The second republic: 'Contestazione' to compromise.

The week before Pentecost saw Italians riveted to their TV screens. Not for the excitement of the European soccer championship (won handily by the Milan club, owned by the Prime Minister designate, Silvio Berlusconi) as for the much closer confirmation vote in the Italian Senate of the Berlusconi government itself. As things turned out Berlusconi and his allies triumphed in the Senate by the narrowest possible margin: a single vote. His victory was made possible by the defection of a number of the senators of the Partito Popolare Italiano (successor to the discredited Christian Democrats) who defied party discipline by either voting outright for Berlusconi or abstaining, thus permitting the slim margin of victory.

A few days later the Berlusconi government was confirmed, as expected, by the Italian Assembly (the lower house of Parliament) in which his right-of-center coalition enjoys a comfortable majority. And thus the Italian Second Republic was officially launched.

Obviously the Senate debate and vote were crucial; and it was poignant to listen to the senators of the Partito Popolare anguish over their decision to break ranks with their party. Basically their reasoning was twofold. Negatively, they feared that a vote of no-confidence could lead to new elections and the real possibility of an even greater electoral victory for the Berlusconi forces. But positively, there was a strong sense that, after years of turmoil and scandal, the voters had opted for a new beginning and that Berlusconi and his partners deserved a chance to show what they could do to revitalize both a slack economy and an effete political system.

That the Berlusconi coalition is itself a volatile one, cobbled together by joining his own Forza Italia party with Umberto Bossi's Northern League and Gianfranco Fini's National Alliance (successor to the postwar neo-Fascist party), is clear. Moreover, the inclusion of the former neo-Fascists has elicited concern, both in Italy and among her European partners, over the genuineness of their commitment to democratic values and procedures. A good deal of time was spent in the Italian Senate debate, seeking reassurance on this score. Nonetheless, risks and challenges abound and were perceptively detailed in Leo Wollemborg's recent "Report from Italy" ["A Shaky Coalition: How Far to the Right?," Commonweal, June 3].

Equally significant, however, are the new possibilities that may also emerge. Whatever their demerits, the Christian Democrats led Italy out of the abyss of World War II and presided over almost fifty years of peace and prosperity and, no less importantly, of real practice in the ways of democracy. They initiated the historic "opening to the Left," entering into a longenduring coalition with the Socialists: a move that might be considered the political precursor (though, of course, in the opposite direction) of the current "opening to the Right" by Berlusconi.

Having observed the Italian political and social scene over a period of thirty years, I have often been struck by the frequency with which one word appears both in political debate and editorial pronouncement: the word contestazione. Its use in Italian eclipses by far any American employment of the cognate "contestation." Moreover, its rhetorical energy crackles with intimations of contest, objection, dispute, even struggle. It seems both to reflect and to promote an adversarial atmosphere in which "compromise" can only be parsed as ideological impurity and infidelity: far more grievous, in certain quarters, than any minor lapses from the Sixth or Ninth Commandments.

By contrast, what I sensed during a recent stay in Italy is the very beginnings of a desire to move beyond the ideological a prioris and fixations of the past toward a more pragmatic vision and style. Berlusconi seems to many to embody this approach; hence his popularity and the willingness to give him a chance.

Indeed, several experienced commentators with whom I spoke even envisage the eventual emergence of two political alignments, somewhat akin to our own Republican and Democratic parties (with their own left and right wings), out of the decades-long, often confused farrago of Italian politics. If the Berlusconi coalition promotes such an outcome, then the Second Italian Republic might indeed have a promising future.

On the vigil of Pentecost, having been confirmed as his country's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi paid a courtesy call on Pope John Paul II, still recuperating in a Rome hospital from his fall and surgery. Responding to reporters' queries regarding the purpose of his meeting with the pope, Signor Berlusconi quipped: "I need prayers." He was only partly joking.