Americans find Italy a paradox. We love vacationing in a country with such delicious food, friendly people, and so many historical and cultural monuments. Its politics, however, bother us. After 20 years of one party rule, from 1923-43, it seemed to rebound into virtual chaos. There have been 46 governments since World War II, not to mention the terrorism of the past two decades. Yale Professor Joseph La- Palombara has written Democracy Italian Style to remind us that Italy is a real success story.

Far from being chaotic, Italy’s government is too stable. One party, the Catholic Christian Democrats, has dominated every government since the war, and the first eight governments were headed by one man, Alcide De Gasperi, Italy’s Adenauer. Three men have been prime minister for ten of the past 15 years. When not heading the government, they are still in the cabinet, providing continuity and experience.

Italy’s politics do not fit into our vision of a perfect state. We believe in the separation of church and state. Their most powerful party is Catholic. We are anticommunist and Italy’s No. 2 party is Communist. Over the past two decades we have been treated to predictions of right-wing coups and the Communists’ overtaking the Christian Democrats in the vote. Yet the percentages of the Italian vote are pretty much what they were 30 years ago. Italy is a secure and stable country with a relatively prosperous economy.

Although LaPalombara defends the success of the Italian political class, he has sharp words for the Italian intelligentsia. This comes out most clearly in his chapter on terrorism, which almost broke the Italian democracy during the 1970’s. The violence and villainy of the Red Brigades and other terrorists were encouraged by irresponsible negativity. The great novelist Leonardo Sciascia could proclaim, “I stand neither with the state nor with the Red Brigades,” at a time of literally daily killings and maimings. LaPalombara’s clear j’accuse launched against the Italian intellectuals who supported terrorism in their nation’s worst hours is eloquent and courageous.

But at times LaPalombara gets carried away. To describe Italy’s massive tax evasion as “democratic” is silly, especially since he believes that Italy’s deficit would disappear if everyone paid up. (Most people think that overtaxation is the root of the problem.) LaPalombara not only praises Italy’s political class, but also its partitocrazia, the rule of the parties. I cannot go along with this. If Italy had a law that a party needed 5 percent of the vote to get into Parliament, there would be only four parties there, instead of ten. (If the cut-off point were 10 percent, there would be only three parties, and the Socialists have climbed to over 10 percent only in the last few years.) As it is, parties with derisory percentages of the vote not only get into Parliament, thus making majorities more difficult, but help to form governments and even furnish prime ministers. Spadolini, whose Republicans were lucky to get 3 percent of the vote, got himself, with Socialist connivance, appointed head of two governments for nearly two years—a mockery of democracy. The serious problem with corruption in Italy is partly due to the parties’ blatant misuse of the spoils system.

LaPalombara has a few well-chosen words on Marco Panella and his Radicals, publicity hounds for whose antics Americans often fall, but his admiration for Socialist Bettino Craxi seems to me excessive. Italy survived the near-catastrophe of the 70’s because of Giulio Andreotti’s leadership during the crucial years 1976-79. Terrorism met its most important defeats then, the economy was put on a stable base, and the growing support for communism was turned around. Craxi’s hysterical jealousy of Andreotti is one of his less admirable traits, along with his poor responses to the Moro kidnapping and the Achille Lauro affair, when he allowed the mastermind of the atrocity to walk out of Italy.

Luigi Barzini’s The Italians (1964) is still the best introduction to Italy for the average American. Frederic Spotts and Theodor Wieser’s Italy: A Difficult Democracy (1986) is a clearer presentation of the most important facts (except on terrorism, where LaPalombara is far better). American readers who know something of Italy will be grateful to Joseph LaPalombara for giving us a lively and factual account of why Italian democracy, so far from being the Sick Man of Europe, is alive and kicking.

[Democracy Italian Style, by Joseph LaPalombara; New Haven: Yale University Press]