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Italy - A Contested Polity

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Despite the promise of the new Second Republic launched in the early 1990s, Italy remains Europe's least well-governed country. Fifteen years ago, politicians on the take and mafiosi on the make were supposedly pushed aside by a new generation of reformers and crusading magistrates. However, in this new book a team of leading experts on Italy uncovers little real progress. Badly needed reforms have foundered on bickering between the parties and their ego-centric leaders. Both left and right-wing coalitions have been guilty of impeding the anti-corruption revolution. Little has been done to improve the quality of public expenditure: infrastructure and education systems remain shambolic, and decades of periodic devaluation and deficit spending have left the economy structurally weakened. Italy's politicians are not just masters of trasformismo , but of stratificazione, or layering, the introduction of new policies and institutions without replacing those that preceded them. The result is a damaging mix of obsolete and contradictory legislation, the product of bargaining over reform by chronically weak governments in a veto-ridden polity. The outcome - immobilismo - is a system in which all parties, and democratic government itself, are steadily losing legitimacy.

This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.

Language: English

Pages: 310

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Routledge

Release: February 01, 2009

ISBN: 0415472644

ISBN 13: 9780415472647

Italy - A Contested Polity

0/5 ( ratings)

Despite the promise of the new Second Republic launched in the early 1990s, Italy remains Europe's least well-governed country. Fifteen years ago, politicians on the take and mafiosi on the make were supposedly pushed aside by a new generation of reformers and crusading magistrates. However, in this new book a team of leading experts on Italy uncovers little real progress. Badly needed reforms have foundered on bickering between the parties and their ego-centric leaders. Both left and right-wing coalitions have been guilty of impeding the anti-corruption revolution. Little has been done to improve the quality of public expenditure: infrastructure and education systems remain shambolic, and decades of periodic devaluation and deficit spending have left the economy structurally weakened. Italy's politicians are not just masters of trasformismo , but of stratificazione, or layering, the introduction of new policies and institutions without replacing those that preceded them. The result is a damaging mix of obsolete and contradictory legislation, the product of bargaining over reform by chronically weak governments in a veto-ridden polity. The outcome - immobilismo - is a system in which all parties, and democratic government itself, are steadily losing legitimacy.

This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.

Language: English

Pages: 310

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Routledge

Release: February 01, 2009

ISBN: 0415472644

ISBN 13: 9780415472647

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