Welcome to the Inquiry with me, Tonya Beckett.

Each week one question for expert witnesses and an answer.

It's January 2021 and a man is being driven through the streets of Rome in a sleek black

car.

He pulls up outside the gleaming marble Quirinale Palace, where he hands over his letter

of resignation to the Italian president.

It's a weirdly familiar scene.

This man is Giuseppe Conte, the Prime Minister of Italy.

Since the founding of the Italian Republic in 1948, a Prime Minister has resigned just

over once a year on average, and this was actually Conte's second resignation.

So this week on the Inquiry we're asking, why do governments in Italy keep collapsing?

Part 1, Il Ducce.

Benito Mussolini became Italian Prime Minister in 1922.

He imposed an authoritarian, fascist regime on Italy, which lasted until he was arrested

in 1943 during the Second World War.

I think the experience had a deep and lasting influence on the culture and politics of the

country.

Our first expert witness is Professor Martin Bull, the editor-in-chief of the Italian Political

Science Review.

He had demonstrated how it was possible to seize power in a weak political system characterized

by deep political divisions.

He had banned all political parties, created what he called a corporate state, where the

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