Another democratically inclined party, Asaba (Banner) also took one seat in the upper house. Registration was denied to another group, the Freedom Party, because its platform includes the creation of an Uygur autonomous district extending into the Chinese Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which the Chinese government opposes. The Union of Germans took one seat in the lower house, and a Russian nationalist group, Concord, also took one seat.For all their proliferation, parties have not yet played a large part in independent Kyrgyzstan. In the mid-1990s, early enthusiasm for the democratic parties faded as the republic's economy grew worse and party officials were implicated in the republic's proliferating political corruption. The communist successor parties, on the other hand, appeared to gain influence in this period. In the absence of elections, and with President Akayev belonging to no party, it is difficult to predict the future significance .

2. Political system of Italy

Politics of Italy:

The politics of Italy is conducted through a parliamentary, democratic republic with a multi-party system. Italy has been a democratic republic since June 2, 1946, when the monarchy was abolished by popular referendum. The constitution was written by the Constituent Assembly of Italy and promulgated on January 1, 1948. The executive power is exercised collectively by the Council of Ministers, which is led by the Prime Minister, officially referred to as President of the Council ("Presidente del Consiglio"). Legislative power is vested in the two houses of parliament primarily, and secondarily on the Council of Ministers, which can introduce bills and holds the majority in the parliament. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislative branches. It is headed by the High Council of the Judiciary. The President is the head of state, though his position is separate from all branches.

The current President of Italy is Giorgio Napolitano and current Prime Minister of Italy is Mario Monti.

Government:

By stating that Italy is a democratic republic, the article solemnly declares the results of the constitutional referendum which took place on the 2nd of June 1946. The State is not anymore an hereditary property of the ruling monarch, but it is instead a Res Publica, it belongs to everyone.

The people who are called to temporarily administer the republic are not owners, but servants; and the governed are not subjects, but citizens. And the sovereignty, that is the power to make choices that involve the entire community, belongs to the people, in accordance with the concept of a democracy, from the Greek demos (people) and kratia (power). This power, however, is not to be exercised arbitrarily, but in the forms and within the limits established by the rule of law.

Head of State:

President Giorgio Napolitano was elected on 10 May 2006.

As the head of state, the President of the Republic represents the unity of the nation and has many of the duties previously given to the king of Italy. The president serves as a point of connection between the three branches: he is elected by the lawmakers, he appoints the executive, and is the president of the judiciary. The president is also commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

The President of the Republic is elected for seven years by Parliament in joint session, together with three representatives of each region, except for the Aosta Valley, which gets only one representative. These delegates are elected by their respective Regional Councils so as to guarantee representation to minorities. The election needs a wide majority that is progressively reduced from two-thirds to one-half plus one of the votes after the third ballot. The only Presidents ever to be elected on the first ballot are Francesco Cossiga and Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. Mr. Ciampi was replaced by Giorgio Napolitano, who was elected on 10 May 2006. While it is not forbidden by law, no president has ever served two terms.

According to the Constitution, any citizen that is fifty on the day of the election, and enjoys civil and political rights, can be elected President. The President cannot hold office in any other branch of power, and the office's salary and privileges are established by law.

Among the powers of the President are the capacity to:

· send messages to Parliament, authorise the introduction of bills by the Government, and promulgate laws, decrees and regulations,

· dissolve one or both Houses of Parliament, in consultation with their presidents, except during the last six months of his terms, unless that period coincides at least in part with the final six months of the Parliament,

· call a general referendum under certain circumstances established by the Constitution,

· appoint State officials in the cases established by law,

· accredit and receive diplomats, and ratify international treaties, after the Parliament's authorisation when required,

· make declarations of war agreed upon by the Parliament, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces,

· grant pardons, commute sentences, and confer honorary distinctions of the Republic.

The President also presides over the High Council of the Judiciary and the Supreme Council of Defence.

Usually, the President tries to stay out of the political debate, and to be an institutional guarantee for all those involved in the political process. The president can also reject openly anti-constitutional acts as the guardian of the Constitution of Italy.

The President is not responsible for the actions performed in the exercise of his duties, except for high treason and violation of the Constitution, for which the President can be impeached by the Parliament in joint session, with an absolute majority of its members.

Presidents of the Italian Republic (1946 - present) (Traditionally, Presidents have not been members of any political party during their tenure, in order to be considered above partisan interests. The parties shown are those to which the President belonged before they took office.).

Enrico De Nicola (1877-1959).

De Nicola was the first President of Italy. Once the monarchy had ended, the Constituent Assembly elected De Nicola Provisional Head of State on 28 June 1946, with 80% of the votes, at the first round of voting. On 25 June 1947, De Nicola resigned from the post, citing health reasons, but the Constituent Assembly immediately re-elected him again the following day, having recognized in his act signs of nobility and humility. After the Italian Constitution took effect, he was formally named the "President of the Italian Republic" on 1 January 1948. He finally refused to be a candidate for the first constitutional election the following May, in which Luigi Einaudi was elected to the Quirinale

Luigi Einaudi (1874-1961).

On May 11, 1948 he was elected the second President of the Italian Republic. At the end of the seven year term of office in 1955 he became Life Senator. Einaudi was a member of numerous cultural, economic and university institutions. He was a supporter of the ideal of European Federalism.

Einaudi personally managed the activities of his farm near Dogliani, producing Nebbiolo wine, for which he boosted to be using the most advanced agricultural developments. In 1950, monarchist satirical magazine Candido published a cartoon in which Einaudi is at the Quirinal Palace, surrounded by a presidential guard of honour (the corazzieri) of giant bottles of Nebbiolo wine, each labeled with the institutional logo. The cartoon was judged a lese-majesty by a court of the time, and Giovannino Guareschi, as the director of the magazine, was held responsible and sentenced.

Giovanni Gronchi (1887-1978).

His period in office lasted until 1962. It was marked by the ambition to bring about a gradual “opening to the left”, whereby the Socialists and the (still Stalinist) Communist Party would be brought back into the national government, and Italy would abandon NATO, becoming a non-aligned country. There was however stiff parliamentary opposition to this project, particularly by the small Italian Liberal Party, which was deemed a necessary ingredient of any viable majority. In an attempt to escape the deadlock, in 1959 Gronchi appointed as Prime Minister a trusted member of his own Catholic left-wing faction, Fernando Tambroni, sending him to Parliament with a “President's government” but no pre-arranged majority. However Tambroni found himself surviving in Parliament only thanks to neo-fascist votes. This unforeseen “opening to the right” had serious consequences. In 1960 there were bad riots in several towns of Italy, particularly at Genoa, Licata and Reggio Emilia, where the police opened fire on demonstrators, killing five people. The Tambroni government thus ended in ignominy; forced to resign, it was followed by an all-DC government, with a traditionally centrist parliamentary majority.

The unhappy Tambroni experiment tarnished Gronchi's reputation for good, and until the end of his period of office he remained a lame-duck President. In 1962 he attempted to get a second mandate, with the powerful help of Enrico Mattei, but the attempt failed and Antonio Segni was elected instead.

Antonio Segni (1891-1972).

Segni was elected President of the Italian Republic on 6 May 1962 (854 to 443 votes). He suffered a serious cerebral hemorrhage while working at the presidential palace on 7 August 1964. At the time he was 73 years old and the first prognosis were not positive. He only partially recovered, and he retired from office on 6 December 1964. In the interim, the President of the Senate Cesare Merzagora served as acting president.Politically, Segni was a moderate conservative opposed to "opening to the centre-left" enabling coalition governments between the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and the Christian Democrats. Segni was later accused of having tried to instigate a coup d'etat (known as Piano Solo) along with General Giovanni De Lorenzo during his presidency to frustrate the opening to the left.

Giuseppe Saragat (1898-1988).

Saragat was the first Social democratic leader to become President of Italy. Its election was the result of one of the rare cases of unity of Italian left, threatened by rumors of a possible neo-fascist coup during Antonio Segni's presidency. In his precidency he tried to unit the Christian democrats with the Socialists and the Communists

Giovanni Leone (1908-2001).

After having been unofficially several times candidate to the Presidency of the Republic, he was named Life Senator in 1967. In 1968 he was again Premier for some months. In 1971 he succeeded Giuseppe Saragat as President of Italy, being elected with votes of a right-centre majority of the Parliament (518 out of 996 votes, including those of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement). He was forced to resign from his position following his involvement in the Lockheed bribery scandal

Sandro Pertini (1896-1990).

Pertini was the first Socialist to become President of Italy. As President he succeeded in regaining the public's trust in the State and institutions. During the Brigate Rosse terrorism period of the Anni di piombo, Pertini was a defender of the institutions he represented. His death in Rome was viewed by many as a national tragedy, and he is arguably one of modern Italy's most accomplished politicians. Pertini is considered one of the best President in the history of Italy.

Francesco Cossiga (1928-2010).

Following his resignation as president of the Senate in 1985, Cossiga was elected President of Italy (Head of State). This was the first time a candidate had won following the first ballot (where a majority of over two thirds is necessary). He opined that the Italian parties, especially the DC (his own party) and Italian Communist Party, had to take into account the deep changes brought about by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. These statements, soon dubbed "esternazioni", or "mattock blows" (picconate), were considered by many to be inappropriate for a President and, often, beyond his constitutional powers; also, his mental health was doubted and Cossiga had to declare "I am the fake madman who speaks the truth." Tension developed between Cossiga and the President of the Council of Ministers Giulio Andreotti. This tension emerged when Andreotti revealed the existence of Gladio, a stay-behind organization with the official aim of countering a possible Soviet invasion through sabotage and guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. Cossiga announced his involvement in the establishment of the organization. On 28 April 1992 Cossiga resigned two months before the end of his term; he was the last President of the First Republic.

Oscar Luigi Scalfaro (1918-2012).

Scalfaro was the first President of the Second Republic. He was elected on 25 May 1992, after a two week stalemate of unsuccessful attempts to reach agreement. The killing of anti-Mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone prompted his election. His mandate ended in May 1999, and he automatically became a lifetime member of the Senate. Scalfaro was the last Christian democrtas to become President of Italy.

Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

Ciampi was elected with a broad majority, and was the second president ever to be elected at the first ballot. He usually refrained from intervening directly into the political debate while serving as President. However, he often addressed general issues, without mentioning their connection to the current political debate, in order to state his opinion without being too intrusive. His interventions have frequently stressed the need for all parties to respect the constitution and observe the proprieties of political debate. He was generally held in high regard by all political forces represented in the parliament. As President, Ciampi was not considered to be close to the positions of the Vatican and the Catholic Church, in a sort of alternance after the devout Oscar Luigi Scalfaro. He has often praised patriotism, not always a common feeling in Italy because of its abuse by the fascist regime; Ciampi, however, seems to want to stress self-confidence rather than nationalism.

Giorgio Napolitano.

Napolitano was elected on 10 May, in the fourth round of voting -- the first of those requiring only an absolute majority, unlike the first three which required two-thirds of the votes -- with 543 votes (out of a possible 1009). At the age of 80, he became the first former Communist to become President of Italy, as well as the third Neapolitan after Enrico De Nicola and Giovanni Leone. In November 2011, after barely surviving a motion of no confidence in December 2010, Berlusconi resigned from his post as head of the government, having lost the trust of the Parliament following increasingly dramatic financial and economical conditions. President Napolitano then decided to appoint former EU commissioner Mario Monti as a senator for life, and then as prime minister designate. Monti was subsequently confirmed by an overwhelming majority of both houses of the Italian Parliament, in what was widely referred to as a "government of the president". Napolitano's management of the events caused unprecedented worldwide media exposure regarding his role as President of the Italian Republic (usually referred to as nothing more than a ceremonial one) and also won him the nickname "King George" from The New York Times.

Legislative branch Gianfranco Fini is the President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies since 30 april 2008.

Renato Schifani is the President of the Italian Senate since 29 april 2008.

With article 48 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to vote, the people exercise their power through their elected representatives in the Parliament. The Parliament has a bicameral system, and consists of the Chamber of deputies and the Senate, elected every five years.

The Chamber of deputies is elected by direct and universal suffrage by voters who are eighteen. There are 630 deputies, twelve of which are elected in the overseas constituencies. All voters who are twenty-five on election day are eligible to be deputies.

The Senate is elected by direct and universal suffrage by voters who are twenty-five. There are 315 senators, six of whom are elected in the overseas constituencies.^[1] There are also a number of senators for life, such as former Presidents or citizens appointed by the President, during his term in office, for having brought honor to the nation with their achievements. All voters who are forty on election day are eligible to be senators.

Executive branch.

Life senator Mario Monti was asked by President Napolitano to form a government. He is Prime Minister since 16 November 2011.

The government of Italy is composed of the President of the Council and the Ministers. The President appoints the Prime Minister and, on his proposal, the Ministers that form its cabinet. The appointee can be the leader of the majority coalition that won the election, or it can be a person instructed by the President to form a national unity government in times of crisis for the nation. Either way, the government must receive the confidence of both Houses, so the Executive derives its legitimacy from the Parliament and the great number of political parties forces the Prime Minister to bend to the will of the people. If the majority coalition no longer supports the government, the Prime Minister can be ousted with a vote of no confidence, and a new government must be formed.

Judicial branch.

The Constitution states that justice is administered in the name of the people and that judges are subject only to the law. So the judiciary is a branch that is completely autonomous and independent of all other branches of power, even though the Minister of Justice is responsible for the organisation and functioning of those services involved with justice and has the power to originate disciplinary actions against judges, which are then administered by the High Council of the Judiciary, presided over by the President.

The Italian judicial system is based on Roman law, the Napoleonic code and later statutes. It is based on a mix of the adversarial and inquisitorial civil law systems, although the adversarial system was adopted in the Appeal Courts in 1988. Appeals are treated almost as new trials, and three degrees of trial are present. The third is a legitimating trial.

There is only partial judicial review of legislation in the American sense. Judicial review exists under certain conditions, established by the Constitutional Law, in the Constitutional Court, or Corte Costituzionale, which can reject anti-constitutional laws after scrutiny. When the Court declares a law unconstitutional, the law ceases to have effect the day after the publication of the ruling.

According of the Constitution, the Constitutional Court shall pass judgement on:

· controversies on the constitutional legitimacy of laws issued by the State and Regions;

· conflicts arising from allocation of powers of the State and those powers allocated to State and Regions, and between Regions;

· charges brought against the President and the Ministers.

The Constitutional Court is composed of 15 judges one of which is the President of the Italian Constitutional Court elected from the court itself. One third of the judges are appointed by the President of the Italian Republic, one-third are elected by Parliament and one-third are elected by the ordinary and administrative supreme courts. The Constitutional Court passes on the constitutionality of laws, and is a post-World War II innovation. Its powers, case load, and frequency of decisions are not as extensive as those of the U.S. Supreme Court. Italy has not accepted compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.

Political parties and elections.

For other political parties see List of political parties in Italy. An overview on elections and election results is included in Elections in Italy.

All Italian citizens older than 18 can vote. However, to vote for the senate, the voter must be at least 25 or older.

Chamber of Deputies. Senate of the Republic.

A poster for the European Parliament election 2004 in Italy, showing party lists Italy's dramatic self-renewal transformed the political landscape between 1992 and 1997. Scandal investigations touched thousands of politicians, administrators, and businessmen; the shift from a proportional to an Additional Member System (with the requirement to obtain a minimum of 4% of the national vote to obtain representation) also altered the political landscape.

Party changes were sweeping. The Christian Democratic party dissolved; the Italian People's Party and the Christian Democratic Center emerged. Other major parties, such as the Socialists, saw support plummet. A new liberal movement, Forza Italia, gained wide support among moderate voters. The Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance) broke from the (alleged neo-fascist) Italian Social Movement (MSI). A trend toward two large coalitions (one on the center-left and the other on the center-right) emerged from the April 1995 regional elections. For the 1996 national elections, the center-left parties created the Olive Tree coalition while the center-right united again under the House of Freedoms. These coalitions continued into the 2001 and 2006 national elections.

This emerging bipolarity represents a major break from the fragmented, multi-party political landscape of the postwar era, although it appears to have reached a plateau, since efforts via referendums to further curtail the influence of small parties were defeated in 1999, 2000, and 2009.

History of the post-war political landscape First Republic.

There have been frequent government turnovers since 1945, indeed there have been 61 governments in this time. The dominance of the Christian Democratic party during much of the postwar period lent continuity and comparative stability to Italy's political situation, mainly dominated by the attempt of keeping the Italian Communist Party (PCI) out of power in order to maintain Cold War equilibrium in the region (see May 1947 crisis).

The communists were in the government only in the national unity governments before 1948, in which their party's secretary Palmiro Togliatti was minister of Justice. After the first democratic elections with universal suffrage in 1948, in which the Christian Democracy and their allies won against the Popular front of the Italian Communist and Socialists parties, the communist party never returned in the government.

Even though many repeat the cliche that Italy had over fifty governments in its first fifty years of democracy to stigmatise its alleged political instability, Italy's main political problem was actually the opposite: in all the course of the so-called First Republic, the government was in the hands of the Christian Democrats and their allies, since it was unacceptable for a communist party to rule a western country during the Cold war. The system had been nicknamed the imperfect bipolarism, referring to more proper bipolarism in other western countries (the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France etc.) where right-wing and left-wing parties alternated in government.

The Socialists enter the Government.

The main event in the First Republic in the sixties was the inclusion of the Socialist party in the government, after the reducing edge of the Christian Democracy (DC) had forced them to accept this alliance; attempts to incorporate the Italian Social Movement (MSI) in the Tambroni government led to riots, and were short-lived.

Aldo Moro, a relatively left-leaning Christian democrat, inspired this alliance. He would later try to include the Communist Party as well, with a deal called the historical compromise. This attempt at compromise was, however, stopped by the kidnapping and murder of Moro in 1978 by the Red Brigades, an extremist left-wing terrorist organization.

The Communist party was at this point the largest communist party in western Europe, and remained such for the rest of its existence. Their ability to attract members was largely due to their pragmatic stance, especially their rejection of extremism, and to their growing independence from Moscow. The Italian communist party was especially strong in areas like Emilia Romagna, where communists had been elected to stable government positions. This practical political experience may have contributed to their taking a more pragmatic approach to politics.

The Years of Lead.

On 12 December 1969 a roughly decade-long period of extremist left- and right-wing political terrorism, known as the years of lead (as in the metal of bullets, Italian: anni di piombo), began with the Piazza Fontana bombing in the center of Milan. Neofascist Vincenzo Vinciguerra later declared the bombing to be an attempt to push the Italian state to declare a state of emergency, in order to lead to a more authoritative state. A bomb left in a bank killed about twenty, and was initially blamed on anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli. This accusation was hotly contested by left-wing circles, especially the Maoist Student Movement, which had support in those years from some students of Milan's universities, and who considered the bombing to have all the marks of a fascist operation. Their guess proved correct, but only after many years of difficult investigations.

The strategy of tension attempted to blame the left for bombings carried out by right-wing terrorists. Fascist "black terrorists," such as Ordine Nuovo and the Avanguardia Nazionale, were, in the 1980s-90s, found to be responsible for several terrorist attacks. On the other extreme of the political spectrum, the leftist Red Brigades carried out assassinations against specific persons, but weren't responsible for any blind bombings. The Red Brigades killed socialist journalist Walter Tobagi, and, in their most famous operation, kidnapped and assassinated Aldo Moro, president of the Christian Democracy, who was trying to involve the Communist Party in the government through the compromesso storico ("historic compromise"), to which the radical left, as well as Washington, were opposed. It is worth noting that the Red Brigades met fierce resistance from the Communist Party and the trade unions; some left-wing politicians, however, used the sympathetic expression "comrades who are mistaken" (Italian: Compagni che sbagliano) to refer to the Red Brigades. Some, including the prosecutor of Moro case Ferdinando Imposimato, have alleged that the 2nd Red Brigades (those led by Mario Moretti) were exploited - or anyway allowed to act freely - by Andreotti's government and possibly foreign forces (notably United States) to destabilize Italy, discredit the Communist Party and impede the historic compromise. The last and largest of the bombings, known as the Bologna massacre, destroyed the city's railway station in 1980. This was found to be a neofascist bombing, in which Propaganda Due was involved.

On 24 October 1990 Prime minister Giulio Andreotti (DC) revealed to the Parliament the existence of Gladio, NATO's secret "stay-behind" networks which stocked weapons in order to facilitate an armed resistance in case of a communist coup. In 2000, a Parliament Commission report from the Olive Tree (centre-left) coalition concluded that the strategy of tension followed by Gladio had been supported by the United States to "stop the PCI and, to a certain degree, the PSI [Italian Socialist Party] from reaching executive power in the country."

The Eighties.

With the end of the lead years, the communist party gradually increased their votes under the leadership of Enrico Berlinguer. The Italian Socialist Party, led by Bettino Craxi, became more and more critical of the communists and of the Soviet Union; Craxi himself pushed in favor of Ronald Reagan's positioning of Pershing missiles in Italy, a move many communists strongly disapproved of.

As the socialist party moved to more moderate positions, it attracted many reformists, some of whom were irritated by the failure of the communists to modernize. Increasingly, many on the left began to see the communists as old and out of fashion, while Craxi and the socialists seemed to represent a new liberal-socialism. The Communist party surpassed the Christian Democrats only in the European elections of 1984, held barely two days after Berlinguer's death, a passing that likely drew sympathy from many voters. The election of 1984, however, was to be the only time the Christian Democrats did not emerge as the largest party in a nation-wide election in which they participated.

In 1987, one year after the Chernobyl disaster following a referendum in that year, a nuclear phase-out was commenced. Italy's four nuclear power plants were closed down, the last in 1990. A moratorium on the construction of new plants, originally in effect from 1987 until 1993, has since been extended indefinitely.

In these years, corruption began to be more extensive, a development that would be exposed in the early nineties and nicknamed Tangentopoli. With the Mani Pulite investigation, starting just one year after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the whole power structure faltered, and seemingly indestructible parties, such as the Christian Democrats and the Socialist party, disbanded; the communist party changed its name to the Democratic Party of the Left and took the role of the socialist party as the main social democratic party in Italy. What was to follow was then called the transition to the Second Republic.

Second Republic.

From 1992 to 1997, Italy faced significant challenges, as voters, disenchanted with past political paralysis, massive government debt, extensive corruption, and organized crime's considerable influence--collectively called Tangentopoli after being uncovered by Mani pulite--demanded political, economic, and ethical reforms.

In the Italian referendums of 1993, voters approved substantial changes, including moving from a proportional to an Additional Member System, which is largely dominated by a majoritarian electoral system and the abolition of some ministries, some of which, however, have been reintroduced with only partly modified names, such as the Ministry of Agriculture reincarnated as the Ministry of Agricultural Resources.

Major political parties, beset by scandal and loss of voter confidence, underwent far-reaching changes. New political forces and new alignments of power emerged in the March 1994 national elections. This election saw a major turnover in the new parliament, with 452 out of 630 deputies and 213 out of 315 senators elected for the first time.

The 1994 elections also swept media magnate Silvio Berlusconi (leader of "Pole of Freedoms" coalition) into office as Prime Minister. Berlusconi, however, was forced to step down in December 1994 when the Lega Nord withdrew support. The Berlusconi government was succeeded by a technical government headed by Prime Minister Lamberto Dini, which left office in early 1996.

A series of center-left coalitions dominated Italy's political landscape between 1996 and 2001. In April 1996, national elections led to the victory of a center-left coalition, Olive Tree, under the leadership of Romano Prodi. Prodi's government became the third-longest to stay in power before he narrowly lost a vote of confidence, by three votes, in October 1998.

In May 1999, the Parliament selected Carlo Azeglio Ciampi as the President of the Republic. Ciampi, a former Prime Minister and Minister of the Treasury and, before entering the government, the governor of the Bank of Italy, was elected on the first ballot by a comfortable margin over the required two-thirds of the votes.

A new government was formed by the Democrats of the Left leader and former communist Massimo D'Alema, but in April 2000, following poor performance by his coalition in regional elections, D'Alema resigned.

The succeeding center-left government, including most of the same parties, was headed by Giuliano Amato, a social-democrat, who had previously served as Prime Minister in 1992-93, and had at the time sworn never to return to active politics.

National elections held on 13 May 2001 returned Berlusconi to power at the head of the five-party center-right "Freedom House" coalition, comprising the prime minister's own party, Forza Italia, the National Alliance, the Northern League, the Christian Democratic Center, and the Democrats' Center Union.

Between 17 May 2006 and 21 February 2007 Romano Prodi served as Prime Minister of Italy following the narrow victory of his l'Unione coalition over the Casa delle Liberta led by Silvio Berlusconi in the April 2006 Italian elections. Following a government crisis, Prodi submitted his resignation on 21 February 2007. Three days later he was asked by the Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano to stay on as Prime Minister and he agreed to do so. On 28 February 2007 Prodi narrowly survived a senate no confidence vote.