The Popular Democratic Front (), shortened name of the Popular Democratic Front for Freedom, Peace, Labour (''Fronte Democratico Popolare per la libertà, la pace, il lavoro'') was a leftist
political coalition
This is a list of political groups by country. A political group also known as a political alliance, coalition or bloc, is cooperation by members of different political parties on a common agenda of some kind. This usually involves formal agreem ...
in Italy.
History
The coalition was formed for the
1948 general election and consisted of the
Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party ( it, Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist political party in Italy.
The PCI was founded as ''Communist Party of Italy'' on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). ...
(PCI) and
Italian Socialist Party
The Italian Socialist Party (, PSI) was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy, whose history stretched for longer than a century, making it one of the longest-living parties of the country.
Founded in Genoa in 1892, ...
(PSI).
Its symbol was a green star surmounted by an image of
Italian Unification
The unification of Italy ( it, Unità d'Italia ), also known as the ''Risorgimento'' (, ; ), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single ...
hero
Giuseppe Garibaldi
Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi ( , ;In his native Ligurian language, he is known as ''Gioxeppe Gaibado''. In his particular Niçard dialect of Ligurian, he was known as ''Jousé'' or ''Josep''. 4 July 1807 – 2 June 1882) was an Italian general, patr ...
.
The
Social Christian Party (PCS) and
Sardinian Action Party (PSd'Az) were not allied with the coalition, and formed their own electoral lists. The right wing of the PSI opposed the Front, left the party, and organised a separate list as
Socialist Unity; this group later became the
Italian Democratic Socialist Party
The Italian Democratic Socialist Party (, PSDI), also known as Italian Social Democratic Party, was a minor social-democratic political party in Italy. The longest serving partner in government for Christian Democracy, the PSDI had been an ...
(PSDI).
The election of 1948 was perhaps the most important in Italian republican history: the choice of future alliance with
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
or with the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
was at issue. The Popular Front got only 31.0% of the vote for the
Chamber of Deputies
The chamber of deputies is the lower house in many bicameral legislatures and the sole house in some unicameral legislatures.
Description
Historically, French Chamber of Deputies was the lower house of the French Parliament during the Bourbon R ...
(30.8% of the
Senate
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
vote).
Following the victory of
Christian Democracy
Christian democracy (sometimes named Centrist democracy) is a political ideology that emerged in 19th-century Europe under the influence of Catholic social teaching and neo-Calvinism.
It was conceived as a combination of modern democratic ...
with 48.5%, Italy became a founding member of
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...
in 1949.
Composition
It was composed of the following
political parties
A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or pol ...
:
Election results
References
{{Authority control
1947 establishments in Italy
1948 disestablishments in Italy
Defunct political party alliances in Italy
Political parties disestablished in 1948
Political parties established in 1947
Popular fronts