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In most countries, Alessandra Mussolini wouldn't be more than a passing nostalgia act on the political stage. But in Italy, the granddaughter of Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and her tiny right-wing Social Alternative party are among the main attractions. Mussolini, whose party polled just over 1% in last year's European elections, trashes the euro and wants to bring back her grandfather's outlawed stiff-armed salute. Last week, she was on hunger strike in a rickety white trailer in a central Rome parking lot to protest her exclusion from next month's regional elections for allegedly submitting fraudulent ballot signatures. She claims she's being singled out in a system where signatures are rarely all authentic. "We are fighting against the power, and we're not going to let them get away with it," Mussolini told TIME from across a fold-down table in her cramped camper. Yet Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said last week that his rapport with Mussolini was "excellent," and that sooner or later she will realize her destiny lies within his center-right coalition.

With regional polls coming up in two weeks, and a fraught race already emerging for next year's national vote, fringe parties like Mussolini's are punching way above their weight. And Berlusconi is going out of his way to attract new allies and keep current members of his fractious coalition government onside. Take the anti-immigrant Northern League, which got less than 4% of the vote in 2001 parliamentary elections. The League's bombastic founder, Umberto Bossi, who's just returned to the fray a year after suffering a stroke, pulled his top lieutenant from his post as Reform Minister to protest what he sees as the government's lukewarm commitment to giving more autonomy to Italy's regions. Berlusconi quickly vowed that regionalization reforms would go ahead.

Since returning to office in 2001, Berlusconi has been a master coalition-builder. His government is the longest-lived of the 57 different ruling coalitions that have governed Italy since the end of World War II. Yet beneath that glossy surface, microparties continue to multiply, and Berlusconi lavishes political capital on simply keeping his government from imploding. There's no better example of that than the Northern League. It was Bossi who brought down Berlusconi's first government in 1994 when he yanked his support after only seven months. As a result, Berlusconi has handed the League several top ministerial posts, and made regular visits to Bossi during his convalescence.

Berlusconi may be even more eager to please potential allies since he's seen his own poll numbers dip. His alliance with U.S. President George W. Bush combined with the sluggish economy have pushed Berlusconi's ratings down to 43%, according to a Demos-Eurisko poll published last week in the left-leaning La Repubblica daily. The Prime Minister did make one enormously popular announcement last week: during a political chat show on TV, he said Italian troops would begin pulling out of Iraq in September. For a brief moment, even the opposition was praising him. But after a phone call from President Bush, Berlusconi clarified his remarks, telling reporters he only "hoped" for a withdrawal. Opposition leader Francesco Rutelli quipped: "It's a world record — the withdrawal of an announced withdrawal in half a day."

The center-left opposition is at the mercy of small parties, too. The disparate mix of communists, reformers and former Christian Democrats has proved ineffective without a unifying Berlusconi-like figure. "There's a problem of political culture," says Fabrizio Tonello, a political science professor at the University of Padua. "If people are interested in a small party, they vote for it no matter what its strength. The result is big coalitions that are extremely fragmented inside."

Mussolini ended her five-day hunger strike when her appeal for a place on next month's ballot was rejected. But she vowed to fight on, preferably alone. "I want to stay out of any coalition," she said. "We will continue to create a short circuit for everyone in this bipolar system." The Prime Minister is still likely to court her, though. "Berlusconi loves [Mussolini] because she is so good at the spectacle of politics," says La Repubblica columnist Filippo Ceccarelli. But if tiny parties like hers can keep their outsized influence, Berlusconi may no longer find that spectacle so edifying.

• JEFF ISRAELY | Rome
• Italy's feisty small parties are throwing their weight around, rocking Silvio Berlusconi's fragile coalition