Italian parliamentary parties dissolved into factions that converged into one ruling bloc

Evidence

Trasformismo . This term was used from the 1880s onwards to describe the process whereby the so-called “historic” Left and Right parties which emerged from the Risorgimento tended to converge in terms of programme during the years which followed, until there ceased to be any substantive difference between them especially after the “Left” came to power under Depretis in 1876 (see note 23 on p. 227 below) and the latter began to recruit his ministers indiscriminately from both sides of the parliament. The two main parties disintegrated into personal cliques and factions, which characterised Italian parliamentary life until fascism. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1874

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘trasformismo’ as the mechanism by which opposing parliamentary parties converge into a single dominant political class.
• XREF: This ‘absorption of opposition into the ruling bloc’ mechanism parallels hegemony theory concepts used in Islamophobia analysis — co-opting critics rather than repressing them. — connects to: Italian Left governments preserved Right policies under new personnel — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 448