Abstract EN:

To build a positive analysis of economic policy, the links between macroeconomic shape, the electoral consent and the government activity must be examined. The origin of the italian political crisis is both the problem the thesis has tried to clarify and the field for a methodological exercise. The crisis development is analysed starting from an original theoretical model : government sets its economic policy; the evolution of the macroeconomic variables resulting from this choice produces effects on the interests of the various social groups; this influences the electoral result of the government, which thus takes into consideration this mechanism when it makes the choice concerning its economic policy. Since the government shows a strong preference for the present electoral consent and there is a strong ideological polarization of the electorate, the model supplies a satisfying reconstruction of the political and economic dynamics in italy between 1979 and 1992. According to this scheme, the italian political crisis can be interpreted as the consequence of the end of the compromise among social groups bearers of hetereogeneous interests; such an end is caused by the endogenous exhaustion of the margins for the political mediation among such interests.