Through two Parliaments, ten governments and five Premiers, Italy during the past decade has been ruled by an unstable but basically unchanging center-left coalition. Beset by continual infighting, the coalition has fallen apart on an average of once a year; Italy's politicians have had to drop everything and devote their entire attention to putting the alliance together again.
Last week the 17-month-old government of Premier Emilio Colombo toppled in another such crisis—one, moreover, that raised the question of how much longer the center-left coalition formula could survive at a time when a deep recession is exacerbating all of Italy's social ills....
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