Italy: The crisis of the left

Despite the transformation of the Italian left in the past decade and its presence in government between 1996 and 2001, its shattering electoral defeat in the May 2001 general election represented a new nadir in what is a long-term decline. The principal party of the left, the Democrats of the Left (DS), is undergoing an electoral and organisational crisis which is a product of the failure over ten years to construct a left-wing party free of the organisational legacy of the former communist party. The crisis is further complicated by the left's alliance with the centre parties (in the Olive Tree Coalition) which are competing for the same electoral space. Recent attempts to address the crisis (through the election of a new leader on a platform of change) have been unconvincing, and the DS remains torn between different types of reformist identity.