Da Forza Italia e Alleanza Nazionale al Popolo della Libertà, e ritorno: dinamiche territoriali e contraddizioni politiche

Less than five years after its formal establishment, the National Council of PDL – which met on 11-16-2013 at the ‘Palazzo dei Congressi’ in Rome – decided for the dissolution of the party and the subsequent confluence of all its members and leaders in a new political entity which was called again Forza Italia. A party that – in the first two years of its political life – had proven to be a powerful tool with respect to various majoritarian electoral disputes, was definitively dismissed without any regret. Aside from the considerations linked to the gradual weakening of Silvio Berlusconi’s leadership, which is certainly a major issue, this article examines the impact of territorial dynamics – in particular, intra-party competition and party territorial roots – on the electoral results obtained by PDL in the 2013 Italian parliamentary elections. Unlike what argued for a long time, these dynamics have much affected those electoral results. Although the largest Italian center-right party still remains inextricably tied to the fluctuating fortunes of its founding leader (Silvio Berlusconi), in the future the so-called ‘moderate coalition’ will have to pay greater attention to the relationships with the territory than what it did so far