Introduction to Italian History and Culture

The Italian Society: Past and Present

The Paradoxes of the Italian Society

• “In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinciand the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The Cuckoo clock.” Orson Welles in The Third Man

The Paradoxes of the Italian Society• "First of all, let's get one thing straight. Your Italy

and our Italia are not the same thing. Italy is a soft drug peddled in predictable packages,such as hills in the sunset, olive groves, lemon trees, white wine, and raven-haired girls. Italia, on the other hand, is a maze. It's alluring, but complicated. It's the kind of place that can have you fuming and then purring in the space of a hundred meters, or in the course of ten minutes. Italy is the only workshop in the world that can turn out both Botticellis and Berlusconis." Beppe Severgnini, Journalist and Writer

The Paradoxes of the Italian Society

• For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is a most fascinating act of self-discovery - back, back down the old ways of time. Strange and wonderful chords awake in us, and vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete forget-fullness. D.H. Lawrence

“The Creator made Italy from the designs by Michelangelo.” Mark Twain

The Paradoxes of the Italian Society

• I do not have any political commitments anymore. I’m politically a total agnostic; I’m one of the few writers in Italy who refuses to be identified with a specific political party.

• Italo Calvino

The Paradoxes of the Italian Society

• Real socialism is inside man. It wasn’t born with Marx. It was in the communes of Italy in the Middle Ages. You can’t say it is finished.

• Dario Fo

The Paradoxes of the Italian Society• ‘But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the

subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don’t. Don’t evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo.’ Umberto Eco

The Paradoxes of the Italian Society

• “Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini used to send people on vacation in internal exile.”

• “The racial laws were the worst fault of Mussolini as a leader, who in so many other ways did well.” Silvio Berlusconi, January, 2013

The Paradoxes of the Italian Society

• ‘Italy is now a great country to invest in … Today we have fewer communists, and those who are still there deny having been one. Another reason to invest in Italy is that we have beautiful secretaries.’ Silvio Berlusconi

The beauty and the beast: Italy is full of beautiful architecture but many face decay and deterioration. Lack of care and funding, and administrative malfunctioning

Incredible wealth and conspicuous spending and widespread poverty and urban deprivation

The most beautiful landscape and the ugliest industrial scenery: concentration of heavy industry and the north-south divide.

Italy was the land of learning and civilization; now the Italians read the least in EU and have one of the worst television

The Italian Economy• Late in industrialization.• Business caught up with

and overtook Western European countries, particularly in the north.

• Metallurgical and engineering industry

• Weakness: lack of raw materials and cumbersome bureaucracy and regulations

The Italian Economy• Problems: North – South

divide• Industrial North and

agricultural South• Two largest sectors:

chemical and garment industries.

• The fourth largest GDP in Europe following Germany, France, and GB, surpassing Russia

The Italian Economy• Italian economic problems• Inefficient levying of direct

taxes• Since the creation of the

republic after WWII, economy relied on public loans to finance public works

• Many did not pay direct income tax till the 1970s

• Tax evasions • Thriving underground

economy

The Italian Economy• By 1991 public debt exceeded GDP and still does in 2012• After the economic recession since 2007 the Italian

economy stagnated, GDP continues to fall, and unemployment topped 10 %

• One of the acronym ‘PIIGS’

Government and Society

• In referendum, Italy replaced monarchy with a republic

• A new constitution• Built-in guarantees against

easy amendment• Sovereignty belongs to the

people• Rights of men• Equality before the law• Freedom of speech and faith• Abolishing the patriarchal legal

system and legalization of divorce and abortion

Government and Society

• Bicameral parliament – Chamber of Deputies and Senate

• Members of the Chamber of Deputies popularly elected via a proportional representation

• Members of the Senate too via PR, but several members appointed by the president(s)

• Difference – the minimum age to be an electorate and candidate

• 18 and 25 / 25 and 40• Terms 5 years

Government and Society

Government and Society

• The Presidential Office• President as the head of state• Elected by the two-thirds

majority of a college of the two chambers and three representatives from each region

• Calls special sessions; delays and authorizes legislation

• Dissolve parliament at his own initiative or at the request of the government

Governement and Society

• Electoral System• Full proportional

representation after WWII• The 2005 reform allocates

a number of bonus seats to the winning coalition to guarantee a majority for victors. (Deputies)

• No such privilege for the Senate

• The same legislative power

Government and Society

• Political parties from the end of WWII to the 1990s

• Two major parties – Christian Democratic and Italian Communist parties with small parties

• The fall of communism in 1991, prosecutions of corrupt officials and politicians (mani pulite), electoral reforms

• Demise of the First Republic and disappearance of major political parties

Government and Society

• Tangentopoli (tangente = kickback, poli = cities) cities of kickbacks and bribes

• Investigations called mani pullite (clean hands) revealed massive kickbacks given for public work contracts

• More than the half of the members of parliament under indictment, but mainly CD and PS

• More than 400 city and town councils dissolved for corruption charges

Government and Society

• The Second Republic• Three major parties rose to

dominate the political right – Forza Italia, the Northern League and the National Alliance

• PCI reborn as Democratic Party of the Left (later DS)

• In 2007 DS merged with a centrist Daisy (Margherita) Party and became the Democratic Party (centre-left)

• FI joined with AN to create the centre-right People of Freedom (Popolo della libertá) Party

Italy in 1494

Italian History: Unification• Italy was divided into

eight states: Sardinia-Piemont, Lombardy, Venezia, Parma, Modena, Tuscany, Papal State, Kingdom of the Two Sicilies at the time of the Congress of Vienna, 1815.

• The role of Piemont• King Vittorio Emanuele II

of Sardinia-Piemont formed a cabinet under Massimo d’Azeglio

Italian History: Unification

• D’Azeglio introduced the new law curtailing the power of ecclesiastical courts.

• Camillo Benso di Cavour entered the cabinet and introduced economic reforms – laissez-faire policy

• Sardinia-Piemont fought with the victorious side in the Crimean War and strengthened its position in the international politics.

Italian History: Unification

• The monarchist, unionist National Society and Garibaldi and the Thousand supported Cavour’s democratic policies to unify Italy by removing foreign powers (Austria).

• The Kingdom of Italy was officially proclaimed on March 17th 1861.

Education• Compulsory education for

those between 6 and 16 years• Now about two-thirds of

people of university age attend university, and almost nine-tenths of people of high school age attend high school.

• Most schools and universities are run by the state, with uniform pragrammes across the country

• Less than one tenth attend private schools