Silvio Berlusconi has undoubtedly been a successful figure, firstly as a businessman and subsequently as a politician. A talented, unscrupulous entrepreneur, he has built up a vast financial and economic empire. He has proven to be even more skilled and unscrupulous in the political field, as shown by the fact that in less than two months he managed to create the most voted-for party at the 1994 general election, and by his ability to build a coalition with two parties which were quite far apart on the political spectrum at the time – the Northern League and the National Alliance. In doing so, he became Italy's Prime Minister, contrary to all expectations. In the twenty-five years since then – a period of both triumphs and failures – Silvio Berlusconi has always managed to remain at the centre of Italian politics, regardless. The undisputed leader of his party, and of the entire centre-right coalition, Berlusconi was the longest standing Prime Minister in Italy's post-war history, as well as an influential leader on the European and international scenes. Despite its recent waning in popularity, the party Berlusconi created – Forza Italia – is currently the oldest party present in Parliament (if one considers Salvini's ‘League’ as a different party from the previous ‘Northern League’).
Berlusconi is a highly successful, widely acknowledged politician whose political mission, however, has ultimately failed. This is the argument that James Newell puts forward (against mainstream beliefs) in his recent work on the figure of Silvio Berlusconi. Newell's conclusion, summarized in the volume's title, is clear enough, but it is certainly not a hastily elaborated, partisan or groundless view. In fact, the author is a very thorough, experienced scholar of Italian society and politics, and his latest work reveals his deep understanding of the Italian political context and the political affairs he recounts.
Since his political debut, many academic articles and books have been written, both in Italy and abroad, about Berlusconi's actions as political leader, as the head of his party, but also as legislator, communicator, and so on. Newell's work stands out from the other numerous publications on this subject for a number of reasons.
The first reason is that it was written at a very timely moment, that is, at the very start of the electoral demise of Forza Italia and its leader, Berlusconi, who were beaten by the League at the 2018 general election. Given that he Berlusconi is now 83, although still leader of Forza Italia and recently elected to the European Parliament, this is perhaps the right time to offer a more complete, balanced analysis of Berlusconi's political and cultural actions and legacy, before such attempt becomes the prerogative of historians after his demise.
A second reason why Newell's work is of high value is that he utilizes the case of Berlusconi to shed light on the role of political leaders in contemporary democracies, and in particular to contribute towards the broader debate regarding their actual capacity to impact on social, economic, and political reality. Given that for a long period of time he held an incredible range of powers (political, economic, and communication), ‘if we find that even in the case of Berlusconi, leaders appear not to make a difference, then it is unlikely that they will make a difference in less favourable circumstances, i.e. where they are less powerful’ (p. 7).
A third feature of Newell's book that distinguishes it from many other works on the same theme, is the author's decision to consider and evaluate Berlusconi's various roles separately. In fact, it is possible – as Newell believes to be so in the case in question – that a political leader may be particularly effective as party leader or as speechmaker during an electoral campaign, but fails to impress as a country's Prime Minister.
Newell's analytical and explanatory approach is very clear and effective. In fact, the book is divided into four sections, and the various chronological and thematic interconnections between the sections are clearly explained in the book's introduction. The first section, which is basically of biographical nature, reconstructs the principal (and fairly well-known) stages in the career of Silvio Berlusconi the businessman. This is followed by a second section examining his debut and success as a politician. Here, as in the third section regarding Berlusconi as Prime Minister, various different aspects of Berlusconi's career are dwelt on that will be familiar to those who have lived through, or know about, the last 30 years of political life in Italy. I feel that the fourth section is more interesting and original. It is here that the author deals with the question of Berlusconi's legacy, a legacy that Newell expounds in relation to four different areas: the cultural development of Italy; the impact on electoral behaviour; the capacity to determine public policy once in power; and the quality of Italian democracy.
This is clearly a broad-ranging and ambitious objective, and perhaps one that would have required a sounder empirical basis. Newell recounts political affairs and developments, and convincingly draws up a series of interconnections between them, providing certain electoral and survey data, and citing electoral analyses conducted by other scholars. For each of the four areas examined (culture, electoral behaviour, public policy, and the quality of Italian democracy), the author identifies certain more specific features of Berlusconi's legacy, which he discusses in the light of the socio-political scientific literature.
As previously mentioned, although Newell presents the various different aspects of contemporary Italian culture and politics that show that Berlusconi cannot really be considered a rare political phenomenon, he nevertheless concludes that Berlusconi's political experience ended in failure and disappointment in view of the great expectations generated by his appearance on the political scene in 1994. Berlusconi the political leader can be considered an ‘eventful man’ rather than an ‘event-making man’. It was not his extraordinary qualities that were to make him an important political figure, but as was the case of Winston Churchill and George Bush (to mention just two of the more famous political leaders), it was rather the exceptional circumstances he found himself operating in that led him to appear as a great innovator. In reality, the author argues: ‘What he has done has not been original, having, rather, reflected tendencies already present: he has been the bearer or the agent of change, not one of its most significant drivers. He has in that sense been an epiphenomenon. He has not made a significant difference, and Italian politics would in all probability have unfolded in much the way that it has, even if not in entirely the same way’ (p. 13).
Now, while on the one hand there can be no denying that the Italian political system, following the demise of the country's traditional political parties in the early 1990s, took on certain characteristics shared with other western democracies (increasing presidential power, the personalization of political parties, political leaders increasingly perceived as celebrities, the growing importance of the media, the dominance of election polls, and so on), on the other hand it is also true that Italy's political path was not ineluctable. The success of the Five Stars Movement, which fed off anti-Berlusconi sentiments, was far from given; neither was the success of the League, which in fact was close to disappearing altogether following the scandals surrounding the party's funding, but which Matteo Salvini managed to resuscitate and transform into Italy's leading political party. These new parties’ successful rise to power was in part due to the concurrent weakening of Forza Italia which, like all charismatic or highly personalized political parties, depends on the destiny of its leader. Perhaps even without Berlusconi, today's political leaders would have adopted a more anti-institutional, anti-political style. However, the normalization of the constant denigration of other politicians and the disdain for institutions represented one of the key features of the Berlusconi years, both when on the opposition benches and when in government. In other words, it is true, as the author rightly points out that Berlusconi failed to radically modify the Italian Constitution and that Italy has remained a full democracy (p. 199). However, I believe that his disputes with the judiciary, his personal ownership-based vision of politics and of the party, the ad personam laws he imposed on his majority, his unprincipled use of means of communication – all aspects strictly associated with his unique position as a political leader forced to defend his financial empire and himself from the judiciary's actions – had a corrosive effect on the Italian political and institutional culture. In the end, this has contributed towards the impoverishment of Italian democracy. I believe that this is where the failure of Berlusconi and his politics really lies.
