(b. Rome, 14 Jan. 1919) Italian; Prime Minister 1972 – 91 The son of a teacher, Andreotti graduated in law at the University of Rome in 1942, and was president of FUCI, the students' branch of Catholic Action, from 1942 to 1945. In this post he succeeded Aldo Moro, another future leader of the Christian Democrats (DC), and his period of office coincided with that of Mgr. G. B. Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, as chaplain appointed by the Vatican to FUCI. He had already met Alcide De Gasperi, the first general secretary of the emerging Christian Democrat Party, and became his personal assistant. Giulio Andreotti was the youngest deputy elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1946, and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in the Rome constituency in every election from 1948 to 1987. He was under-secretary in the Prime Minister's office during De Gasperi's prime ministerships (1947 – 53), a position he used to full advantage to establish his own independent centre-right faction known as "Primavera" (springtime). From then on he was hardly ever out of office, with a total of over thirty individual ministerial or prime ministerial appointments in his entire career. Until 1972 he was usually either Minister of Defence or had one of the Finance portfolios. In 1972, he headed a short-lived centre-right coalition, and then demonstrated his versatility by leading the minority DC governments which ruled with Communist support during the "historic compromise" period (1976 – 9). He re-emerged during the 1980s as Foreign Minister in the governments led by the Socialist Bettino Craxi. His long influence over Italian politics ended when in 1993 the Senate voted to remove his immunity from prosecution on charges of complicity with the Mafia, charges which he strenuously denied.

Andreotti never sought to dominate the course of events, whether in office or out, and was regarded as a supreme interpreter of the party system, not as a policy initiator. His power rested on three main factors: his unrivalled control of his party faction with its base in the region around Rome, his skill in working with the balance of power within the governing coalition, and his range of contacts abroad, especially in the USA, for whose foreign policy community he was an essential point of reference on Italian developments. Andreotti, who was renowned for his oracular style and dry humour, also found time to establish a reputation as an author of mystery novels, cultured biographies, and political commentaries. He was as representative of the post-war Italian Republic as his predecessor Giovanni Giolitti was of the Italian Liberal state, and as controversial.

A Dictionary of Political Biography. Copyright © 1998, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.