(Italian: "Party of action")
Two separate Italian political parties.
The first, founded in 1853 by Giuseppe Mazzini, worked for the unification of Italy on a republican basis, through popular uprisings. It was dissolved when Cavour's monarchist model (see Risorgimento) became a political reality.
The second party of this name was created in 1942. This Partito d'Azione was an anti-fascist group, with its roots in several different republican and social-liberal groups. It played a central rôle in the resistance. After the war, in 1945, the Partito d'Azione headed up the first democratic government of Italy, under Ferruccio Parri. With poor showings at the polls, however, the Partito d'Azione was absorbed by the Partito Socialista Italiano, the Italian Socialist Party, in 1947.