Berlusconi's need for love means reform unlikely

By Gavin Jones - Analysis

ROME (Reuters) - Silvio Berlusconi loves to be loved, a fact that makes it unlikely the prime minister-elect will push through the kind of unpopular reforms Italy needs.

Some commentators say the conservative leader's biggest obstacle in pushing through a cost-cutting, liberalizing reform agenda will be his coalition allies, the separatist Northern League and the right-wing National Alliance.

But that suggests Berlusconi himself has reformist impulses, something there is little or no evidence for.

"More than anything else, Berlusconi wants to please, and history shows he always backs down when he meets resistance," said Gianfranco Pasquino, politics professor at Johns Hopkins University in Bologna.

"He will pass some reforms but only those that don't have a cost, where nobody loses out. And he won't take on the unions."

The 71-year-old media magnate, who won a big parliamentary majority in Sunday and Monday's election, will have a third chance to revitalize Italy's chronically weak economy.

He has said "unpopular measures" will be needed to do that, but many analysts are skeptical and expect no more success than in his first two attempts.

"Berlusconi's last government (in 2001-2006) did little in terms of economic reform, despite having a comfortable majority in both houses," said Deutsche Bank's Susana Garcia.

"And then he had a clearer, more ambitious program than he does now and a more favorable international economic backdrop."

Berlusconi likes to present himself as an heir to Margaret Thatcher, who broke trade union resistance to radically deregulate Britain's economy in the 1980s.

But whereas the Iron Lady seemed to relish confrontation, a defining characteristic of the perma-tanned, ever smiling Berlusconi has always been the desire to be loved by everyone.

NO SPENDING CUTS

During his last term of office, he bent over backwards to cut taxes, always a popular move, but pulled back from pledges to cut public spending, far less popular but even more needed -- resulting in a sharp rise in the budget deficit.

Plans to cut job protection, deregulate protected sectors of the economy and even to trim a ludicrous number of forest wardens in a southern region with almost no forests all ran aground on resistance from unions and vested interests.

And he backed down from unpopular pension reform plans in his first brief government in 1994 and again a decade later.