what is the political system in italy?
Constitutional republic Parliamentary republic Unitary state
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 = = = Social and political structures in Italy = = = 

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 From the Middle Ages until the end of the nineteenth century , Italy was divided into many small duchies and city @-@ states , some of which were autonomous and some of which were controlled by Austria , France , Spain , or the Papacy . These multifarious governments and the diversity of Italian dialects spoken on the peninsula caused residents to identify as " Romans " or " Venetians " , for example , rather than as " Italians " . When Napoleon conquered parts of Italy during the French Revolutionary Wars ( 1792 – 1802 ) and the Napoleonic Wars ( 1803 – 15 ) , he unified many of the smaller principalities ; he centralised the governments and built roads and communication networks that helped to break down the barriers between and among Italians . Not all Italians welcomed French rule , however ; Giuseppe Capobianco founded a secret society called the Carbonari to resist both French rule and the Roman Catholic Church . After Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and the Congress of Vienna left much of northern Italy in the hands of the Austrians , the Carbonari continued their resistance . The Carbonari led revolts in Naples and Piedmont in 1820 and 1821 and in Bologna , the Papal States , Parma , and Modena in the 1830s . After the failure of these revolts , Giuseppe Mazzini , a Carbonaro who was exiled from Italy , founded the " Young Italy " group to work toward the unification of Italy , to establish a democratic republic , and to force non @-@ Italian states to relinquish authority on the peninsula . By 1833 , 60 @,@ 000 people had joined the movement . These nationalist revolutionaries , with foreign support , attempted , but failed , to overthrow the Austrians in Genoa and Turin in 1833 and Calabria in 1844 . Italian unification , or Risorgimento , was finally achieved in 1870 under the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi . 

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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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 To resolve prolonged deadlocks in the earlier years of papal elections , local authorities often resorted to the forced seclusion of the cardinal electors , such as that first adopted by the city of Rome in 1241 , and possibly before that by Perugia in 1216 . In 1269 , when the forced seclusion of the cardinals alone failed to produce a pope , the city of Viterbo refused to send in any materials except bread and water . When even this failed to produce a result , the townspeople removed the roof of the Palazzo dei Papi in their attempt to speed up the election . 
