Berlusconi and the post-democratic reorganization of politics

<jats:p>The purpose of this article, first, is to analyze the complex social and historical background that has favoured Berlusconi's accumulation of economic resources, in particular in the field of electronic media. The second purpose is to relate the expansion of the new media to what the writer and film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolini in the mid-1970s defined as an anthropological mutation, in other words, to look at this expansion as a reinforcement of tendencies deeply rooted in the consumer society. A third purpose is to trace the consequences faced by the democratic form of government formally defined by the Antifascist Constitution of 1948, now with the growth not only of a new political mentality and behaviour, but also of a new post-democratic political class that has left behind the traditional political parties and their ideologies.</jats:p>