Partito Democratico della Sinistra

Democratic Party of the Left (PDS)

   Founded in February 1991, this heir to the Partito Comunista Italiano/Italian Communist Party (PCI) was the principal leftist force in Italian politics for seven years in the 1990s. The PDS’s short history can be divided into two periods. In the first period, the party was led by Achille Occhetto. Under Occhetto, the party survived the 1992 general elections, the first after the collapse of communism in the Soviet bloc, obtaining a creditable 16 percent of the vote, and emerged from the Mani pulite corruption scandals in better shape than any other traditional party. Proposing itself at the head of a “Progressive Alliance” of radical parties, the PDS did well in local and regional elections held in late fall 1993. The March 1994 general elections were a different story, however. Occhetto was outperformed on the campaign trail by the new leader of the Italian right, the media entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi, and the Italian left was soundly defeated at the polls by the conservative and populist right. The PDS’s own share of the vote nevertheless increased to 20 percent.

   See also Calogero, Guido.

   After further losses in the June 1994 elections to the European Parliament, Occhetto was replaced as leader by his deputy, Massimo D’Alema, and the second phase of the party’s history began. Under D’Alema, the PDS worked in conjunction with Romano Prodi and the more progressive elements of the former Democrazia cristiana/Christian Democracy Party (DC) in the Olive Tree Coalition. The PDS provided nine senior ministers, including deputy prime minister, minister of the interior, and finance minister, in the cabinet formed by Prodi after the general elections of April 1996. The PDS was, by a narrow margin, the party that attracted most votes nationally in this poll. Under D’Alema, the party’s political platform was radically changed. The PDS committed itself to the market economy, privatization, and welfare reform, policies far from its communist heritage. D’Alema also tried to broaden the party to encompass small parties from the noncommunist left. In February 1998, the PDS absorbed several of these parties, but in the process changed its own name to the Democratici di Sinistra/Democrats of the Left (DS). The new formation retains the PDS’s oak tree symbol, but at the roots of the tree, the red rose of European social democracy has replaced the old hammer and sickle emblem of the PCI.