Silvio Berlusconi's announcement last week that he plans to run for a fourth term as prime minister is lamentable news for Italian politics and its economic reforms. Though it may sound like a bad joke given his failures to reform or revive the economy and his sex scandals, Mr. Berlusconi's return could do a lot of serious damage.
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It has been a year since he resigned as prime minister amid plunging approval ratings and a rejection of his budget manipulations by European credit markets. To fill out the remaining year-and-a-half of his term, Parliament installed Mario Monti to run a technocratic government.
Markets promptly recovered. European Union leaders, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, applauded. But, in Italy, Mr. Monti took the political heat for the austerity measures that Ms. Merkel and her allies have continued to demand, and the recession that has been made worse by those measures. Still, Mr. Monti's achievements have been considerable, given the narrow space Italy's political parties and the euro zone's leaders left him to operate in. He managed to restore the Italian government's authority at home and win renewed respect in European councils.
But that's not enough. Mr. Monti has repeatedly told Ms. Merkel that Italy needs budgetary flexibility to fight recession. It must have more scope for stimulus spending and for infrastructure and education investments. His labor market reforms have also fallen short, mainly because he has had to appease constituencies in Mr. Berlusconi's center-right party and the center-left Democratic Party that demand continued job protection.
When Mr. Berlusconi withdrew his party's support last week, Mr. Monti responded by announcing he would resign and call for new elections as soon as next year's budget is approved. Those elections are expected in February. Because no major party is likely to be able to form a government on its own, each would have to assemble a majority with support from the host of small leftist, rightist, centrist and separatist parties.
Although Mr. Berlusconi's party is running at only 18 percent in the polls, that is enough to give him considerable influence. He now positions himself as a pro-European but anti-austerity candidate, but other European leaders have learned not to take him or his ever-changing positions seriously. Yet if he attracts enough votes to make his party the largest center-right bloc in the next Parliament, he would be well placed to deny any government a majority, except on his destructive, self-serving terms.
Mr. Monti could make that much harder by running as a reform candidate and rallying other centrists to his cause. Italy cannot afford more years of political stalemate and economic stagnation brought about by Mr. Berlusconi's shameless opportunism.
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