Max Weber meets Silvio Berlusconi’s charismatic parties. The history of a spectacular failure

Silvio Berlusconi emerged as a central figure in Italian politics following the collapse of the mass-based party system in the early 1990s. As a political leader, he introduced significant innovations in various fields of politics: new campaign methods; a unique leadership style and language; novel coalition strategies, and fresh ideological content. This article focuses on one key innovation: the creation of a genuinely new political party with an original organizational model. Despite the electoral success of Silvio Berlusconi’s political parties (Forza Italia and later Popolo della Libertà), there has been little theoretical and especially empirical work devoted to studying them. This paper aims to fill that gap by examining the entire trajectory of Forza Italia from its inception to the present, highlighting its quintessentially charismatic nature in Weberian terms. The first section of the article discusses how scholars have variously perceived Forza Italia – as a personalized/charismatic party, a catch-all party, a franchise party, or a business-firm party. The article then considers the factors that have hindered its institutionalization. In the final section, the paper critically analyses the legacy of Berlusconi’s parties for the stability of the Italian party system and, more broadly, for the quality of democracy in Italy.