Neoliberal Hegemony in 1990S Italy
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca Lucca, Italy Common sense and 'national emergency': neoliberal hegemony in 1990s Italy PhD Program in Political Systems and Institutional Change XXIV Cycle By Davide Bradanini 2012 Reviewers Page The dissertation of Davide Bradanini is approved. Programme Coordinator: prof. Giovanni Orsina, LUISS Supervisor: prof. Francesco Strazzari, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna Tutor: Dr. James Melton, UCL IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca 2012 Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................... 1 Consensus and capitalism .................................................................. 3 1993: building consensus ................................................................... 8 Common sense and trasformismo in the Italian political economy .. 21 Defining neoliberalism as a concept of control................................. 32 1. Literature review: a critique of ‘1993’ in the literature ............ 37 Institutionalist and industrial relations perspectives ...................... 37 Neo-Gramscian perspectives ............................................................ 62 2. The theoretical lens: capital, hegemony and common sense ... 70 Ontological and Epistemological Premises ...................................... 71 Ontology ..................................................................................... 74 Structure and agency in political economy ........................... 78 Epistemology ............................................................................. 84 The Marxian dimension ................................................................... 92 An upside-down world: capital as a social force .................. 92 Capital’s ‘technological fix’ .................................................... 110 The Gramscian dimension .............................................................. 123 Hegemony and the Integral State ......................................... 123 Crisis and ‘national emergency’ in the political economy 148 The 'nodal' state: the national and the international .......... 152 Making sense of our conditions of existence: capital and common sense ............................................................................................... 156 The concept of common sense ............................................... 156 Common sense and ideology ................................................ 168 Common sense, class struggle and the state ....................... 177 Common sense and ‘the international’ ................................ 184 3. The Analysis: Methodology and Empirical Research Process ............................................................................................................ 193 Methodological choices ................................................................... 195 Why qualitative research? ..................................................... 197 Why interviews? ..................................................................... 199 iv Research questions and hypotheses ..................................... 204 Interview sampling ................................................................. 205 The Research Process ..................................................................... 212 Interview design and strategy ............................................... 212 Interview analysis ................................................................... 217 Issues of reliability and validity ..................................................... 220 Objectivity of interview knowledge ..................................... 222 Reliability ................................................................................. 222 Validity ..................................................................................... 224 Generalisability ....................................................................... 227 The Interviews ................................................................................ 229 4. Political history I: Italian capitalism from the postwar decades to the 1990s ........................................................................ 233 The origins of the Italian state........................................................ 234 The DC regime ............................................................................... 251 The fiscal system’s reverse redistribution ...................................... 256 The transnationalisation of Italian capital ..................................... 258 Economic vulnerability, wage restraint and common sense .......... 262 Trasformismo in the Italian political economy ............................... 269 The DC regime and trasformismo .................................................. 273 The PCI, trasformismo and economic liberalism............................ 276 The ‘liberal socialist’: trasformismo and the non-communist left .. 286 The ‘liberal strategy’ of the Second Republic ................................. 289 Left-wing liberalism in the 1990s .................................................. 296 The ‘copernican revolution’ of the 1990s: from 1992 to the Prodi government .................................................................................... 309 Reforming pensions ........................................................................ 321 Reforming the labour market ......................................................... 327 Neoliberalism, new constitutionalism and reformism ................... 330 5. Political history II: 1993, the moment of capital ................... 350 The industrial relations system ...................................................... 350 Early postwar years ........................................................................ 353 The 1969 ‘Hot Autumn’ ................................................................ 354 The ‘Scala Mobile’ .......................................................................... 358 The ‘historic compromise’ and the EUR line ................................. 360 1980-1990: failed attempts at reform and union weakness ............ 362 v Towards the 1993 protocol ............................................................. 366 The U-turn of 1992-1993 ............................................................... 370 The 1993 protocol ........................................................................... 378 The asymmetrical exchange .......................................................... 384 The democratic transformation of the unions: the referendum and the RSUs. ............................................................................................. 391 Consequences of the 1993 deal ....................................................... 397 6. Common sense in 1993: the moment of consensus .................. 406 Conflict and consensus in the Italian political economy ................ 413 The assumption of economic vulnerability ..................................... 433 The ‘vincolo esterno’ and European integration ............................ 456 Common sense and the foreclosure of alternatives ......................... 467 Crisis in the Italian political economy ........................................... 471 1993: common sense and the asymmetrical exchange .................... 484 The post-1993 reforms .................................................................... 522 Elements of the left’s ideological transformation ........................... 537 Conclusions ...................................................................................... 554 Appendix: List of interviewees ...................................................... 581 Bibliography ..................................................................................... 583 vi List of figures and tables Graph 1 - Distribution of income before and after 1993 as a percentage of GNP.......................................................................... 398 Graph 2 - Real Wage Increases in EU member states (1996-2002) ............................................................................................................ 402 Table 1 - Gross Real Salaries for Unit of Labour (1990=100) . 399 Table 2 - Net Monthly Wages for full-time Workers (year 2000 value in Lire) .................................................................................... 399 Table 3 - Employment (1993-1996) ............................................... 405 Table 4 - Quota of labour income as a percentage of GDP ..... 405 Table 5 - Quota of profits calculated as factor costs (difference between value added calculated at factor costs and labour income) ............................................................................................. 405 vii Vita and publications VITA January 13, Born, Caracas (Venezuela) 1983 2004/2005 Exchange Year at the University of California, Berkeley Overseas Scholarship - University of Bologna 2005 3-year BA degree in International Relations Final mark: 110/110 with distinction University of Bologna, Italy 2008 2-year MA degree in International and Diplomatic Sciences Final Mark: 110/110 with distinction University of Bologna (Forli'), Italy 2009 MA in European Political and Administrative Studies Final Mark: Very Good College of Europe, Brugge, Belgium 2009-2012 PhD in Political Systems and Institutional Change Institutions, Markets, Technologies - Lucca, Italy viii PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS D. Bradanini (2012) “Democracy in Europe: a tale of two crises”, Interdisciplinary