Italy. The Impossible Transition?

What was the political/institutional situation that existed in April 2008 at the time of the general election? What was the long process of change in Italian democracy before that election a major event? It is easier to set about answering these two questions by placing the whole phenomenon of macro-political change in a democracy with a theoretical framework. The first question to be asked is therefore how to assess a transition from one democracy to another, different, type of democracy, or how to judge the way a democracy undergoes a more or less substantial shift, in order to adjust to a different model of democracy. Secondly, one should ask whether there have been any real-life cases of transitions from one democracy to another type of democracy. And lastly, one may ask what had happened in Italy: had there been a transition in the true sense of the term, in which Italian democracy began to move away from one model of democracy towards another after 1989, and especially after the 1992 elections? Or had it been a process of accommodation or adjustment within one and the same model? Or again, had there been a process of adjusting/shifting towards a different model of democracy? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]