YOU MEET OLIGARCHY

A country is very different from a corporation, but perhaps it is no coincidence that the metaphor of the corporation facilitates our understanding of the political events, in Italy, of the last 30 years. Years during which two distinct “groups of executives” compete for the role of servants of the "ownership".

The "ownership of the corporation" is to be considered an oligarchy of financial potentates, of both legal and illegal nature. While the aspiring servants competing to win the favors of the “owners” are, on the one hand, the “top management” who governed Italy with Berlusconi and, on the other, the one who governed Italy under various party acronyms… PDS then DS and now PD.

The first group boasts considerable strengths... including an effective tool of mass persuasion... television. Its leader, Silvio Berlusconi, died on 12 June 2023, but all the assets are still under control of Berlusconi’s family.
In the metaphor of the corporation, when Berlusconi was Prime Minister (Presidente del Consiglio dei ministri), it was like an owner that has the control (together other ones) of a corporation and gives himself the CEO role, too.

The other group, that of the party acronyms, presents itself with a good "sector curriculum"… and brags about a popular rooting that would induce the "low level workforce" (that is the most copious category) to "swallow toads" (softening its reactions).

But the elections? Do they decide nothing?
In this context, elections are little more than a “business climate survey". The important thing is that subjects incompatible with the ownership have no chance of imposing themselves at steering; and, when the two main contenders aspire to nothing more than placing themselves in top class at the service of the oligarchs, the latter have little to worry about.
Moreover, electoral rules have been implemented which reinforce this scenario; many willingly align themselves with the path traced by the "protagonists". And then, if there is something to fix in parliament (Parlamento) between one election and another, the ownership is always in a position to do it, as demonstrated several times over the thirty-year period.

But be careful not to make the mistake of thinking that on the side of the dominant potentates everything is always the same.
The same, and common to the various subjects of the oligarchy, remains the aim of exploiting the country's resources, including ordinary citizens, for profit. From time to time different, instead, may be the effective influence of each of those subjects (even for alternating fortunes).

Extreme summary...
If they enter republican institutions on the basis of the votes of the voters and then make policies on the basis of the capitals of the families who consider Italy "their thing", it means that the game is rigged.