Arturo Parisi

Arturo Mario Luigi Parisi ( * September 13 1940 in San Mango Piemonte, Province of Salerno ) is an Italian politician of the Partito Democratico (PD). From May 2006 to May 2008, he officiated in the second cabinet Prodi as Italian Defence Minister.

Political and academic career

Arturo Parisi grew up in Sassari ( Sardinia), where the family had moved as inspector of the National Forestry Authority due to the employment of his father. Shortly after the end of the Second World War, his father died of complications from injuries he suffered in the service. 1955 Parisi moved back to his home region of Campania, where he graduated from the Military Academy Neapolitan Nunziatella the last three years of his humanistic grammar school education. From 1958 to 1968 he joined the University of Sassari his law studies, including at the law professor and later president Francesco Cossiga. He has also acted from 1963 to 1968 in the leading positions of the Catholic Action at the national level and was so under the formative influence of their damaligem chairman Vittorio Bachelet. He was elected to the board of the International Federation of Catholic Youth.

After beginning his academic career as a research assistant for statistics he left in 1968, the University of Sassari and initially taught canon law and church history in Parma and Florence. From 1971 he worked at the University of Bologna, where he qualified in the 1980s as a professor of political sociology. Since the late 1980s, he headed for more than ten years, the social sciences Istituto Cattaneo and published by this magazine Il Mulino. At the same time, he was president of the Italian Society for Electoral Studies ( Società italiana degli Studi elettorali ) and participated in 1987-1988 at the Special Commission to elaborate the government program and the parliamentary inquiry committee on terrorism in Italy ( Commissione Stragi ).

Together with Mario Segni, he was one of the early 1990s, one of the initiators of a movement for institutional reforms. As a political consultant and friend of Romano Prodi in 1995 he was instrumental in the formation of the electoral alliance The Olive and was the first Prodi Cabinet Secretary to the Prime Minister. In February 1999, he founded with Prodi I Democratici, a precursor of the later party Democrazia è Libertà - La Margherita, and took a few months later its chair. After Prodi change in the office of the EU Commission President, he won in a special election in November 1999, whose constituency in Bologna and became a member of the Chamber of Deputies. In the 2001 party formed La Margherita, he took over the chairmanship of the Association of Congress and was one of the most well-known initiators of the primaries ( primarie ) for the presentation of the candidates for the office of the Prime Minister within the center-left alliance. The organizational provisions for such codes that have since been held also to fill other key party posts, going back mainly to Arturo Parisi.

After the electoral victory of the center-left camp Parisi was appointed on 17 May 2006 Minister of Defence. In this role, he was primarily responsible for the completed in December 2006 withdrawal of Italian troops from Iraq. As part of the merger process multiple government parties to the Partito Democratico 2007, he supported the candidacy of Rosy Bindi for the party presidency.