Abstract:

Servio Berlusconi’s arrival at the head of the Italian Government on 13 May did not fail to provoke numerous reactions. Setting to one side the business magnate’s ambiguous ideology and his legal difficulties, it is the unprecedented concentration of political and media power in the same hands which is fuelling the criticism. Certainly, Berlusconi’s success is a reflection of the times: a decline in political standards, a lowering of the threshold of sensitivity to a conflict of interests, and a more widespread channelling of influence – this in most western democracies. But, with Berlusconi, Italy is on the way to becoming the laboratory where the confusion of functions, the manipulation of the populace and the anaesthetising of the democratic conscience are pushed furthest.

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