what kind of government does italy have?
Constitutional republic Parliamentary republic Unitary state
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 = = = Social and political structures in Italy = = = 

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 Italy had long been divided into a number of small states , with the Pope in Rome ruling the Papal States in central Italy . Following the French Revolution , a French army under Napoleon invaded Italy in 1796 , entering Rome almost unopposed on 11 February 1798 and establishing a republic there . This republic was ruled by seven consuls ; in the opera this is the office formerly held by Angelotti , whose character may be based on the real @-@ life consul Libero Angelucci . In September 1799 the French , who had protected the republic , withdrew from Rome . As they left , troops of the Kingdom of Naples occupied the city . 

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 For more than a millennium , starting around 754 , the Papal States were territories in Italy under the direct sovereign rule of the Pope . The Catholic Church 's control over Rome and a neighbouring swathe of central Italy was generally seen as a manifestation of the Pope 's secular " temporal " power , as opposed to his ecclesiastical primacy . After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 , the other main Italian states were the Kingdom of Sardinia — governed from Piedmont on the mainland by King Victor Emmanuel II — the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the south , and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in the west . The French occupation during the 1790s had led the Pope 's popularity and spiritual authority to greatly increase , but had also severely damaged the geopolitical credibility of the Papal States . The historian David Kertzer suggests that by the 1850s " what had once appeared so solid — a product of the divine order of things — now seemed terribly fragile " . 

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 At the start of the 20th century , France , Switzerland and San Marino were the only European nations to have a republican form of government . The ascent of republicanism to the political mainstream started only at the beginning of the 20th century , facilitated by the toppling of various European monarchies through war or revolution ; as at the beginning of the 21st century , most of the states in Europe are republics with either a directly or indirectly elected head of state . 

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 The President of the Italian Republic has an official standard . The current version is based on the square flag of the Napoleonic Italian Republic , on a field of blue , charged with the coat of arms in gold . Prior to this the field was solid blue . The current coat of arms , more accurately called an emblem as it was not designed to conform to traditional heraldic rules , was adopted in place of the royal arms on 5 May 1948 . 
