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Over time FI’s membership has grown considerably, with current estimates placing
membership at a respectable 300,000 (Poli 2001). The main reason for this change was the
realization that capital-intensive campaigning techniques, which have been very effective in
national legislative elections, are quite ineffective at the local and regional levels of electoral
competition. Disappointing results in local and regional elections forced a change in
organizational strategy, which pushed FI in the direction of a more conventional model of party
organization, with territorial branches and local party memberships (Paolucci 2000, Poli 2001).
This has qualified the overbearing role of Berlusconi and Fininvest in the party organization, but
it has not significantly challenged the leader’s power: the organizational statutes, despite
numerous changes (see Poli 2001), still offer the mass membership little opportunity to influence
party decision-making, and the party’s executive bodies are tightly controlled by Berlusconi and
his close advisors. Moreover, although it is difficult to measure the role of voluntary activists in
electoral mobilization, Berlusconi’s tenacious grip on his television empire suggests that mass
membership is a secondary plank of the party organization.
Forza Italia can therefore still be described as a ‘business firm party’ (Diamanti 1994,
Hopkin and Paolucci 1999). A private corporation created and controls the party, and the party
uses its role in public life to defend the interests of its sponsor. Since 1994 FI has revealed itself
on a number of occasions to be above all a vehicle for the defence of its leader's personal and
business interests. It has adopted positions on issues such as broadcasting regulation, the
organization of the Italian justice system and pensions reform which closely to reflect the private
interests of Berlusconi and Fininvest. The most obvious example of this is the failure since 1994 to
reform Italy's anomalous television market. The attempt by the Left Democrat leader D’Alema to
agree constitutional reforms with FI during 1997-8 was exploited by Berlusconi to extract a promise
that the left would leave his television interests intact (Bufacchi and Burgess 2001: xi). Now that FI
is safely installed in government once again, this extraordinary televisual monopoly, in which
Berlusconi owns the three largest private channels and as Prime Minister directly influences the
management of its state-run rivals, can be consolidated to the financial advantage of Fininvest (as
the forthcoming Gasparri law proposes). The business interests of Fininvest have also been
furthered in other ways by Berlusconi’s adventures in politics. During his brief tenure as Prime
Convention