NATIONAL ALLIANCE

formerly (until 1994) Italian Social Movement, Italian Alleanza Nazionale, or Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) extreme right-wing anticommunist party of Italy, some of whose members had neo-Fascist tendencies. The MSI was formed in 1948 from elements of the defunct Uomo Qualunque (Average Man) Party that had appeared in 1945. In the early 1950s MSI's electoral success worried moderates until they saw that the right-wing party was not gaining a substantial number of votes. The moderates' occasional need for MSI votes, however, proved embarrassing; in 1960, when the MSI formed a necessary part of a parliamentary majority, protest riots led to the fall of the Christian Democratic government. In the 1972 general elections MSI joined with another right-wing party, the Italian Democratic Party of Monarchical Unity, to form an alliance known as the National Right (Destra Nazionale; DN). In January 1973 they formally merged as the MSI-DN; but after a moderate faction bolted from the party in 1976, the party readopted its original name. The MSI renamed itself the National Alliance in 1994. It joined two newly formed centre-right parties, the Forza Italia and the Northern League, in an alliance that was swept to power in parliamentary elections in March 1994.