Giovanni Giolitti Bust

Giovanni Giolitti dominated Italian parliamentary life at the beginning of the twentieth century without creating a modern mass party of his own. He built governments through negotiation among parliamentary groups and sought to bring new social forces into the liberal state. Born in 1842, he served five times as prime minister.

His governments are associated with social legislation and the expansion of voting rights. The electoral reform of 1912 greatly increased the number of men entitled to vote. Women remained excluded. The change therefore widened political participation within limits that can disappear behind the loose phrase universal suffrage.

The same period included Italy’s war against the Ottoman Empire and invasion of Libya. Domestic reform and overseas conquest were concurrent policies, not successive stages in a simple story of progress. Giolitti’s use of influence over elections also drew sustained criticism.

He opposed Italy’s entry into World War I in 1915, but his judgment of the later Fascist movement was less resistant at first. He initially supported Mussolini’s government before moving into opposition. His career illustrates both the adaptability of liberal parliamentary government and its failure to contain the forces that dismantled it.