So does the far right, including the neo-fascist Golden Dawn, which has sympathisers among the police.

ECONOMIST: The new government��s task is gargantuan

But he would be vulnerable to Gianfranco Fini, the foreign minister, who is also deputy prime minister and leader of the second-biggest party on the right, the formerly neo-fascist National Alliance.

ECONOMIST: Italy takes a wobbly step towards two-party politics

The sharp polarization, combined with fear, between left and right that was a legacy of the fascist period of Mussolini from 1917 to 1943, returned first in the form of a huge wave of strikes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and then in a deadly form of political violence.

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He had successfully fused his own party with that of the formerly neo-fascist Gianfranco Fini to create a single movement of the right, the People of Freedom (PdL).

ECONOMIST: Italy's beleaguered prime minister

Meanwhile, Silvio Berlusconi, the tycoon who leads a four-party coalition on the right, including the one-time separatists of the Northern League, the post-fascist National Alliance, his own Forza Italia and a little Christian Democratic offshoot, is grinning.

ECONOMIST: Italy��s edgy new government