The strategic behavior of the Italian Left in a risk-sharing framework

The failure of the communist systems in Eastern Europe, the collapse of two of the main Italian political parties due to their massive involvement in the corruption scandal which exploded in the early 1990s, and the change of the electoral system from proportional representation to plurality, caused a major revolution in the Italian political landscape. Within this scenario old and new parties have been shaping their electoral and political strategies. In this paper our primary interest is to demonstrate that the apparently divergent policies supported by the two main parties of the Italian Left could hide a probable electoral strategy to grab the moderate Italian electorate and, hence, to capture the governing majority necessary to rule the country. This will be done through an economic model of risk-sharing applied to plurality maximizer parties.