8193000246f86f4c0c4f7502_px2271c.jpg Pedro Molina
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Italy’s Last Democratic Despot

Outgoing Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s fall from power marks the end of one of Western democracy most controversial recent chapters. But the story of Berlusconi’s rise and fall was written long ago, during the Renaissance, in Niccolò Machiavelli’s classic work The Prince.

ROME – Italy has always had a weakness for authoritarian figures. Emperors, kings, princes, or despots have held power one after another since the time of the Roman Empire. The last dominant personality, Silvio Berlusconi, deserted by his supporters under the pressure of global financial markets, is out as prime minister. Political fragmentation, age constraints, and emotional exhaustion have induced him to promise that he will not seek office again.

Berlusconi’s fall marks the end of one of Western democracy’s most controversial recent chapters. History will judge Berlusconi’s actions, but Italians remain divided. All agree that he was never primus inter pares. To his devotees, he was like an enlightened monarch, a man who gave up his successful private businesses to help Italy rebuild from the ashes of Italy’s post-war party system, which had collapsed in a vast corruption scandal that had left almost no part of government unsullied. To his opponents, Berlusconi was akin to a despot, albeit democratically elected, who abused his office by pursuing his commercial interests and protecting himself from legal sanction.

Whatever one’s view, the story of Berlusconi’s rise and fall was written long ago, during the Renaissance, in Niccolò Machiavelli’s classic work The Prince. Berlusconi carefully followed all of Machiavelli’s teachings on how to obtain and maintain power – all but one, and that lapse sealed his fate.

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