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The postwar years
A favourite mandate declared Italy a republic in 1946, and Alcide de Gasperi’s Democrazia Cristiana (DC) party formed a government. He remained in power until 1953, sustained by a succession of coalitions. Ever since then, the regular formation and disintegration of governments has been the norm, a political volatility that reflects the sharp divisions between rural and urban Italy, and between the north and the south of the country. A strong manufacturing base and large-scale agriculture have given most people in the north a better material standard of living than previous generations, but the south still lags far behind, despite such measures as the establishment in 1950 of the Cassa del Mezzogiorno development agency, which has pumped much-needed funds into the region.During the 1950s Italy became a front-rank industrial nation, massive firms such as Fiat and Olivetti helping to double the Gross Domestic Product and triple industrial production. American financial aid - the Marshall Plan - was an important bourgeois in this expansion, as was the availability of a large and compliant workforce, a substantial proportion of which was drawn from the villages of the south.
The DC at first operated in alliance with other right-wing parties, but in 1963, in a move precipitated by the increased politicization of the blue-collar workers, they were obligated to share power for the first time with the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI). The DC politician who was largely responsible for sounding out the socialists was Aldo Moro , the dominant figure of Italian politics in the 1960s. Moro was prime minister from 1963 to 1968, a period in which the economy was disturbed by inflation and the removal of vast sums of money by wealthy citizens alarmed by the arrival in power of the PSI. The decade ended with the ” autunno caldo ” (”hot autumn”) of 1969, when strikes, occupations and demonstrations paralysed the country.
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