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corporations that derived more of their revenue from TV, merchandising and sponsorship than from tickets. The arrival of prosperity in Italy, where soccer was less influenced by class and had already done more to make itself attractive, brought an increase in the number of people who went to the games: the average First Division crowd jumped from 21,000 in 1960 to 30,000 in 1970. Violence grew in the 1970s, as it did in society as a whole. The gulf between the players and the fans widened, just when the fans need to identify with the team increased. The solution was the group of ultr. These groups, while they supported their club generally, paid little attention to the game because they had their own tasks, which consisted of defending their territory behind the goal, chanting and singing and attacking their opponents, the other teams supporters. They imitated English hooligans but they carried the theatre much further by deploying more drums, banners and flares. Although they used English phrases, their political ties were to Italian extremist groups. The Lazio ultr were neofascist, gave the Roman salute and could boast that Gianfranco Fini and his wife came to home games. Meanwhile by the 1980s the tendency was growing for owners to be entrepreneurs who ran their clubs like companies. The era of Berlusconi was at hand.

Berlusconi and Other Matters: the Era of Football-Politics Nicola Porro and Pippo Russo University of Cassino and Florence University
Keywords
Mass media, pay-TV, soccer, Berlusconi, Forza Italia.

1 Introduction In Italy, the 1990s were marked by the birth and development of a wholly new, disquieting phenomenon: the unprecedented hybridization of sport, mass media and politics. The key figure dominating the period was without doubt the Milan tycoon, Silvio Berlusconi, owner and manager of one of Italys largest entrepreneurial networks, founder and leader of the movement-turned-political party, Forza Italia (FI), which burst onto the Italian political scene with the critical elections of March 1994, only a few months after its creation. The first part of this article deals with the advent and development of Berlusconis football-politics. The authors question the view that this was a one-off, unrepeatable episode produced exclusively by its charismatic leader and in no

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way rooted in a wider social context. By the same token, the article suggests that the subsequent transformation and changes of the FI model further confirm that the movement is not simply a product of media power but rather must be considered an organizational paradigm transferred from the world of sport (namely, the management of the football club, AC Milan) to the political arena. The second part examines the strategy of symbolic mobilization which underpinned the rhetorical discourse employed by Berlusconi to assert leadership within the football-politics context. The interpenetration of sport especially top professional football free enterprise and politics will therefore be the main focus. Examples of less well-known,though no less significant, forms of emerging contamination between sport and business will also be given. 2 The origins of football-politics From the first announcement that he would enter the field in early 1994, right through to the founding of his movement-cum-party with its intentionally football-sounding name (Forza Italia is roughly translatable as Come on Italy!), and characteristic blue of the Italian Olympic team, Silvio Berlusconi was careful to found his entire public discourse on a series of symbols,metaphors and signifiers that deliberately echoed the world of sport. Indeed, sport can be seen as a metanarrationof both the political career of this singular homo novus and of the Italian political scene as a whole. The explosive mix of the rousing, evocative language of football sustained by a media empire the television and radio networks of the Fininvest-Mediaset group owned by Berlusconi and managed by a handpicked team provided the indispensable clout that enabled this newcomer to accomplish the blitzkrieg that was the elections of March 1994. This does not explain the continued survival of Berlusconis political movement, however, often dismissed by many observers as a soluble party generated by an emergency situation and therefore destined to wane as the surprise effect wore off and the unique political circumstances that had brought it success ceased to exist. Nor does it explain FIs survival as a political party that has proved capable of adapting to the Darwinian conditions of a political system as complex and impenetrable as Italys. Despite the disastrous collapse of Berlusconis government in December 1994, after just seven months in power and subsequent electoral defeat in April 1996, Forza Italia has nonetheless built up an original organizational network and recouped political consensus as the 1999 European and administrative elections have shown. A better understanding of the phenomenon may be gained by taking a wider view and placing Berlusconism, as it has been dubbed, against the backdrop of a movement founded on a mix of business enterprise, mass media communications and sport.This mix is the keystone of Berlusconian politics,a new version of political discourse and strategy that takes its cue from these three areas. Inquiry must go beyond the catchy formula and attractive slogan, however. The victorious lightning strike of the March 1994 election was not, or at least was not only,

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a media coup dtat and the first worrying sign that politics was being reduced to a tussle between manipulation techniques. Berlusconis triumph can be accounted for by politically rational and historically definable factors. Doubtless among these are the tactical and strategic mistakes of the progressive fronts electoral campaign and the persistent failure of the left-wing parties to understand and adapt to the language and tools of modern mass communication, which are no longer those of rousing political speeches before crowds,neighbourhood canvassing or an emotional appeal to traditional subcultural appartenenze, or the various group identities that exist in Italy (Abruzzese 1994; Statera 1994). Similarly, while FI can quite aptly be described as a partito azienda, the corporation as political party, it in no way resembles other international phenomena to which it has been likened, such as the American Ross Perot or the French Bernard Tapie. Both Berlusconi and his movement are intrinsically different and parallels drawn with these other figures are misleading. Some studies of the Berlusconi phenomenon also refer to C. Wright Mills and his theory of merging power elites in the USA in the immediate post-war period. This risks confusing rather than clarifying the issue, however. In fact, FI has not suffered the rapid eclipse of the Italian Uomo qualunque movement of the 1950s, or of Poujadism in France. Nor can Berlusconi be solely described as the product of the mediatization of politics, a player in the political arena where financial and economic forces vie with one another using the seductive weaponry of television. A less impressionistic analysis requires the illustration of certain key elements: the singularly political nature of the Fininvest business system, which has made it a highly atypical entity within the European context; the particular situation in Italy at that time which led to the contamination of the enterprise culture and charismatic politics; and the strategic role of the football paradigm in this context, i.e. AC Milans experience under Berlusconis chairmanship, which facilitated the cross-fertilization of business, politics, sport and mass television culture. 3 Only media power? In a previous article on conservative innovation (Porro 1995a), the creation of FI was linked with the dynamics of transformation and adjustment that led the Fininvest business system,well before it entered the field of politics, to turn itself gradually from an investment holding company, founded by Berlusconi in 1975, into a veritable political machine. As a business conglomerate,Fininvest displayed great entrepreneurial acumen in well-timed investments in developing sectors of Italys now mainly tertiarized economy. In retrospect, Fininvest showed a striking capacity to take advantage of rapidly expanding but still poorly regulated sectors of that economy. This was where Fininvests political flair lay: it did not belong to any of the great dynasties of Italian capitalism, yet it swiftly learned to steer adroitly in the treacherous seas of Italian politics during the 1980s. In these

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years Craxis Socialist Party (PSI) had launched an all-out challenge to the two leading parties of the time, on the one hand encroaching upon the middle-class territory of the Christian Democrats with a singular strategy of cooperationcompetition within the government, while at the same time eroding the leftwing electorate of Berlinguers Communist Party (PCI) with ruthless tactics that combined real political and cultural innovation with more traditional scheming and intrigue (sottogoverno). These were the days when Silvio Berlusconi epitomized the sort of entrepreneurial arrivisme (rampantismo) cultivated by the PSI. The Berlusconi decree, issued hastily by the Craxi government to regulate air-wave coverage and give Fininvest a blank cheque and an unassailable position vis--vis potential competitors, was merely the culmination of a long process of osmosis between politics and new-style entrepreneurial operators. During the second half of the 1980s, until the collapse of the old political system,swept away by the corruption charges initiated by the Milan prosecutors office in the early 1990s, Craxis party and the Berlusconi business system were two key players, both in search of legitimation and determined to give no quarter to either old or new opponents, mutually supportive and disposed to even the most questionable means of acquiring and maintaining power. The backlash of Tangentopoli or the Bribesville scandals and the more general crisis of legitimacy of the whole Italian political system was to bring down Craxi, who took with him all Italys representative institutions. At that point, the founding of FI was almost an obligatory step in the process of the political conversion of one of the new generation of unscrupulous entrepreneurs who saw their entry into the political arena almost as a response to a prophetic calling. Berlusconis emphasis on his political mission derives from this context and played very effectively on the tangle of anger, uncertainty and frustration that characterized public opinion at the collapse of the so-called First Republic. The astounding success of the partito azienda, the corporation-cumpolitical party, was largely due to the collective psychological stress generated by Tangentopoli, especially among the new middle classes. This was certainly reinforced in the early 1990s by the ideological and organizational crisis of appartenenza, the traditional divides in Italian society (Calise 1995). In addition, the practice of democrazia referendaria, or democracy exercised by means of popular referenda (Fedele 1994), had provided Italians with models of political representation along the distinctly dichotomous lines afforded by the majoritarian system. The overwhelming media assault fielded by the major commercial radio and television broadcasters all owned by Fininvest found a receptive audience among much of the population on account of the dynamics of what Deutsch calls cognitive melting (disgelo cognitivo) (Deutsch 1961) which had created the fertile terrain in which Berlusconis simple, appealing yet aggressive political message was bound to thrive. This message would lead many to make an unprecedented voting decision, demonstrating a behavioural melting, signalling disaffection for the intricate workings of traditional Italian politics. FI and its leadership provided a political offering that found favour among wide strata of society comprising

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television consumers bewildered by the collapse of the old regime, without any acknowledged leader and in search of reassurance. A close correlation exists, therefore, between Fininvests initial business strategies and its practice and organization once in the political arena. As already mentioned,Fininvest had firmly established itself during the 1980s and early 1990s by becoming part of the overall process of internationalization of Italys production sectors. Only subsequently did it concentrate on key areas of mass communication. Creating a powerful network of radio and television broadcasting companies which underwent relentless rationalization and simplification to become Europes most extended network of its kind was a long-term Fininvest goal for a series of reasons. Not only was the network created to provide a formidable source of income from advertising, fiction production and other services; there was also the latent objective of steering consumer behaviour and lifestyle models. The companys mission was never exclusively profit oriented; in other words, although financial revenue was pursued with the most aggressive and effective strategies, Fininvest also sought an identity and an organizational vision affording it a symbolic value. It would be this strategic resource which would allow Berlusconi at the right moment, when conditions were ideal, to make the quantum leap into the political arena (McCarthy 1997). And this is what makes the operation conducted during the transition period the acquisition in 1986 of the Milan Football Club such a vital stepping stone for a company on its way from being a business group to becoming a political system. 4 The Milan Football Club as a metaphor In order to understand the role that the hybridization of football and enterprise culture had on the development of Berlusconism as a political phenomenon,we must return briefly to the Fininvest business model. As a prevalently financial holding company specializing in intangible goods and services, Fininvest had little in common with its industrial counterparts owned by the entrepreneurial families of northern Italy. Its activities centred on high value-added products generated by the tertiarization of the economy, such as insurance, retailing (the chain store, Standa, was acquired in 1988), tourism, home video production, cinemas and advertising. Subsequently the group was to gain a strong position in the publishing and multi-media business with the controversial acquisition of the prestigious publishing house, Mondadori. The holding companys first venture outside Italy came in the early 1990s with the setting up of other financial holding companies on the main European markets. In just a few years, from 1987 to 1993, the groups overall turnover grew sixfold to some 2,631 billion lire ($1,384 million). By the mid-1980s, the Fininvest galaxy was the second major private Italian group and poised to make further inroads into key domestic sectors as well as consolidate profitable foreign investments. During this phase of expansion based on relentless mergers and acquisitions, the development of the

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Fininvest brand was a strategic element of customer and company loyalty. This was done using avant-garde professional and marketing techniques. A key element of this strategy was the portrayal of Berlusconi the miracle worker, the leader with a vision, the standard bearer of a mission that went well beyond the confines of profitable business ventures. Both the Fininvest brand and the company leadership sought to present themselves as the cultural paradigm of the overall modernization of the whole Italian system which was still being held back by the legacy of the old political regime (the First Republic and its Roman parties) and by dynastic-type capitalism (the Turin oligarchies). The organizational model of Fininvest was increasingly that of a vast network, with the Milanese holding company at the centre of myriad, formally independent, entities, apparently in line with weak link business theories but in reality totally subordinate to the dictates of the parent company. In fact, since its identifying feature was its sole owner and chairman, the Fininvest model was certainly not revolutionary; indeed it ran counter to the new tendency of separation between management and ownership that had marked large entrepreneurial groups in recent decades. Berlusconis rhetoric extolling innovation and modernization was more the product of clever marketing and self-celebration than a reality. Yet, with no sign of opposition either from the old entrepreneurial families which, with aristocratic disdain, long underestimated the impact this dynamic parvenu would have or from the political sphere where Berlusconis arrivisme dovetailed perfectly with Craxis authoritarian style of socialism the carefully tailored image of His Emittenza (Translators note: an untranslatable play on the honorific title Eminenza (eminence) and the word emittenza (broadcasting)) succeeded in gaining public approval, creating a breach in the traditional bastions of society, through which Berlusconi passed in the winter of 1994 to go out onto the pitch, in an apparently spontaneous but in fact well-prepared move. In those unregulated years, when television broadcasting was a free-for-all, bound only by late and vaguely worded legislation, and when the Fininvest lobby enjoyed extraordinary power, the companys broadcasting stations fed Italian viewers with cultural consumer models copied from the large North American commercial networks. These were the years in which infotainment asserted itself, a clever mix of entertainment and advertising. Information and politics became inextricably intertwined, the business culture was applied to the country as a whole with buzzwords like azienda Italia. These were the years of open apology for societys winners and its corollaries a passive citizenship, united only by consumption patterns, and public opinion equated with inter-class userviewer-consumer target groups. Fininvest entered the football sector as part of the strategy to create that essential, symbolic identity or soul which would make it more than just a profitseeking business and fulfil the wider ambitions of its leader and managers.When Fininvest acquired the Milan Football Club in February 1986 through its subsidiary Reteitalia, the club was in deep crisis. Like the other sectors into which Berlusconi had made a timely entrance, top professional football was also in the

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throes of great upheaval. The effects were being felt of a law introduced some five years previously changing the legal and administrative status of professional clubs and allowing them to become joint stock or public limited companies (Porro 1997). Football television audiences had soared after the Italian teams stirring performance in the World Cup in Spain in 1982 and with the internationalization of professional football with the creation of the European Championship titles. Fininvest took over the relegated Milan club with the intention of applying its successful business strategies to the sports sector. These methods quickly led to a thorough shake-out of the whole professional football world. Between 1988 and 1994, the year FI was formally constituted, AC Milan swept the board, winning four national league titles, three European Championship cups, two Intercontinental cups and three Supercups. It was ready for the continental Superclub championship that Berlusconi had set his heart on. Milans success in many ways speeded up the incipient overhaul of the whole Italian football scene. The AC Milan experience demonstrated that management strategies and methods could be perfectly well applied to a football club, maximizing the commercial spin-off from sporting victories and minimizing the uncontrollable variables attendant upon the unpredictability of game results. A formerly prestigious and popular brand name was given a thorough overhaul, human resources were optimized,customer loyalty was developed among a wellidentified consumer target of tifosi or football fans. Milans home stadium was made more comfortable and attractive; season ticket sales campaigns with automatic booking and numbered seating were given blanket advertising coverage, TV coverage of games was carefully calibrated so as not to penalize the prospects for TV-on-demand, still in embryonic form at the time, and a precise strategy was developed to keep unruly fans or hooligans under control. These were just some of the key operations with which the product Milan was marketed and ensured maximum customer loyalty. This team that swept everything before it a mighty metaphor of success became part of the collective imagination and was ready to be put to good use when Berlusconi answered his political calling. This was the only way that the myth of the invincible Milan Football Club, the allegory of success that defied description, could be launched onto the symbolic market of politics without engendering parochial jealousies, or arousing resentment among the losers or hostility from injured local pride. Berlusconis political discourse was directed to creating in the minds of citizen-fans a simple mental equation: that the old business adage of one best way is true, that in sport as in politics, you have to know what you are doing and that there are those like Berlusconi who do, combining the figure of the business wizard with the charisma of the born leader of men. This combination of technocratic knowhow and charisma (to be dealt with more fully below) underpins the whole philosophy of FIs political agenda. The message was further strengthened by the evident metamorphosis of the world of football entertainment during the years of Milans major triumphs. Between 1981 and 1991,television rights and income from sponsors grew threefold as a proportion of football companies financial

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statements. This was the start of an exponential growth in top football club revenues which was to continue into the 1990s. Television rights provided Italian football clubs with little more than 3.8 billion lire ($2 million) in 1982. By 1998, income would be around 970 billion ($510 million) with three-year locked-in contracts. By 1999, the football market was worth some 12 trillion lire ($6 billion), making it the twelfth most important sector of the Italian economy. Alongside these economic data, Fininvest management effected major changes in the football supporter structure. Customer loyalty was consolidated with wellorganized season ticket offers and a resultant fall in the number of occasional spectators. During the 1990s, football goers fell by more than a million. This was offset, however, by a soaring television football-viewing public: twenty-five million consumers among the different Italian television networks for the 19989 football season, devouring an overdose of some 1,971 hours of football broadcasting including live and recorded matches, analysis and talk shows, journalists reports, meetings with players and so on distributed over encrypted (payTV) or unencrypted channels. Other football clubs were to follow the management pattern laid down by the Milan-Fininvest model: controlled indebtedness, growing company assets, massive investment in top players. In addition, the new legal status of professional football clubs as profit-making public companies introduced in 1996 by the Olive Tree coalition government encouraged major clubs to seek stock market listing, underlining the market-oriented nature of the business. The 1999 financial statements of the major clubs are indicative of the enormous assets tied up in players: 281 billion lire ($147 million) for Parma, 265 billion ($139 million) in the case of Milan and 206.6 billion ($108 million) for Lazio. 5 AC Milan as an organizational paradigm In addition to the symbolism behind the resurgence of AC Milan as a metaphor of success and free enterprise philosophy, other components of the football paradigm were to be instrumental both for FI as a political party and for Berlusconis political message as a newly constituted politician. A few of these aspects will be examined. AC Milans communication strategy developed by a house organ was geared to create public loyalty and galvanize Fininvest executive staff. Much emphasis was given to what was considered Fininvests systematic victimization by biased press campaigns from the so-called accredited specialized press and alleged plots against the team. This persecution syndrome be it biased referees or, later, public prosecutors bringing charges of corruption remained one of the most effective and reiterated leit motifs of Berlusconian public discourse. The more violent and vociferous groups of fans were brought to order by recourse to the symbolic archetypal mechanism of the clan spirit: belonging to a football club was a faith to which one was eternally bound. At a more practical level, inducements were offered to the more rowdy groups and their leaders.

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Similarly, when the time came, the underlying FI rhetoric would propose identification with the newly formed party as a means of freeing the country from the old political system. On the practical side, however, the campaign to recruit parliamentarians, opinion leaders and whole political groupings, such as the electoral agreement with the Lega Nord on the eve of the 1994 elections, included many sleights of hand but allowed FI access to institutional posts and elected assemblies. Just as season ticket sales relied heavily on eye-catching TV commercials playing on the idea of enrolling in the party of supporters, so too the FI electoral campaign and its press organs reiterated the same theme. Even the presentation of AC Milans annual financial statement was turned into a spectacular liturgical event where like the subsequent political conventions the collective mission and vision of its leader were celebrated. The aim, copied from American corporations,was to impose decisions already taken by senior management, making them as attractive as possible, in direct contrast with democratic participation. In fact, FI was to set itself up as a political party with a view to gaining national leadership without ever holding a national party congress. Right from the beginning, Fininvests organizational strategy for the Milan club was more than a mere propaganda vehicle or a simple promotional investment. In 1989,when the revampedMilan team won the European Cup Winners Championship in Barcelona, it already had more than 1,400 supporters clubs officially recognized by the company, with at least 340,000 members who all believed they belonged to an elite formally constituted as the Associazione italiana Milan Club (AIMC) and entrusted with a mission personified by a charismatic leader that ran parallel to the professional management of the football club itself. In fact, this clear-cut separation of roles assigned all loyal supporters the task of simply following the objectives set down by the clubs management, thereby depriving fans and citizens of even that traditional symbolic representation guaranteed by democratic societys representative bodies. The associative model was highly specialized by role, function and hierarchy. The docile majority of supporters known as aficionados as well as the vociferous but peaceful regulars in the stands were offered appetizing incentives like periodic meetings with players and cut-price travel offers for away matches. The more unpredictable group of hooligans (ultr) who formed clans and adopted the language and gestures of political extremism were the object of a targeted pacification strategy involving negotiated political agreements such as the offer of free tickets in exchange for restraint from violence in and around the stadium. That Berlusconis media power is only a partial explanation of his success is borne out by the fact that the symbolic and organizational model of the Milan club was an incubator for the future political movement designed by Berlusconi and fleshed out by Publitalia,the branch of Fininvest specialized in image creation and PR. Both associations demanded absolute separation between the decisionmaking core and the supporters. The football experience was clearly the breeding ground for the strategy whereby FI members were mere supporters of their

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leader, having no say whatsoever in the formulation of the political agenda. New members were offered a similar system of incentives to those used for the supporter clubs: in 1999 when FI was on the verge of taking the form of a political party proper, the azzurri supporters clubs were offering party membership (at 100,000 lire), together with a package of special offers including discounts at seaside resorts, English language courses, hotel discounts in major tourist cities, financial and insurance policy offers, etc. The relation between Berlusconis restricted inner circle within FI, the Comitato di presidenza (the Presidential Committee), and the membership association (Associazione nazionale Forza Italia, ANFI) was a mirror image of the relations between the Milan senior management and the AIMC supporter groups. The primary strategy was to operate using methods to reduce complexity, revealing the conviction that grassroots involvement was a useless and probably dangerous process. This was coherently flanked by the privileged role afforded an elite those elected to representative institutions. The polito-logical model adopted resembles that of the so-called partito leggero (the lightweight party). Indeed it was this very structure that allowed the party leadership, in the wake of later electoral upsets, to deflect criticism to the periphery, which nonetheless caused severe lacerations within local executive groups. Following FIs very poor showing in the administrative elections of November 1994, and its general election flop of 1996, the formation of a large right-wing grouping or even a merger with Alleanza nazionale (AN) was seriously considered. Such a project was immediately abandoned,however,at the first signs of electoral recovery, the policy now favouring a mythical large centre grouping comprising the variegated survivors of the disbanded Christian Democrat Party. These acrobatic manoeuvres all took place apparently without the least concern for the party membership.The mood of the electorate was, however, under constant scrutiny and monitored by allegedly objective opinion polls in an innovative form of internal communication which had the advantage of circumventing the tiresome and often insidious practices of democracy by consent through assembly. Berlusconis political style and management strategies did not,however,clash with the inevitable process of institutionalization the party had to accomplish on account of its growing size and spread. At the beginning of the summer of 1999, after its electoral successes of the previous months, FI was received into the inner sanctum of the most partitocratico of Italian parties, the PPE (Partito popolare europeo), the grouping that still operated in full acquiescence to the old party system. The movement had now become part of Italys representative institutions. The 2,500 football supportersclubs claimed to have recruited 190,000 members for FI. Similar to traditional-format political parties, FI now had 20 regional and 120 provincial coordinators as well as 104 organizers in the larger cities and 3,000 municipal-level leaders, steering committees, proboviri (local arbiters) and labour departments, in other words the whole armoury of the traditional political system. Indeed, Berlusconi resuscitated forms of collateral associations discarded by traditional mass party political models, such as Forza seniores, a

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pensioners group and Giovani azzurri, a youth association, the latter even being provided with a rousing anthem composed by the leader himself. As in the Milan club, the incentives offered to local activists who exceeded their recruitment targets included bonuses this time an invitation to dinner at the Berlusconi mansion. More than a lightweight party, FI tended to adopt an eclectic model, one which did not disdain methods belonging to old-style politics but updated to become more appropriate to the movements mission. In fact, the creation of a full-fledged party college (Quadri Italia) was announced at the end of 1999. The school was to be run, however, by professional business management trainers. And a few months earlier, during the summer,holidaymakers on many Italian beaches were treated to the spectacle of small blue airplanes trailing banners rallying them to fight for freedom and against the current governments proposed totalitarian solution of the delicate Italian issue of par condicio (an ongoing dispute between government and opposition over granting all parties equal access to the mass media, namely television air time). Italy, which had been the stage for some of the most deleterious political experiments at the beginning of the twentieth century, now, at the close of that century, was witnessing the development of a mass, one-master party (partito padronale). Six years from its inception, FI appeared to be a lightweight party but one with a well-knit country-wide network. Using completely new communication codes, it proposed a social ideal, vehicled largely by television, whose creed was the need for unopposed leadership and the popularization of a type of associationism once the bastion of a former elitist society. This development curve is hardly surprising, indeed it is part of the genetic coding received from Fininvest which demonstrated extraordinary ability in carrying over the symbolic and organizational style applied to AC Milan into the political party. Dal Lagos definition of football politics (la calcivtizzazione della politica: Dal Lago 1994) is more than an effective slogan coined by an ideological adversary with aristocratic sympathies. Nor does it just describe the wholesale transfer into the political arena of the language, iconography and symbolism of football, i.e. the traditional blue of Italian sports teams, the very formula Forza Italia (Come on Italy!), the constant use of sporting metaphors which became an almost obsessive feature of Berlusconi-speak, etc. Football politics also contains a disquieting vision of society and the role of representation within that society. It is a formula which resorts systematically to Schmitts friendenemy juxtaposition (Schmitt 1932). Indeed for Schmitt, the football match is the very essence and perfect allegory of themus antagonism, stylizing and miniaturizing human conflict. However, as will be mentioned later, following the Berlusconi experience, other forms of contamination between sport and politics were subsequently to appear. 6 Symbolism and leadership Five years after Berlusconi entered the field, causing turmoil in traditional-style Italian political life, any analysis of the Berlusconi phenomenon and its symbolic

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weave of political and sporting discourse must examine whether the original conditions leading to FIs lightning success still persist and what, if any, changes have taken place on the political and social scene. Enough time has elapsed to warrant reliable medium-term forecasts and allow us to take stock fairly accurately of certain key factors during the crucial period of Italys recent history, known as the transition from the First to the Second Republic. The first factor to be examined must be Berlusconis concept of leadership. This will be the subject of the present section. Second, the special relationship created by football politics and the majoritarian electoral system will be examined and, subsequently, the public story or narration proffered by Berlusconismo, a phenomenon which was to lead to the legitimation of right-wing radicalism with the FI leaders redemption of the Italian right-wing party at the outset of his political enterprise. The authors have used two approaches: the first considers the specifics of the Berlusconi phenomenon in order to arrive at a general insight into the sea-change undergone by Italian politics; the second looks in detail at the symbolic fabric or matrix taken from the world of football which has been the most effective and immediate source of identification and communication throughout Berlusconis political career. Previous articles (Russo 1994; Porro 1995b) have dealt with Berlusconis leadership model. Berlusconi came onto the scene during a period of political transition in Italy, a fact which, while an advantage for the newcomers, nonetheless obliged them to make some kind of innovation. FIs political originality was based on three main features: (1) Berlusconis position as an outsider vis--vis the traditional political market; (2) a political style based on the massive use of the most sophisticated (and in this case domestic) means of communication; (3) the creation of a hybrid of language and symbolic structures which made incessant reference to Berlusconis experience as chairman of one of the worlds greatest football teams. Berlusconis political discourse centred largely on the insistence that he was entering the field as a total stranger to the world of Italian politics. He was the outsider, putting himself forward as the leader of an alternative to the traditional political machinery. The recurrent theme of Berlusconis blanket communication campaign was that an entirely new product was available on the atypical market of the national electorate: the versatile entrepreneur, Berlusconi. FI was portrayed as an anti-party movement and thereby concealed the intrinsically politically nature of Fininvests success and the close ties its leader had always had with the old regime, namely with the PSI and its leader Bettino Craxi. This approach provided Berlusconi with substantial strategic capital as the old party system was shattered by the wave of corruption charges. In tune with widespread popular sentiment, FIs communication strategy exalted its leader as a businessman totally alien to the discredited, delegitimized political system. In addition, the particular timing of the decision to enter the political fray, described repeatedly as a decision taken after much inner turmoil leading finally to an acceptance of the responsibility and self-sacrifice demanded by this bitter cup,afforded

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two key communication effects. On the one hand, it lent a prophetic, messianic tone to Berlusconis entering the field, making it a media event. On the other, it provided a symbolic thrust to an electoral campaign built around the image of the homo novus not embroiled in the traditional wheeler-dealing of politics, whose only weapon was his sense of mission. With his three national-coverage television networks and a wide range of newspaper titles, the leader of FI was backed by a media force far beyond the reach of his political adversaries. Already at the end of 1993, Berlusconis TV networks were awash with propaganda for the new movement, constituting an external variable that shook the consolidated political system to its foundations: commercials, public opinion polls and cleverly worded information bulletins anticipated the real electoral campaign. One of the most widely used frames stressed the challenge theme: the outsider stepping in to take up the banner for that part of the political spectrum (Centre-Right) orphaned by the collapse of the parties in power for the past fifty years, fully aware of the daunting challenge faced by his daring to enter the arena and confront the most hostile of opponents. The element of challenge is a first ingredient of the hybridization of politics and sport, to a certain extent recalling the political athleticism of Hoberman (1984) and the transfer of the sports competition matrix to the domain of politics. Berlusconis campaign made reference to political athleticism only indirectly, however. Insistent emphasis was given to the physical narcissism and vanity displayed by current political leaders. In the case of Berlusconi himself,political athleticism was presented rather as a metaphor for the topos of the titanic challenge he had answered. The construction was of the outsider obeying a prophetic call to face the powerful, ruthless enemy on his own ground. This was couched in the appropriate mythical narrative context such as the voyage of the Argonauts, David and Goliath, the labours of Hercules and even the chanson de geste and it became part of a state-of-the-art manipulative strategy (Edelman 1976). The heroic accomplishments of AC Milan, the former, fallen glory of Italian football that rose from its ashes to attain victory in the world arena, provided a fitting epilogue for this theatrical representation. The classical rhetoric of athleticism was also part of this communication strategy, however. Berlusconi was careful to release pictures of himself engaged in keeping physically fit and leading a healthy lifestyle. The most notable incident involved photographs (surreptitiously?) taken by a paparazzo in 1996 in Bermuda where Berlusconi had obliged his closest collaborators to join him on a fitness holiday. To bolster his image as an outsider, distanced from the men and mindset of old-style Italian politics, Berlusconi very carefully gauged the different layers that were to make up his public image. Emphasis was given in turn to his qualities as a self-made man, as a successful businessman,as the head of a TV empire able to break the public broadcasting monopoly, and as an entertainment impresario. A hybrid of political and sports language was developed right from the beginning for the FI leader. Emphasizing his role as chairman of AC Milan and the publicity this afforded, Berlusconi adopted a communication register comprising a wide

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mix of symbolic signifiers taken from the most diverse sources. Sports stylemes were constantly reiterated as part of a two-pronged strategy: first, the need to keep ever present in the public mind the most effective image of a leader who won every contest he entered, and second, the plan to remodel the symbolic forms of political consensus,introducing new forms of electorate motivation and loyalty based on the model of the sports competition whose matrix is that of opposing sides confronting one another. This latter aspect, as will be mentioned below, was to prove a key asset in Berlusconis electoral campaign. 7 In the stadium: the majoritarian framework The diachronic approach allows a better understanding of events than synchronic observation which focuses on individual episodes as they occur. Only diachronic reconstruction can throw light on the overall developments and interim results obtained by Berlusconism. All important at the specific moment when the ruling political class had been routed by corruption scandals was the other leading feature of Italian political life during that period: the change from a proportional representation to a majoritarian electoral system. The year prior to Berlusconis political victory, a plebiscite referendum vote (82 per cent) had introduced the majoritarian system. The public and political debate had been heated. Silvio Berlusconi had remained strangely silent on the issue, however. In retrospect, his silence seems strange for two reasons. First, the majoritarian system is one that lends itself to personalization of the prospective candidates and to clear-cut divisions in which communication is simplified and political issues are much more susceptible of media packaging (mediatizzazione della politica). The overwhelming Yes vote at the referendum should have been a boon to the television magnate Berlusconi. His absence from the public debate can be interpreted in several ways. One of these is the pure logic of contingent advantage, as was the case a few years later when Berlusconi expressed regret for the passing of the proportional representation system in the hope of acquiring the leadership of a composite aggregation of the orphans of the First Republic that had rallied to attack the DAlema government causing the brief Christmas crisis at the end of 1999. The second reason for surprise lies in the spontaneous affinity Berlusconis political style has with the majoritarian system,a fact which clashes glaringly with his tactical strategy of opting for proportional representation. The essence of the majoritarian political competition is that of the duel. However many candidates compete for a seat and however many groupings put themselves up for general elections, the dispute in the vast majority of cases centres on just two people. Especially in the single-round, first-past-the-post system characterized by zerosum outcomes, the aspect of two duelling forces is key. The competition can have only one victor; one party suffers a major defeat and there is a series of other predestined losers. The majoritarian framework provides a sort of institutional stadium, a symbolic political arena.

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The psychological effects on the Italian collective imagination of the introduction of the majoritarian system have probably not been sufficiently investigated. Grafted onto a profoundly consortial-consensual political culture (consociativo-consensuale) (Lijphart 1988), the impact of the majoritarian principle cannot be confined to a mere question of greater electoral efficiency. Italy had been accustomed for some fifty years to a proportional representation system based on glaring disregard for numerical logic. The strong Communist Party claiming a third of the popular vote was in fact systematically denied the possibility of forming a government while small moderate parties with less than 3 per cent of the national vote exercised power by blackmail over their coalition partners. The possibility of now finally being able to determine clear-cut winners and losers had led to excessive public expectations,even anticipation of a miraculous remedy. The elections of 1994 and 1996 were to dash such hopes. Before these elections, however, the new communication barrage from a political neophyte offering new solutions (nuovismo and neofitismo), together with a public apology for the new voting system as a much-needed simplification, triggered wide public expectations. Berlusconis skill was his ability to attune himself to these expectations, conveying a leader model and political style which matched more than any other the Zeitgeist of Italy during those days. More important than Berlusconis political agenda was his appropriate symbolic response,which had its roots in his experience in the sports world. Skilled in measuring up to the imaginary component of any competition, where the contest involved an easily identifiable adversary, and accustomed to the zero-sum alternatives of success or defeat, Berlusconi found it easy to put himself forward as the least controversial competitor in the field. To apply Simmels definition,Berlusconi was able to appropriate the form of the majoritarian competition and, with a cleverly targeted operation of symbolic transfer, was to put to best use his long practice with the sports duel, so as to become the victor in the political duel.These first majoritarian elections were confused by several variables: the fact that there were three and not two contestants; the lack of a credible candidate for premier put up by the other two poles; and the very ambiguity of Berlusconis own coalition which saw him linked to the Lega and not the AN in the north, but with the AN and not the Lega in the south. Nonetheless, it could be argued that the ease with which Berlusconi handled the duel format and his ability to shape the collective imagination and the symbols of the political contest provided a surrogate for institutional learning. While the two opponent poles still had to come to grips with the new communication formulas of a new electoral competition,Berlusconi found himself in his element (Russo 1995).This empathy was no longer to be sufficient to bring him success in the 1996 elections, however. 8 The language of sport as public narration (sportivizzazione della narrazione pubblica) In light of the above, Berlusconi can be considered as an example of one of the innovative leadership categories described by the social psychologist Howard

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Gardner (1995). Using a cognitivist approach to the question of hegemonic personalities, Gardner suggests that the real ability of a leader and the likelihood of his achieving the goals set depend on his ability to tell an innovative story: Leaders attempt to communicate, and to convince others,of a particular view, a clear vision of life. The term story is the best way to convey this point. I argue that the story is a basic human cognitive form; the artful creation and articulation of stories constitutes a fundamental part of the leaders vocation. Stories speak to both parts of the human mind, its reason and its emotion. And I suggest further that stories of identity go on to constitute the single most powerful weapon in the leaders literary arsenal. (Gardner 1995: 42) In Gardners view, the story told by the leader is contested by the counterstories of the adversaries. It is the emerging hegemonic personalitysability to outdo these counterstories that will afford him success. In Berlusconis case, the story narrated by the man himself and by the imposing media and propaganda machine he owns told of a successful businessman, not part of the close-knit, family dynasties that made up Italian capitalism, who, to avert the possibility of a left-wing party defined as communist from coming to power, had decided to sacrifice his own economic livelihood and enter the political arena by forming a moderate rassemblement. The narration emphasized several key features: the self-made man the person who started from nothing and yet achieved the highest prizes in whatever endeavour he took on; the personal sacrifice made for the common good; the threat to democracy from residual communist forces; the wholly new type of political venture; and, especially, the equation made between the largest opposition party, the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), which at that time had never held executive office, and all the other political parties in power that had connived with the system of intrigue that had been the hallmark of the First Republic. The counterstory offered by Berlusconis opponents emphasized certain grey areas of his business career and private life: the duopoly enjoyed within television broadcasting acquired thanks to cast-iron political protection and the grave conflict of interest this entailed; the massive indebtedness of his group, described in apocalyptic terms; the fact that Berlusconis name was on the secret P2 masonic lodge members list, and that during the most equivocal years of Italys republican history he had been involved in several very dubious dealings; that he was beginning to be the object of official judicial inquiries, later to become embarrassingly numerous. The leitmotiv of the Berlusconi story and the counterstory of his adversaries both centred on the rhetoric of the homo novus pitched against the old system and provoked a conservative, corporatist reaction. The rhetorical theme was magnified by FIs vast propaganda machine which used two key topics: on the one hand,demonization of the enemy;and on the other,the image of Berlusconi the football entrepreneur, incessantly invoked to legitimize his claim to be a public figure.

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The first strategy demonizing the enemy had already been amply employed by another innovative leader, the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who not by chance was one of Berlusconis political models. Gardner writes: Thatchers central premise was that human beings could be conceived of as either on the right side or on the wrong side. Early in her tenure,Thatcher used to ask of her associates is he one of us?The reference of us might vary somewhat across contexts but the basic issue was, did the individual have the same point of view as Thatcher and her circle or was that individual in some fundamental way in opposition? She once declared: I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil and I believe that in the end good will triumph. (1995: 234) Berlusconis demonization of his political adversaries is a perfect replica of Thatcherite Manichaeism and recalls one of the most famous and controversial lessons in political theory: Schmitts friendenemydichotomy referred to above, and considered a fundamental category of politics (Schmitt 1932). Refusal to acknowledge the honesty or legitimacy of ones political adversary and the representation of political competition as a struggle between good and evil comprise the fundamental elements of any effective communication strategy. More especially, however, they erode an institutional code of good conduct that is the sunk cost of any modern parliamentary democracy. In this sense, the public narration or story of the Berlusconi leadership, like that of Thatcher, contradicts Eliass theory of the evolutionary processes of civilization (Elias 1988). The mutual recognition among political parties contending for power and the fact that conflict is conducted through recognized institutional channels are, according to Elias, among the most significant achievements of western civilization. If Eliass theories are applied to Berlusconi, another paradox becomes apparent. Elias, in the later phase of the development of his theoretical system, concerned himself with sport. Sport was depicted as a miniaturized version of the more general process of civilization. The continuous dissemination of sports activities as practised in the English-speaking world is linked to the success and dissemination of a society that has learned to defuse cycles of civil violence and give birth to the first forms of modern parliamentary democracy (Elias and Dunning 1986). The spread of sports is therefore the sign of a more general advance of civilization. Fair play and abiding by the rules become the exemplary elements of a societal model of interaction which regulates conflict, reducing it to a civilized confrontation among rival forces. The apparent contradiction presented by Berlusconi is, however, also included in Eliass theory: any political leader who bases his strategy exclusively on his sports persona is by the same token contravening fair play and the legitimacy of his adversaries by systematically reducing them to the rank of enemy (Elias 1988). The second theme developed by the Berlusconi propaganda machine was

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based more explicitly on the image of the football entrepreneur and concentrated on telling the story of the success of a modern magnate who had swiftly transformed an old, formerly triumphant club on the verge of financial collapse into one of the most powerful football machines in the world. The accent was constantly on the modernization introduced by the FI leader into the team and hence the whole football system. This modernizing thrust involved both the organization and mission of the football team now considered a business and the technical performance of the Milan players on the field. From the business point of view, AC Milan became part of a much wider system geared to produce entertainment across the board. The economic and symbolic synergies that were key to the public image campaign generated a most formidable capital sum subsequently expendable in the political arena. From the technical point of view, the arrival of an innovative trainer, Arrigo Sacchi, with no credible football pedigree, and the success afforded by his original and unconventional interpretation of the game, helped to consolidate the image of Berlusconi as a man ready to take great risks to achieve success by innovation. A remark he made during the electoral campaign should be recalled for its particular significance (and bad taste): referring to the economist, Luigi Spaventa, his opponent for the Rome electoral seat, Berlusconi allegedly asked: This Spaventa, how many championship cups has he won? 9 Redeeming the right wing A key element in Berlusconis political strategy was to readmit into the political arena the authoritarian right-wing party AN which had replaced the wholly unpresentable neofascist party, Movimento sociale italiano (MSI). This was symbolically and politically a revolutionary move since it entailed accrediting and legitimizing, with a view to possible future government alliances, what was still considered by many an anti-system party. The rapprochement between Berlusconi and ANs executive group started with the move that marked Berlusconis real entry into the field although he had not yet become the leader of Forza Italia: a public declaration of support for the AN leader Gianfranco Fini, former secretary of the MSI, in the decisive second round of voting in the elections for mayor of Rome at the end of 1993. Berlusconis argument was that Fini was closer to the ideals and interests of the moderate electorate than the left-wing candidate, Rutelli. On that occasion Berlusconis support of Fini had more symbolic than political importance. Likening AN to the moderate electorate both swept away a long-standing taboo and created new coordinates within the whole political spectrum. The taboo was an implicit pact, respected throughout the history of the First Republic, whereby this anti-system force was not allowed government responsibilities. The new coordinates effectively redefined the symbolic characterization of the Right, which suddenly lost its epithet of extreme. Eugenio Scalfari, then editor-in-chief of the Repubblica daily newspaper, was to coin the apt phrase of Berlusconis redemption (sdoganamento) of the extreme

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Right. That declaration of support and the subsequent political and electoral alliances were to play a fundamental role in allowing the neofascist right-wing party to come out of quarantine,an event that would otherwise have been highly unlikely despite the ANs attempts to present a new public image. This redemption by Berlusconi did not only affect the political party, which was subsequently offered the possibility of becoming a full-fledged player in the political system of the Second Republic, but also contributed to a much wider legitimation of a whole right-wing culture which a few years previously had penetrated only a few restricted social circles. It must be said, however, that the extreme right-wing subculture had begun its worrying revival even before Berlusconi publicly condoned Fini and his party. One of the areas where this revival was most apparent was in the stands (curve) of Italys football stadiums.While in the 1970s the stands had been dominated by extreme left-wing groups,the pendulum had inexorably begun to swing the other way. During the 1990s, newspaper and police reports both described worrying neofascist and neo-Nazi behaviour in the stands. Numerically large groups of violent fans were riding the wave of the growing public unrest or moral panic over the issue of increasing immigration which had triggered openly racist reactions. Law and order was even at times at stake. In December 1999,Rome was shaken by a series of racial and anti-Semitic episodes that culminated in a bomb attack on the Museo della Resistenza which the police attributed to the more radical fringes of neofascist football hooligans. Other disquieting factors were the agreements between extremist supporters of the various teams,who were prepared to forgo their football allegiances and band together under a general Far Right banner. In retrospect, the disturbances that took place in Brescia in November 1994,exactly a year after the Rights redemption and during the waning months of Berlusconis brief term of office, take on a new significance. The occasion was a match between Brescia and Roma at which Lazio hooligans (ultr), traditionally overt right-wing supporters, joined forces with Roma neofascists. The serious clashes with the local police that followed left one policeman seriously injured. The traditionally left-wing clubs of Roma, Milan itself and Torino had now become right-wing strongholds with the arrival of a new generation of hooligans who acted in small, independent groups beyond the control of the coordinating forces of the supporters clubs. Many violent incidents occurred, notably one at the first match of the Italian 19992000 championship between Roma and Inter on 12 September 1999. The long-established group of Roma supporters,the CUCS (Commandos Uniti Curva Sud) always considered non-political were attacked by extreme right-wing factions armed with knives and clubs and forced to give up their traditional position in the southern stands. In the new political and cultural climate where the friendenemy dialectic was a keystone of political debate and when hitherto anathematized forces were generally being given rights of citizenship, the imagination and iconography of the extreme Right started speaking the language it knew best that of social disruption, tribal affiliation and the imposition of the will of an organized, rowdy minority. The moderate Berlusconi, who

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must have had some acquaintance with the football stadium, should have been able to anticipate such a turn of events. 10 Football and the enterprise beyond Berlusconi Long before Berlusconi entered politics and became Prime Minister (and a case study for political scholars everywhere), he had created a Weltanschauung that was immediately labelled Berlusconismo. By this is meant a philosophy of life founded on the cult of the successful businessman,preaching the creed of innovation and spreading the good word and his own way of life to the rest of humanity. It is a philosophy of selfishness, genetically monopolistic and rooted in the parable of the individual who builds a vast empire from nothing and who, by virtue of this very success, is entitled to tell his story and recount his Zeitgeist. The term Berlusconismo was coined in the world of football and referred to the AC Milan chairmans strategy of buying the strongest players on the Italian and world market to prevent them from going to rival teams, even if it meant keeping many of them out of the game. Berlusconismo is the paranoid desire for victory at any cost, including killing the entertainment value of a football championship because one team monopolizes the scene. Berlusconismo in football also means the innovative organization of a company engaged in providing all-inclusive entertainment. However, little more than ten years after its rise, Berlusconismo was to become an obsolete football management formula, replaced by other models, in their turn original and innovative. Two examples, to remain within the sphere of Italian football, are the Parmalat and Cragnotti models. Parmalat has focused on its company brand name rather than the sporting exploits of a football team. This multinational corporation producing long-life milk has generated its own special brand of globalization by exploiting the image it derives from sponsorship of sport. During the 1970s it started by sponsoring skiing and Formula 1 events. The Collecchio corporation entered football during the 1980s, making the Parma Football Club the centre of its economic and football empire. It subsequently enlarged its football portfolio, acquiring many clubs throughout the world or controlling them via massive sponsorship deals. It has a policy of contracting South American players who automatically become testimonials for the Parmalat brand in their home countries which just happen to be those of greatest commercial interest to the corporation based in the Emilia region of Italy. The Parmalat football formula is based on synergy among the individual clubs, to the benefit of the Parma club, and on the worldwide dissemination of the corporation brand name (Russo 1996). The Cragnotti model, on the other hand, is called after the chairman of the Lazio football club which has become an important segment of Cragnottis much more complex high-finance business. Lazio was the first Italian team to be listed on the stock exchange and is part of a financial and economic system which, like Parmalat, has its core business in the food sector (the group is owned by Cirio).

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Lazios market strategies are dictated more by stock market value than plausible technical policy. Indeed, it was this link with the financial sector that made it the first joint stock or public corporation in the Italian football world. To judge by the slow and hesitant access of the other big football clubs to the stock market, it is not an easy model to copy. Only Roma owned by Sensi, another ownerentrepreneur, seems likely to follow in the footsteps of Cragnotti. In view of these new football organizational models, Berlusconi the innovator appears to have lost his creative verve. Indeed, AC Milan was late off the mark in setting up what should have been a natural extension of its activities: Club-TV, a pay-television channel completely dedicated to the matches of one football club. AC Milan took this up very late broadcasts started only on 16 December 1999 after Manchester United (the first club in the world to set up its own channel, MUTV, Manchester United Television), Real Madrid and Olympique Marseille. Becoming a joint stock company listed on the stock exchange still seems a long way off for AC Milan, and the 19992000 season results, after a lucky win in the national championship league, have been modest. Its present troubles make Milan what it was during its finest hours: a metaphor for the state of health of Berlusconismo. In the days of political and football triumphs, the inextricable mesh of football and politics provided an all-pervading symbolic hybridization. Indeed, when on 25 May 1994, Berlusconi succeeded in winning a difficult vote of confidence for his government in the Senate and AC Milan won the Champions Cup in Athens, roundly beating Barcelona by 4 goals to nil, a sports daily carried the headline Confidence vote while score 20 (Corriere dello Sport/Stadio, 26 May 1994), illustrating a symptomatic confusion of symbols and language. In 1999 Milan was eliminated from the European Cup by a Turkish team while its chairman was knocking down a cardboard replica of the Berlin Wall to celebrate the tenth anniversary of a historic event of which he was not part since he was busy doing other things in 1989. And as in a nightmare described by Orwell Berlusconi has no history behind him. He is the ultimate homo novus, without a past and projected towards the immediate future. Continuously subject to manipulation, having to circumnavigate failed bicameral committees on constitutional reform (bicamerali), a sabotaged majoritarian system, with caricatured Thatcherist and neo-Christian Democrat leanings, Berlusconi is the carbon copy of his Milan football club, an entity without a past who, through his right-hand man Galliani, went as far as to condemn Nereo Rocco, AC Milans mythical coach of the triumphant 1960s, as an example of an obsolete life and football style (passatisti). His is the Weltanschauung of the latest news, the photo frame, trying to plan the future while suffocated by an anxiety to lay claim to the present. Around him have appeared new personalities whose pragmatic strategies and ingenious insights are creating new combinations of sport and business. Berlusconi, the great innovator, seems today cannibalized by the Darwinian cycle he himself set in motion. The old political system is returning to claim victory, devouring one of its main opponents, the leader of the anti-politics movement, and pitilessly highlighting

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the failings and shallowness of the Berlusconian challenge. It is significant that Berlusconi sided with the proportional representation lobby when the rules of the future Italian political system were being decided. It was tantamount to surrender to the First Republic and the perverse logic of a system that crowns the victors with the noose that will strangle them the moment they become the vanquished. Certainly Berlusconi may once again be successful at the polls, exploiting yet again the contradictions and snail pace of Italian institutional change, and even realize his dream of becoming Prime Minister once more. But that is another story and would not be sufficient to reinstate his irremediably lost charisma as the homo novus and hide the painfully visible traits of the has-been. Football politics, now relegated to scuffles between rowdy supporters and to boring defence tactics, consumes its heroes very rapidly. Translated by Stephanie Johnson Note
Nicola Porro is the author of the first five sections, and Pippo Russo of the rest of the article.

References
Abruzzese, A. (1994) Elogio del tempo nuovo, Genoa: Costa & Nolan. Calise, M. (1995) Dal partito dei media alla corporation multimediale Quaderni di Sociologia XXXVIIIXXXIX(9): 1932. Dal Lago, A. (1994) Il voto e il circo, Micromega 1: 13845. Deutsch, K. W. (1961) Social mobilization and political development, American Political Science Review 55(2) (September). Diamanti, I. (1994) Forza Italia: il mercato elettorale dellimprenditore politico, in P. Ginsborg (ed.) Stato dellItalia, Milan: Il Saggiatore, pp. 6657. Edelman, M. (1976) The Symbolic Uses of Politics, Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Elias, N. (1988) Il processo del civilizzazione, Bologna: Il Mulino. Elias, N. and Dunning, E. (1986) Quest for Excitement. Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Fedele, M. (1994) Democrazia referendaria, Rome: Donizelli. Gardner, H. (1995) Leading Minds, New York: Basic Books. Hoberman, J. M. (1984) Sport and Political Ideology, Austin: University of Texas Press. Lijphart, A. (1988) Le democrazie contemporanee, Bologna: Il Mulino. McCarthy,P. (1997) Forza Italia: old problems linger on,in R. DAlimonte and D. Nelkan, Italian Politics.The Center-Left in Power, Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 5164. Porro, N. (1995a) Linnovazione conservatrice, Fininvest, Milan club e Forza Italia, Quaderni di Sociologia XXXVIIIXXXIX(9): 618. (1995b) Identit, nazione, cittadinanza. Sport, societ e sistema politico nellItalia contemporanea, Rome: Seam. (1997) The four revolutions of spectator football,in R. DAlimonte and D. Nelkan, Italian Politics.The Center-Left in Power, Cumnor Hill: Westview Press, pp. 18397. Revelli, M. (1994) Forza Italia: Lanomalia italiana non finita, in P. Ginsborg (ed.) Stato dItalia, Milan: Il Saggiatore, pp. 66770.

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Special feature Russo, P. (1994) La societ del Pallone, Segno 156/157. (1995) La partita della sinistra, Segno 164/165. (1996) Modello Parmalat. Lo sport, la purezza, Sport & Loisir 23. Schmitt, C. (1932) Begriff des Politischen, Munich: Denker & Humboldt. (Italian translation in G. Miglio and P. Sciera (eds) Le categorie del politico, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1972, pp. 89208.) Statera, G. (1994) Il volto seduttivo del potere, Rome: Seam.

Itinerary 5: Soccer and Politics

As Porro and Russo point out, Berlusconi is by no means an isolated figure. Running a soccer club as if it were a company, in particular a company run by a charismatic leader, then using the clubs success as a springboard to enter politics is a natural progression. Politics across Europe lent itself to such a strategy by the decline of the mass parties; by the cult of leaders who, heedless of Machiavelli, wanted to be loved and admired, not feared; and by the rise of politics as spectacle where TV talk shows are more important than debating with ones opponent. France had its Bernard Tapie, while in Italy the space for such leaders was all the greater because of the regime crisis of 1992. Berlusconi used the language of soccer to take the field and its personalities in 1994 Forza Italia ran as a candidate the widow of Gaetano Scirea, one of the 1982 World Cup team; and most important of all, he promised to repeat in running Italy the success he had had with AC Milan his team won the European champions cup on the very evening he was confirmed in the Senate. Such methods do not always succeed. In December 1994 the Berlusconi government fell for the oldest reason in politics: one component of the coalition deserted it. There was nothing that Scireas widow could do about that. Other examples cited by Porro and Russo of a soccer club used as the cutting edge of a conglomerate are Callisto Tanzis Parma/Parmalat and Sergio Cragnottis Lazio. The language of sport is ever more intertwined with the language of politics. When Prodi decided to stand against Berlusconi in 1995, he constructed for himself an identity as a cyclist. To Berlusconis allusions to Maldini and Baresi, Prodi opposed his memories of Bartali (Prodi was a Catholic), of Coppi (Prodi was allied with the ex-Communists) and of Rik van Steenbergen (because Prodis key policy was to get Italy back into Europe). Following Mussolini, the MSI had been using sport as a main theme. In 1986 Gianfranco Fini had given an enthusiastic speech on the Duces reign when sport was the virile expression of the new Italian youth.1 The word virile was a key term in neofascist as in Fascist language. Fini dropped the word when he moved Alleanza nazionale to post-Fascist positions and, perhaps coincidentally, began to attend Bolognas home games. This was plausible because his family was from Bologna but it also helped him to avoid the Roman salutes at Lazio. Alessandra Mussolini has declared, however, that she is a Lazio fan.2

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