Opening to the Left

(l’apertura a sinistra)

   This term describes attempts made in the early 1960s by several leaders of the Democrazia Cristiana/Christian Democracy Party (DC) to broaden the consensus in the Italian polity by including the Partito Socialista Italiano/Italian Socialist Party (PSI) in the government. Between 1961 and 1963, with due attention to the international implications (particularly U.S. opinion), the PSI was gradually brought into the governments headed by Aldo Moro (1963–1968). They stayed in power with the DC until 1972. The historic compromise that Moro wove in the 1970s with the Partito Comunista Italiano/Italian Communist Party (PCI) and its leader, Enrico Berlinguer, can be seen as an attempt to repeat the strategy. In neither case did the strategy fully succeed; many commentators, indeed, have seen the opening to the left as an example of the perennial device of trasformismo and have depicted it as a means by which the DC drew the fangs of radical forces for change in Italian society.