Oh yeah. And anything that can’t be blamed the US occupation after the overthrow of Mussolini? Blame it on Germany. What a demagogue. This long snip from the wiki-wacky is just part of a much longer and detailed history. The average length of time gov’ts lasted during the First Republic was just over a year (61 in 48 years), and the current record for duration is about 2.5 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Italy#First_Republic:_1946-1994
First Republic: 1946-1994
There have been frequent government turnovers since 1945, indeed there have been 61 governments in this time. The dominance of the Christian Democratic party during much of the postwar period lent continuity and comparative stability to Italy’s political situation, mainly dominated by the attempt of keeping the Italian Communist Party (PCI) out of power in order to maintain Cold War equilibrium in the region (see May 1947 crisis).
The communists were in the government only in the national unity governments before 1948, in which their party’s secretary Palmiro Togliatti was minister of Justice. After the first democratic elections with universal suffrage in 1948, in which the Christian Democracy and their allies won against the Popular front of the Italian Communist and Socialists parties, the communist party never returned in the government...
Second Republic: 1994–present
...In the Italian referendums of 1993, voters approved substantial changes, including moving from a proportional to an Additional Member System, which is largely dominated by a majoritarian electoral system and the abolition of some ministries, some of which, however, have been reintroduced with only partly modified names, such as the Ministry of Agriculture reincarnated as the Ministry of Agricultural Resources.
Major political parties, beset by scandal and loss of voter confidence, underwent far-reaching changes. New political forces and new alignments of power emerged in the March 1994 national elections. This election saw a major turnover in the new parliament, with 452 out of 630 deputies and 213 out of 315 senators elected for the first time.
The 1994 elections also swept media magnate Silvio Berlusconi (leader of “Pole of Freedoms” coalition) into office as Prime Minister. Berlusconi, however, was forced to step down in December 1994 when the Lega Nord withdrew support. The Berlusconi government was succeeded by a technical government headed by Prime Minister Lamberto Dini, which left office in early 1996.
A series of center-left coalitions dominated Italy’s political landscape between 1996 and 2001. In April 1996, national elections led to the victory of a center-left coalition, Olive Tree, under the leadership of Romano Prodi. Prodi’s government became the third-longest to stay in power before he narrowly lost a vote of confidence, by three votes, in October 1998. [about two and a half years]
...The election set against two new parties, the Democratic Party (founded in October 2007 by the union of the Democrats of the Left and Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy) led by Walter Veltroni, and The People of Freedom (federation of Forza Italia, National Alliance and other parties) led by Silvio Berlusconi. The Democratic Party was in alliance with Italy of Values, while The People of Freedom forged an alliance with Lega Nord and the Movement for the Autonomy. The coalition led by Berlusconi won the election and the leader of the centre-right created the Berlusconi IV Cabinet.
...The current prime minister Matteo Renzi became the youngest prime minister, at 39 years. His government has the youngest average age in Europe.
Grand Coalition governments
At different times, since his entering the Italian Parliament, Silvio Berlusconi, leader of the centre-right, had repeatedly vowed to stop the communist, while leftist parties had insisted that they would oust Berlusconi. Thus, despite the fact that the executive branch bears responsibility toward the Parliament, the governments led by Mario Monti (since 2011) and by Enrico Letta (since 2013) were called “unelected governments” because they won a vote of confidence by a Parliament coalition formed by centre-right and left-right parties that had in turn obtained parliamentary seats by taking part in the elections as competitors, rather than allies. While formally complying with law and procedures, the creation of these governments did not comply with the decision made by people through the election.
Meanwhile, in 2013, a ruling by the Constitutional Court of Italy established that the Italian electoral system employed to elect the Parliament breached a number of Constitutional requirements... The issue was a major one, to the extent that the Constitutional Court itself ruled that the Italian Parliament should remain in charge only to reform the electoral system and then should be dissolved.
The new government, led by Matteo Renzi, has proposed a new electoral law. The so-called Italicum has been approved in 2015 and will come into force on 1 July 2016.
Given Italy’s long history of development and its limerock soils in the south, although I was ready to accept and am interested in finding out more about this “cementification” problem there, I did a search on cementification+soil+Italy and didn’t come up with much. I do know there was major erosive damage during the Roman Imperial period, but don’t know much more about it.