Italy has found itself once again mired in political instability (Hooper, 2014). This time it is centred on the struggle over the leadership of the Partito Democratico. The party, having taken the largest share of seats at the last election, seemed relatively sure-footed. That illusion very quickly faded in the election's aftermath.
The first leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, was nominated to be Prime Minister, but couldn't put together a progressive governing coalition. He resigned, and his deputy Enrico Letta took a more moderate approach and formed a grand coalition between left and right. That, however, alienated many on the left and his position became untenable when the deal with the right failed to deliver speedy reforms (BBC, 2014; Frye, 2014).
The new leader, Matteo Renzi, the Mayor of Florence (BBC, 2013), is faced with an almost impossible task (Grillo, 2014). He needs to form a government, overcome crippling public debts, and find a way to restart the Italian economy. All of that has to be achieved within an unstable political system where one party can gather itself into a position to singularly affect a whole society, even with its own internal debates.
It would be nice to able to put down this present state of intransigence and instability to some modern corruption, but the truth is more complex. It is a quagmire that has developed over time, as group after group has reacted and adapted to the political realities of their day.
In a 1974 Harvard publication, Romano Prodi, who would be Italian Prime Minister and President of the European Commission, stressed the important role that the Italian state institutions played in Italy's economic development. Prodi pointed out the intense integration that existed between the state and the country's industrial sector. That influence made the Italian state incredibly influential.
It has been the state's economic power, in particular, that former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his political factions have sought to undermine. However, instead of breaking state power, his movements have merely diffused it, miring it in a factious, squabbling, divided and uncooperative central body - thus ensuring that the power, while remaining present, is impossible to use. Political debates and policy considerations have been replaced with a brash, loud and short-termist populism, that has done little to break corruption or satisfy the demands of the public sector.
The response of the left has been to build its own groups, but they have often been short-lived enterprises. Such efforts also carried the risk of stifling all of the best things about the movement - diversity, dissent, and debate - in the name of generating the raw power to oppose conservative forces.
But such an approach does little to alleviate the problems caused by a political system that is factious, and sometimes monolithic, but never particularly prone to cooperation.
Italy isn't alone in these problems. The United State Congress has been trapped in the same conditions by a partisanship only reinforced over the decades. The inability of the factions to work together has crippled these political systems where state power is constructed so, when the electorate is divided in its opinions, that it may only be exercised by those who co-operate or those who wield monolithic strength. Reluctance to compromise then forces those parties to stifle internal debate and crush internal dissent, which in turn robs them of the intellectual stimulation that might have offered the originality necessary to engineer a way out of such an impasse.
Renzi, whatever his abilities or ambitions (Davies, 2014; The Guardian, 2014), is inheriting a country sunk deep into this model for instability. His first moves have to be towards bringing an end to, not just the political stalemate, but the system that causes it. Failure to do so will be simply be a perpetuation of the cycle and in that, no one wins.
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References:==========
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+ John Hooper's 'Matteo Renzi asked to form new government by Italian president'; in The Guardian; 17 February 2014.
+ BBC's 'Italy PM Letta in battle for survival with Matteo Renzi'; 12 February 2014.
+ Andrew Frye's 'Letta Pressed to Quit as Italy Premier to Make Way for Renzi'; in La Repubblica; 12 February 2014.
+ BBC's 'Profile: Florence mayor Matteo Renzi'; 9 December 2013.
+ Francesco Grillo's 'Becoming Italian PM would be a pyrrhic victory for Matteo Renzi'; in The Guardian; 14 February 2014.
+ Romano Prodi's 'Public Policies: Italy'; in Raymond Vernon's 'Big Business and the State: Changing Relations in Western Europe'; Harvard; 1974. [Buy Now]
+ Lizzy Davies' 'Italy's new prime minister: is Renzi a young Blair, Berlusconi – or the Fonz?'; in The Guardian; 14 February 2014.
+ The Guardian's 'Matteo Renzi, Italy's smooth-talking prime minister in waiting'; 14 February 2014; and The Guardian's 'Italy: young man in a hurry'; 14 February 2014.
For more information, see also:
+ Lizzy Davies' 'Matteo Renzi: 'we want to restart Italy''; in The Guardian; 24 April 2013.
+ Lizzy Davies' 'Italian PM Enrico Letta to resign'; in The Guardian; 13 February 2014.
+ Lizzy Davies' 'Enrico Letta steps down as prime minister of Italy'; in The Guardian; 14 February 2014.
+ Frances D'Emilio's 'Renzi may be asked Monday to form new Italy gov't'; in The Guardian; 16 February 2014.
+ Lizzy Davies' 'Italian president set to ask Matteo Renzi to form new government'; in The Guardian; 16 February 2014.
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