Italy’s first universal-suffrage election hinged on a Catholic-liberal pact against socialism
Evidence
At the elections of 1913 the first under universal suffrage Giolitti came to an agreement with Count Gentiloni, the president of the Catholic Electoral Union of Italy, whereby Catholic voters would support the governmental candidates in order to check the advance of the socialists. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1997
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: Links forward to Gramsci’s broader arguments about passive revolution and how ruling blocs absorb or co-opt rival class and confessional forces; also connects to the Gentiloni Pact as a textbook moment in Italian coalition politics.