A colpi di cuore. Storie del sessantotto

This article attempts to tackle the problem of how a colonial culture that was elaborated through the written word may have impacted on an Italian society that was significantly more ‘backward’ than its western European counterparts. The Prima Guerra d'Africa (1885-96) has often been seen as a military campaign desired exclusively by an isolated Italian government in a society that was incapable of using the occasion to develop cultural themes that impacted on the desires and aspirations of the ‘real’ Italy. This supposed societal dysfunction meant that Italy failed to create a ‘culture of imperialism’ in the years of the Scramble for Africa in a way that has now come to be considered of such central importance for the histories of France, Britain or even Germany.

Through an analysis of the role played by primary schools in Italian culture in these years, this article attempts to reverse this view, arguing that even taking into consideration Italy's ‘backwardness’ there was not only a great awareness of what Italy was supposedly doing in Africa but also a serious attempt to load the events that occured there with a meaning that had a much more intimate relationship with Italy's population. Although defeat in Africa meant a major setback in this process, imperialism as a cultural phenomenon continued to be of fundamental importance to the progress of nation building and the development of nationalism in Italy and, Finaldi argues, it should therefore be assigned a place in Italian culture that is much more on a par to that which culture and imperialism are deemed to have held for other European nation-states.     

Citizen Emperor. Napoleon in Power

Abstract

The recent Italian elections have taken place under a new proportional system, but have confirmed and even strengthened the main trends already at work since the beginning of Italy's political transition. The center-left coalition has won by the slightest margin, thus ensuring the third alternation in power since 1994. The system's extreme competitiveness underscores its full-fledged bipolar format, the eclipse of center parties, and the continuing electoral stagnation and political integration of extreme left and right. These trends coexist with a party system fragmentation whose level is within the standard of other European systems of moderate pluralism and this fragmentation is, moreover, kept at bay by the coordination ensured by the majority bonus seats provided through the electoral law. At the same time, the main parties show persistently low levels of structural consolidation, that tend to hinder the stability and effectiveness of coalition cabinets. This problem might paradoxically have been sharpened by systemic competitiveness through a negative impact on coalitional discipline and the maximization of destabilizing effects of the smallest changes in electoral and parliamentary behavior.     

German volunteers in the armed conflicts of the Italian Risorgimento 1834–70

Abstract

Between 1834 and 1870, Germans participated in the armed conflicts of the Italian Risorgimento in the ranks of both Mazzini and Garibaldi and of the Pope and Francis II of Naples. While acknowledging the difficulty in analysing the motives of historical actors, the essay compares the reasons that led these Germans to volunteer and fight. For those who fought for the cause of Italian unity, the networks created in exile in the 1830s remained decisive down to 1870, whereas the mobilization of volunteers in Germany for the Papal states reached its height only later between 1867 and 1870. Despite these chronological differences, the methods used in terms of the media and forms of organization to mobilize the volunteers and to legitimize war were very similar across the political spectrum. The foreign volunteers were described by their own side as brothers, but as mere mercenaries by the respective enemy side. At the same time, Germans and Italians brought their national stereotypes to the various armed groups and armies in which they served and in ways that made the latter important places for the staging of national ‘re-virilization’ achieved through heroic fighting.     

Italy: A new language for a new politics?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the language used by the major actors in contemporary Italian politics. After a brief introduction, which lists the general questions posed by such an analysis, we examine the language of the pre‐1992 regime, which has been rather too hastily condemned as obscure and solipsistic. We then pass to the self‐consciously simple language of Bossi, who constructs a discourse of protest, and of Berlusconi, who offers a discourse of government. These lead to the very different, albeit sometimes complementary, languages of Prodi and D'Alema, which go beyond populism and open new political perspectives. Through these and other examples we examine the role of political language in a changing Italy.     

Piero Gobetti and the Liberal Revolution in Italy

Abstract

Piero Gobetti, who died at an early age in 1926 after a severe beating by Fascist squadristi, is one of the most remarkable figures in twentieth‐century Italian culture. A writer and thinker with deep political commitment, Gobetti launched the reviews and journals during the political crisis in Italy between 1918 and 1925 which provided a meeting point for the otherwise dispersed forces of the Italian Left. The republication of his essay ‘The Liberal Revolution. An Essay of the Political Struggle in Italy’ ‐ the fifth edition since it first appeared in 1924 — has reopened the debate on Gobetti and provides an opportunity to consider Gobetti's ideas outside the context of the often politically motivated interpretations that have been placed on them.     

Fascist Italy and German Jews in south‐eastern France in July 1943

Abstract

In the summer of 1943, a few days before the political crisis of 25 July, Italy decided to hand over to Germany German Jews (including those from the former Austria) in the French territory occupied by the Italians. The hand‐over never took place because the crisis of 25 July intervened. But the decision taken by the Italian Minister of the Interior on 15 July is nonetheless a historical fact that provides evidence of the progressive radicalization of Fascist anti‐Semitism before the establishment of the RSI (Salò republic).     

Recent works on Italian capitalism: A review essay

Abstract

Italy's capitalism has traditionally differed from that of its major trading partners: state‐owned enterprises have played a larger role, securities markets have been relatively less developed, while corporate power in the private sector has been concentrated to an unusual extent in the hands of a few family‐controlled business groups. Since the 1970s, Italian big business has seemed unable to steer a new course in an increasingly global economy. When belatedly and under tight budget constraints Italy finally started privatizations in 1992, many hoped that this would bring about a long‐delayed modernization of financial markets, an increase in competitive market pressues, and some ‘democratization’ of corporate power. This article reviews a book edited by Fabrizio Barca which puts these recent experiences into a much‐needed longer historical perspective, and other books offering non‐scholarly views on the present state of Italian capitalism.

Fabrizio Barca (ed.) (1997) Storia del capitalismo italiano (Rome: Donzelli), pp. 1‐634, 60,000 lire, ISBN 88‐7989‐252‐5 hardback.

Filippo Cavazzuti (1996) Privatizzazioni, imprenditori e mercati (Bologna: Il Mulino), pp. 1‐83, 10,000 lire, ISBN 88‐15‐05562‐2 paperback.

Alfredo Macchiati (1996) Privatizzazioni tra economia e politica (Rome: Donzelli), pp. 1‐160, 18,000 lire, ISBN 88‐7989‐254‐1 paperback.

Giuseppe Turani (1996) Isogni del grande nord (Bologna: II Mulino), pp. 1‐138, 15,000 lire, ISBN 88‐15‐05721‐8 paperback.     

The politics of finance in Napoleonic Italy (1802‐1814)

Abstract

The Republic and Kingdom of Italy (1802‐14) served as an important source of revenues for Napoleonic France. Most importantly, the authorities had to pay for a growing Italian army and for the French troops in northern Italy. To satisfy the Emperor's increasing financial pressure, Prina, the Finance Minister, increased the tax burden and reorganized the financial administration and tax collection. Prina kept a moderate property tax to secure the support of the landowners and raised indirect taxes, thereby increasing the burden on the poor. His reforms in the financial administration made it more orderly, uniform and efficient, thus strengthening the central state. While Prina modernized the financial machinery and expanded the state's resources, the fiscal pressure contributed to growing hostility from the population to the Napoleonic state. Following the fall of the Kingdom of Italy, the Austrians left the Napoleonic financial system intact, a demonstration of Prina's effective reforms and long‐term impact.     

Legal hyper-invasiveness and anti-legal practices in contemporary Italy

This paper gives an illustration of legal hyper-invasiveness in Italy over the course of the last decades, with particular emphasis on the increase in laws and law-producing institutions: neoliberal governmentality is not characterized by a retreat of the State, rather by the extent of its reach and force. The success of legal imposition has always been partial; in recent years, however, anti-legal constituent praxes are becoming more evident both in public demonstration and in everyday conduct. Street mobilizations are fuelled increasingly by disillusion with institutional politics, pursuing explicit anti-legal aims and marked by an autonomy from political parties and trade unions. The paper also provides an ethnographical examination of the day-to-day avoidance of institutional control, revealing a growing and widespread sense of intolerance of several regulations promoted by the institutional powers. Finally, contemporary forms of repression of these constituent energies are examined; and the belief that an increase in legality will benefit citizens is questioned.     

Interview with Romano Prodi

On the occasion of the Conference on the State of Italy, held at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies on 29–30 October 2013, David Kertzer interviewed former two-time Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi. Their focus was on the evolution of Prodi's involvement in Italian government and politics. This first in what is planned to be two such interviews examines Prodi's initial move from an economics professor at the University of Bologna interested in the study of political economy and industrial policy, to a major figure in implementing industrial policy in Italy. It looks at his brief stint as Minister of Industry under Giulio Andreotti, his founding of the influential industrial study group Nomisma, and then his presidency of the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), Italy's giant holding company. With the crisis of the Italian political system in the early 1990s, Prodi was central to the creation of a new centre-left coalition, named L'Ulivo (the Olive Tree), an experience he recalls here, along with his first experience as Prime Minister, from 1996 to 1998.