The origins of
liberalism in Italy are in the
Historical Right, a parliamentary group formed by
Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour in the Parliament of the
Kingdom of Sardinia following the
1848 revolution. The group was moderately
conservative and supported
centralised government, restricted
suffrage,
regressive taxation and
free trade. They dominated politics following
Italian unification in 1861, but never formed a party, basing their power on
census suffrage and
first-past-the-post voting system. The Right was opposed by the more
progressive Historical Left, which overthrew
Marco Minghetti's government during the so-called Parliamentary Revolution of 1876, which brought
Agostino Depretis to become
Prime Minister. However, Depretis immediately began to look for support among Rightist Members of Parliament, who readily changed their positions, in a context of widespread
corruption. This phenomenon, known in Italian as
trasformismo (roughly translatable in English as transformism—Prime Minister
Giovanni Giolitti was depicted as a
chameleon in a satirical newspaper), effectively removed political differences in Parliament, which was dominated by an undistinguished liberal bloc with a landslide majority until after
World War I. Two parliamentary factions alternated in government, one led by
Sidney Sonnino and the other, by far the largest of the two, by Giolitti. At that time, the Liberals governed in alliance with the
Radicals, the
Democrats and eventually the
Reform Socialists. This alliance governed against two smaller opposition, namely the Clericals composed by some
Vatican-oriented politicians and
The Extreme formed by the
socialist faction which represented a real left in a present-day concept. The period between the start of the 20th century and the start of
World War I, when he was Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior from 1901 to 1914 with only brief interruptions, is often called the Giolittian Era. A
left liberal Giolitti's periods in office were notable for the passage of a wide range of progressive social reforms which improved the living standards of ordinary Italians, together with the enactment of several policies of government intervention. Besides putting in place several
tariffs, subsidies and government projects, Giolitti also nationalized the private telephone and railroad operators. Liberal proponents of
free trade criticized the Giolittian System, although Giolitti himself saw the development of the national economy as essential in the production of wealth. In the
1913 general election, the Liberals were voted by more than two millions people, with 47.6% of votes and gaining 270 out 508 seats, therefore becoming by far the first party of the country. Under the premiership of
Antonio Salandra, a member of the right-wing faction of the Liberals, Italy declared war to
Austria-Hungary and
Germany in 1915, entering in
World War I. This decision was against the thought of Liberal leader Giolitti, who was a strong supporter of neutrality. In 1917, a member of the party's left-wing,
Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, became Prime Minister and during his government Italy defeated Austria, earning him the title Premier of Victory. At the end of World War I,
universal suffrage and
proportional representation were introduced. These reforms caused big problems to the Liberals which found themselves unable to stop the rise of two mass parties, the
Italian Socialist Party and the
Italian People's Party which had taken the control of many local authorities in
Northern Italy even before the war. The Italian particularity was that although the
Catholic party opposed the Socialists in accordance with European standards, it was also in contrast with the Liberals and generally the right under the consequences of the
capture of Rome and the struggles between the
Holy See and the Italian state which the Liberals had ruled for more than fifty years. The
general election in 1919 saw success for the Socialist Party led by
Filippo Turati, which gained the 32.3% of the vote. Giolitti's Liberals came only fifth, with 8.6% of the vote and 41 seats, behind the Italian People's Party of
Don Luigi Sturzo, with 20.5%. The Parliament was thus divided into three different blocks with huge instability while the Socialists and the rising
Fascists instigators of political violence on opposite sides. In this chaotic situation, the Liberals founded the
Italian Liberal Party in 1922 which joined an alliance led by Fascists and formed a joint list for the
1924 general election, transforming the Fascists from a small political force into an absolute-majority party. Albeit banned by
Benito Mussolini in 1925, many old Liberal politicians were given prestigious yet not influential political posts such as seats in the Senate, which was stripped of any real power by Fascist reforms. == Electoral results ==