An Idea Whose Time Is Passing?

HADLEY ARKES

About a year ago the conviction was becoming settled in academic circles that the Communist Party in Italy (PCI) would have to be brought into the government in a formal role if Italy was to be governed at all. Almost every expert on the subject regarded the ascension of the Communists as at least inevitable, if not imminent. But in the months since then that conviction has eroded, and the erosion became manifest at the beginning of June in a conference held in Washington under the auspices of the American Enterprise Institute and of the Hoover Institution of Stanford.

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HADLEY ARKES

About a year ago the conviction was becoming settled in academic circles that the Communist Party in Italy (PCI) would have to be brought into the government in a formal role if Italy was to be governed at all. Almost every expert on the subject regarded the ascension of the Communists as at least inevitable, if not imminent. But in the months since then that conviction has eroded, and the erosion became manifest at the beginning of June in a conference held in Washington under the auspices of the American Enterprise Institute and of the Hoover Institution of Stanford.