Overview
Modern Italy has been a republic since the referendum of 2 June 1946, governed under a constitution that took effect in 1948.
Key developments
Italy became a founding member of NATO (1949) and of the European Communities (Treaty of Rome, 1957), and its postwar “economic miracle” of the 1950s and 1960s turned it into an industrial power known for cars, fashion, and design. Political life was marked by frequent changes of government, the terrorism of the “Years of Lead” in the 1970s (when former prime minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped and killed in 1978), and the Mani Pulite corruption investigations of the early 1990s, which swept away the old party system.
End and transition
Italy adopted the euro as a founding member and remains a G7 economy and central European Union member, facing debt, demographic, and migration challenges into the present.