Italy
Italy saw relevant examples of party switches during its republican history. Most affected by the phenomenon was the Italian Socialist Party which was in an ambiguous position, between Soviet-funded and revolutionary Communist Party, and the social-democratic area, not clearly choosing any of these two possible alliances. Italian Democratic Socialist Party switched from PSI in 1947 to become the leader of reformist left, while the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity switched on the other side in 1964 to search a stronger alliance with the PCI. If these switches were allowed by the pure proportional system of that time, situation did not change when the electoral system was turned into a FPTP in 1993, because coalitions leaders began to accept quite all new parties, ever if very little ones, in their alliances.
Read more about this topic: List Of Politicians Who Switched Parties
Famous quotes containing the word italy:
“When intimacy followed love in Italy there were no longer any vain pretensions between two lovers.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!”
—Orson Welles (1915–84)
“I think sometimes that it is almost a pity to enjoy Italy as much as I do, because the acuteness of my sensations makes them rather exhausting; but when I see the stupid Italians I have met here, completely insensitive to their surroundings, and ignorant of the treasures of art and history among which they have grown up, I begin to think it is better to be an American, and bring to it all a mind and eye unblunted by custom.”
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937)