Abstract
As the most dominant Italian politician of his time, Silvio Berlusconi has introduced important innovations in many fields of Italian politics: new ideological approaches, new coalition strategies, new campaign methods and a new leadership style and language. All of these innovations have had a considerable impact both on his party and the wider political system, and the governmental program, as well as on the nature of Italian democracy (Paolucci C. 2006, 163). These new ideas and methods began emerging in Italy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but they only displayed themselves fully with Forza Italia ("Power Italy"), founded in 1993, and the strongest organisation in the political alliance which Berlusconi has established. The purpose of the following pages is to account for the success of Silvio Berlusconi in Italian politics since the political crisis of the early 1990s. Several factors have created this success. First to be successful a new party has to persuade the electorate that they are beset by serious social patterns, to which it alone has the answer, and Berlusconi has done this by underlining the crisis of the First Republic. Second, the party has to make its policy proposals attractive by including some appealing campaign themes such as tax reductions for everyone. Third, it must build up and assert its own identity.
