Italian voters are hoping that it will be third time lucky for Mr. Silvio Berlusconi. In fact, the Italian media magnate, one of the world's richest men, is almost always lucky. The real question is whether Mr. Berlusconi's third term as prime minister of Italy will be good for his country. Sadly, there is little reason to believe that the new prime minister is ready to put his country's interests above his own or to make the hard choices that Italy needs.
Italy continues to be the "sick man of Europe." While it is the world's seventh largest economy with gross domestic product of $2.4 trillion, it is the slowest growing of the more than two dozen advanced economies tracked by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF forecast Italian growth at 0.3 percent in 2008, considerably below the 1.4 percent average forecast for the 15 countries that use the euro — the 13th consecutive year that Italy has lagged the group as a whole. Italy has the highest national debt of any country in the euro zone, and is last in labor productivity among OECD members.
There is widespread agreement that Italy needs deep structural reform, but the political system has been too fractured and entrenched interests too powerful to permit governments to push through serious change. Instead, as occurred in Mr. Berlusconi's previous governments, tax cuts and promises of new public spending — a dangerous combination — have been the first resort when the economy flags. On the stump, Mr. Belusconi pledged more of the same.