, like several others in his long judicial history, was "timed out".
From the outset, Berlusconi was more than just a unique figure on the political scene. He can take the credit for inventing a wholly novel form of political interaction.
His first party, Forza Italia, was created in a few months using the resources and techniques of the media age, which its self-appointed leader could muster in abundance. The party's earliest officials were executives of the advertising arm of his business empire, Publitalia. Its branches were set up by their local representatives. The name of the party, which means "come on Italy", neatly fused patriotism with the national passion for football. And, when Berlusconi was ready to throw his hat into the ring (or "take the field", as he astutely termed it), he did so in a video recording made at his home and distributed to the national television networks.
Forza Italia, which was to become Italy's biggest political movement, was profoundly undemocratic. Berlusconi or his lieutenants decided who should fill the key posts and, in the whole of its 15-year existence, the party held only two national congresses.
Two months after showing his hand, Berlusconi swept to victory in the 1994 general election. His allies were, on the one hand, Umberto Bossi's Northern League and, on the other, the National Alliance, a party led by Gianfranco Fini and composed largely of self-styled post-fascists.
By bringing them into the mainstream, their rehabilitation will remain one of Berlusconi's most controversial achievements. It unquestionably helped moderate a strain of political thought that, in the 1970s and 80s, had offered a justification for murderous violence. But, by incorporating into his coalition a party that was resolutely statist, Berlusconi prevented Italy from evolving an economically liberal right of the sort that had emerged in the previous decade in the US and Britain. Though he presented himself as a free-market campaigner, and consistently referred to himself as a liberale, Berlusconi never paid more than lip service to promoting competition or the creating of a meritocracy.
His first government lasted less than a year. It was brought down by the withdrawal of the Northern League, which was not yet a party of the hard right and had become increasingly uncomfortable with both the National Alliance and a prime minister whose legal problems were mounting daily.
For as long as Bossi withheld his support, Berlusconi was to remain out of office. He lost the 1996 general election and might well have been reduced to political insignificance subsequently had the centre-left taken the opportunity to blunt his most formidable political weapon. But, in the late 1990s, Berlusconi tricked the leader of the ex-communists, Massimo D'Alema, into believing he would back a grand project for constitutional reform in exchange for a promise not to dismantle his near-monopoly of commercial television. D'Alema never got his reform, but Berlusconi kept effective control of his TV channels.
His apologists mock the idea that Italians would take their instructions from his three channels, and point out that Berlusconi's ownership of the Mediaset network did not stop him from twice being defeated at the polls. But it is also true that his sway over television (reinforced when he was in office to include all but two of the seven main national channels) helped create an environment in which he could thrive (and later survive).
If Italians were unable to grasp the seriousness of the financial misdemeanours of which he was accused, if they were willing to give the benefit of the doubt to his claim that he was a victim of politically motivated prosecutors, if they were untroubled by his anachronistic sexism, and if latterly they failed to grasp the extent to which Berlusconi was held in contempt outside Italy, it was to a large extent because of what was said – and not said – on their small screens.
Having reunited with Bossi the year before, Berlusconi returned to office in 2001 at the head of a coalition not unlike the one he had led seven earlier. The period that followed was, in one respect, a triumph. Berlusconi became the first prime minister since Alcide De Gasperi after the second world war to see out a full, five-year legislature, giving Italy a period of historically exceptional stability.
Yet his governments – technically, there were two because of a reshuffle in 2005 – achieved surprisingly little. They approved more restrictive legislation on immigration, drugs and in vitro fertilisation. They introduced an electoral law that even its sponsor later called a "load of rubbish". And they endorsed a string of planning and tax amnesties that helped to weaken further respect for the rule of law.
But then Berlusconi's second and third governments will be remembered above all for endless clashes with the opposition over bills his critics said were drawn up exclusively to protect or further his interests. One, which would have shielded him from prosecution, was declared unconstitutional. But others made it on to the statute book, including measures to decriminalise false accounting, time out offences even more quickly and lift restrictions on the volume of Mediaset's advertising sales.
By 2006, Berlusconi's credibility was in shreds. It is a tribute to his campaigning skills that he only narrowly lost the general election of that year to his old adversary, Romano Prodi. But it is an indictment of the centre-left's capacity for self-destruction by infighting that Berlusconi was back in power by 2008.
His fourth government started confidently. But, just as his previous term of office had been swamped by conflict of interest issues, so this one was also engulfed by scandal. Starting in 2009, with the discovery of his still-unexplained friendship with an 18-year-old girl, Berlusconi was gradually pulled deeper into a mire of his own making as claims were made of quasi-orgies at his homes in Rome and near Milan. In April, 2011, his standing in the eyes of the world fell to a new low when he was put on trial, accused of paying an underage prostitute.
Berlusconi's poll ratings held up to the scandals remarkably well. But they were unable to withstand a growing realisation among voters that they had been misled by their prime minister over the state of the economy. Ever the salesman, his instinctive reaction to a crisis was always to radiate optimism.
The 2008 credit crunch, he declared, had left Italy in better shape than any other European nation. The following year, its GDP plunged by 5.2%, wiping out the scant economic progress of a decade. The effects of that year's recession triggered a slide in Berlusconi's popularity that never reversed.
His government's faltering reaction when Italy was infected by the spreading eurozone crisis in mid-2011 reinforced a growing public belief that he was out of his depth in a macroeconomic emergency. It was the ultimate irony: the man who was happy to let his compatriots believe he could deliver a "new economic miracle" – the man who was voted into power because of his Midas touch – was finally brought to earth by his failure to make the Italian economy grow.
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