Italy Today

The Sick Man of Europe

Andrea Mammone, Giuseppe A. Veltri, Andrea Mammone, Giuseppe A. Veltri

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415561600
• eBook ISBN: 9781135164935
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Italy Today represents one of the most comprehensive examinations of contemporary Italy. It is a provocative and an innovative collection that aims to highlight the current 'crisis' of the country through an analysis of several different 'dark shadows' of contemporary Italian society.

Italy already had a long history of 'unsolved' issues, several chronic problems and contradictions that have been ignored for a very long time, during which they have assumed dramatic proportions and gravity. The peninsula has now become the 'Sick Man of Europe', a country facing a veritable decline also caused by apparent incapacity and difficulties of the ruling economic, political and social elites.

Discussions include:

• an evaluation of the current predicaments of the political system
• analysis of emerging mafias, including new powerful crime organizations such as 'Ndrangheta
• issues surrounding the ongoing presence of Fascism
• examination of the recent xenophobic tensions
• discussion of problems associated with the missed opportunity of the EU funding, and the increasing regional economic gaps
• outline of the systemic troubles of Italy's economic and industrial system.

Written by leading experts in the field and covering a wide range of topics, this collection is essential reading for all those seeking to understand the issues and problems that are facing contemporary Italy.

1
A ‘sick man’ in Europe

Andrea Mammone and Giuseppe A. Veltri

THE MAKING OF THE SICK MAN¹

In October 2006 the popular TV programme Le Iene (The Hyenas) scheduled a documentary on the Italian Members of Parliament (MPs) and their use of cannabis and cocaine. About 50 MPs (secretly and involuntarily) were tested by Le Iene journalists, and 32 per cent appeared to use these illicit drugs. However, the Italian Privacy Authority refused permission to screen it, and the Public Prosecutor’s office in Rome confiscated all the material – including the drug tests. A few days later, the ‘revenge’ of Le Iene was to test MPs’ general culture knowledge:

Who is Nelson Mandela?

‘I am not really aware of this’; ‘There are different opinions on Mandela’s figure’; ‘[He is] the South-American President […], he is Brazilian.’

What is Guantanamo? Have you ever heard about Guantanamo?

‘No.’

Where is Guantanamo?

‘In Afanistan.’²

Where?

‘In Afanistan!’

Who is Venezuela’s current President?

‘Gomez.’

Who?

‘Comez.’

Where is Darfur?

‘It is the Lebanon’s issue.’

And what about the Darfur drama?

‘Unfortunately this is not an Italian “moda” [fashion] […]. We [Italians] should not have it. We are a country of “style”, a country of good food […]. [The Darfur] is a lifestyle, a type of behaviour […], [the Darfur] is for food.’

Such striking answers were provided by some MPs interviewed in front of the national parliament in Rome.³ With the exception of a few newspaper articles, not many questioned the surprising lack of knowledge of part of national party representatives.

This peculiar ‘status’ of the parliamentary elite echoes some of its historical precursors. In Liberal Italy, as Christopher Duggan reminds us, ‘a Tuscan, Ferdinando Martini, was horrified by the ignorance of his fellow deputies and recalled an occasion when the Minister of the Interior, Giovanni Nicotera (a southerner and a former Mazzinian revolutionary), repeatedly referred to “King Teodoro” of England in a speech after misreading a note that had been slipped to him about “the Tudors”’ (Duggan 2008: 311).

Yet, Italy’s problems go much deeper than its parliamentarians’ lack of knowledge. In general, this country – well-known as a nation of art, culture and beautiful landscapes – has a long history of unsolved issues and long-term problems that still characterize its relatively young democracy. For instance, Italy is known as a country with a weak sense of nationhood, a high degree of politicization of social life, a multitude of quarrelsome political parties, unstable or unproductive government coalitions, constant inequalities between regions, the dramatic presence of powerful crime organizations, widespread corruption in public life, and growing xenophobic stances. The wide array of these and other critical issues seems to have reached a critical mass that has transformed Italy into the ‘sick man of Europe’: a country still struggling between modernity and backwardness, between the need/will to change and the fear of losing some local or specific privileges.⁴ In such a context, Italy, as already noted, became an interesting ‘laboratory’ for democracy as it copes with a series of political and social challenges that have a wider, European significance (Lazar 1997: 4).⁵

The country is therefore facing a tangible decline to which its economic, social and political elite have no answers. These ruling elites do not seem ready to cope with the crisis of Italian society and politics. They are distrusted by most of its citizens and affected by a worrying lack of renewal and meritocracy. Linked to this last point, it is clear that many of these elites are selected through a self-referential process which influences access to several professions, including journalism, public service and bureaucracy, university professors, and professional politicians (Floris 2007b; Iezzi 2009; Carlucci and Castaldo 2009); and it is often regulated by personal networks or political links rather than proven and effective know-how.

This naturally developed an in-group narrow mentality, one in which the raccomandazione, the ‘preferential’ treatment, is the only certain way of getting a job, social position and favour. Journalist Giovanni Floris, for instance, called it Mal di Merito and highlighted the social impact of this system (with the inherent loss of human capital) as well as the ‘epidemic of recommendations which is paralyzing Italy’ (Floris 2007a). A recent survey by the Luiss University of Rome showed that the economic impact of this non-meritocratic system costs each Italian citizen between

1,080 and

2,671 each year (Iezzi 2009: 23). This obviously contributes to an overall inefficiency and to the low growth of the economy, but it also affects the quality of the education system. For example, the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment – which tests the knowledge and skills in mathematics, science and literature of 15-year-old pupils in 57 countries –from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) certified that 50.5 per cent of Italian students are unable to understand what they read (the average in the OECD area is 42.2 per cent). While some countries showed significant improvements in student performance since 2000, Italy had a further drop of 5 per cent. If the best expertise and ‘brains’ are thus ‘lost’ due to the raccomandazione system, who is consequently dealing with the most crucial issues and domestic predicaments?

Some of these crucial issues should be pressing enough to stimulate an open public debate involving all political, social and intellectual forces. Yet, this debate is simply not taking place.⁶ There is instead a superficial, and often demagogic, discussion in which chronic problems are mainly used as rhetorical tools for one party or another. Similarly, mass media are hardly shaping this debate – and this is by no means surprising as, according to several international bodies, Italy does not allow the mass media enough freedom. The perverse outcome of this is that the intellectual (academic) milieu, or other non-leading opinions, which have no real party or media links are often confined to the local or marginal press. Although there is an understandable and justifiable tendency to associate Italy’s lack of media freedom with the figure of an industrialist such as Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, this is instead another ‘legacy’ and traditional negative domestic feature.⁷

One of the rhetorical tools often used as an alleged solution for current national troubles is the creation of a stronger executive branch and the weakening of the powers of elective Chambers. Recently Berlusconi similarly questioned the usefulness of parliaments with a large number of deputies, and seemed to suggest a re-balance of power in favour of the government as well as a new institutional structure. To balance the failure of Liberal Italy and the outcomes of the First World War, some thought the solution to the domestic quandaries lay with the implementation of a fascist dictatorship. Obviously, those were different historical times and conditions, though Fascism still remains alive in the Italian collective memory, architecture and politics (Mammone and Veltri 2007; Mammone 2006). Indeed, setting aside the controversial approach of the now extinguished Alleanza Nazionale (AN), deputies like Alessandra Mussolini, the well-known granddaughter of Benito and leader of the neo-fascist and anti-immigrant Azione Sociale (Social Action) or newly elected MPs like the editor Giuseppe Ciarrapico never denied their respect for the Duce or the fascist regime.⁸

This is particularly worrying in a country that is currently facing an alarming rise of far-right culture and so-called soft-core racism, including citizens’ (and some neo-fascist) squads against local crime (mainly attributed to immigrants), the proposed fingerprinting of gypsies (including children) living in camps, the violence against the Roma population,⁹ or the creation of separate school classes for young non-Italians. Recently, a group of parents in Rome proposed to withdraw their children from the local school because ‘there are too many immigrants’, but glossing over the fact that these immigrati were, in reality, born in Italy and speak perfect Italian, and are thus completely integrated into the local community (Martini 2009: 20). Rather than criticizing this, some leading politicians and ministers similarly affirmed that a multi-ethnic Italy ‘is not our idea’ or proposed that ‘some Milan Metro carriages should be reserved for Milanese only’ (Owen 2009), declared that the government will send boats full of immigrants back to the African coasts (De Zulueta 2009), and even argued that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) displays an ‘inhuman and criminal behaviour’ (Ruotola 2009: 4).

As one of Italy Today’s editors recently suggested, these events are showing a deeper trend, as the

focus on immigration encourages the distraction of public opinion from an economy in serious trouble, and politics and society in general in crisis.

In Italy, crimes committed by immigrants can be discussed for weeks. Yet in May 2008, some neo-fascists in Verona murdered an Italian because he refused to give them a cigarette. This story disappeared from most newspapers after no more than a few days. Il Giornale, a daily newspaper which supports Berlusconi, even disputed that those arrested belonged to the far right […].

The night before Obama’s capture of the White House, a group of young neo-fascists burst into the Rome headquarters of the RAI, the Italian public television station, to threaten journalists who had reported on violent attacks by neo-fascist thugs on high school students demonstrating against the government’s education policy […].

In such a climate, with mainstream politicians apparently unwilling or unable to stand up to racist violence and xenophobia, and some even prepared to justify these reprehensible acts, it is hardly surprising that right-wing extremists are not afraid or embarrassed to show their true, violent faces […]

(Mammone 2009: 15)

Despite this, groups like the Lega Nord or politicians like Alessandra Mussolini are not perceived as potential threats to the functioning of an Italian society that is increasingly becoming multi-ethnic and multicultural. The most controversial point is that these forces are currently governing the nation. The same granddaughter of the Duce can even proudly claim that, along with her neo-fascist party, she is one of the founders of the recent Popolo della Libertà (PDL), the biggest Italian party, led by Silvio Berlusconi.¹⁰ A rightist bloc was thus created without any serious internal debate but only on the base of the leader’s will (it also includes the ‘post-fascists’ of the AN). Outside Italy, this overall process and strategy looked so worrying that a much respected British newspaper wrote the headline, ‘Fascism’s shadows’, and com...

Table of contents

• Italy Today
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 A ‘sick man’ in Europe
• Part I Politics and society
• Part II History, memory and politics
• Part III Institutional(ized) Exclusion?
• Part IV Mezzogiorno
• Part V Economy and political economy
• Index