Who Trusts Berlusconi? An Econometric Analysis of the Role of Television in the Political Arena

Silvio Berlusconi has dominated Italian political life since he was first elected prime minister in 1994. He has been the third longest-serving prime minister of Italy, after Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Giolitti, and, as of May 2011, he was the longest-serving current leader of a G8 country. This political longevity is often difficult to understand for foreign political analysts. The former Italian prime minister has an extensive record of criminal allegations, including mafia collusion, false accounting, tax fraud, corruption and bribery of police officers and judges. Recently, he has even been charged with child prostitution. In a famous editorial published in April 2001, the respected British newsmagazine The Economist stated that: “In any self-respecting democracy it would be unthinkable that the man assumed to be on the verge of being elected prime minister would recently have come under investigation for, among other things, money-laundering, complicity in murder, connections with the Mafia, tax evasion