The Historical Reasons Behind Italy's Instability
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Geographical Overview | EU’s Mediterranean Countries Panorama The Historical Reasons behind Italy’s Instability Giulio Sapelli thus endangering the Italian presence in Libya and Research Associate Egypt, thanks to direct French and British pressure Fondazione ENI Enrico Mattei, Milan aimed at expelling Italy from North Africa, just as happened at the end of the 19th century. Both European states resorted to every means to One cannot understand the Italian crisis of recent ensure that Italy was excluded from Egypt as well as years, primarily during the period from the 2014 Libya, thus preventing the still existing Italian produc- Renzi government to the present, without focusing tion potential from being used in the upcoming re- on the specifics of Italy or what I prefer to call Italian construction of Mesopotamia, which could have Geographical Overview Mediterranean | EU’s Countries exceptionalism (to borrow a term from the famous been made possible by the drawing up of an interna- book American Exceptionalism. A Double-Edged tional pact between the US, Turkey and Arab Sunni Sword by Seymour Martin Lipset). This “exception- powers. alism” is, ultimately, simply the outcome of Italy’s The growing deinstitutionalization that afflicts Italy 176 anomalous situation in world processes of state has arisen out of the geopolitical vacuum created by building; an anomaly that emerges dramatically to- the decline of Europe in the world. We are well into day, against a backdrop of radical upheaval in inter- the era of European deinstitutionalization, of which national power relationships. BREXIT is merely the beginning, as soon the states Italy is a fragile and unstable nation due to its his- of central Europe will embark on a process of pol- torical instability and historical position in the inter- yarchic (not democratic) deinstitutionalization, as is national division of labour. The country was eco- already happening in Hungary, Poland, Romania, Al- nomically fragmented and divided and subject to bania, Slovakia and Bulgaria. the external dominion of UK and French capitalism The economic policy of the last two dramatic years, initially and then US capitalism after World War II. 2016-2017, must be seen in the specific context of Nowadays, the fast-shifting international order ex- Italian monetary matters, which have always been plicitly reveals the fact that North America’s security determined by fluctuation and a continuous inter- and financial dominance export model has encoun- weaving of fiscal dominance and foreign domi- tered serious military and diplomatic defeats in re- nance, with a growing loss of sovereignty. cent years and left Italy exposed to an increasingly The pinnacle of this loss was represented by the crucial dependency on external agencies. Monti government of 2011, which marked the oust- 2017 A snapshot of Italy’s position in the balance of pow- ing from power of Silvio Berlusconi. This occurred er was revealed by the Libyan crisis in the Mediter- without any vote of no confidence against Berlusco- ranean, which destroyed an almost hundred-year re- ni’s government but due to strong French and Ger- lationship, which started out as a hateful colonial man pressure that, significantly enough, found an power and gradually evolved into a relationship institutional basis in the ECB. This pressure was not based on the trading of oil resources in return for supported by the US under Obama’s presidency. Mediterranean Yearbook security resources and infrastructural capital goods. Italian political and institutional history of recent The Arab Springs and their dire consequences have years cannot be understood without remembering Med. Med. IE risked and continue to risk destroying such trade, that the Italian party system was again subject to increasing disintegration in the wake of the de- to form a stable majority when no longer held to ran- struction that took place in the early 1990s, at the som by the Senate, which had been unable to time of the ”clean hands” campaign: Europe’s very achieve a majority for want of a few votes. The Five Panorama own version of the more recent Brazilian “operation Star movement ploughed on and ruled out the alter- car wash.” native option of a coalition government with the The current crisis thus began in 2011, after the Democratic Party. Hence the crisis in the party ma- Deutsche Bank dumped huge quantities of Italian chinery and the start of the deinstitutionalization government bonds on international markets, caus- meltdown. ing a deep-seated public debt crisis. US pressure A deep gulf opened up between Parliament, which to prevent this pro-German attack on European sta- was unable to come to an agreement over the crea- bility was in vain. The unconstitutional role per- tion of a new electoral law, and the Constitutional formed by Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano ena- Court, which declared the law under which the bled top ranking Eurocrats to take a decision to go 2013 elections were held to be unconstitutional, ahead with setting up the Monti government. This opening up confrontation and conflict between the was done without the aid of political elections and parties that has yet to establish a compromise. thus was not legitimized by popular will, but only by The increasingly significant role that Giorgio Napoli- exceptional arrangements of a financial nature. tano, the Italian President, assumed during that pe- riod meant that we were really faced with a political and social disintegration worthy of Caesar and Bon- The growing deinstitutionalization aparte: effectively dominated a Republic that was that afflicts Italy has arisen out of the and still is parliamentarian. To this was added the Geographical Overview Mediterranean | EU’s Countries devastating transformation (from the beginning of geopolitical vacuum created by the the 1990s to the present day) of the judicial order, decline of Europe in the world with the judiciary becoming an autonomous power that encroaches on politics and on the economy with 177 anomalous and anti-constitutional force. This regime was reminiscent of the Roman dictator- This was the scenario in April 2013 when Giorgio ship that prevented the Roman Senate from unravel- Napolitano brought into being the government of ling due to external threats up until the time of Sulla Enrico Letta, a government that represented a deci- and Caesar. After Caesar, it became a despotic re- sive shift in Italian political life: a return to an ap- gime that laid the foundations of imperial rule, taking proach based on a major coalition that is political power from the Roman people. rather than technical, strongly focused on securing After the political disintegration of the Monti govern- the support of party secretaries. Once the minis- ment, which no longer had the confidence of the ters had been appointed on 28 April, however, the parliamentary right, the 2013 elections set Italy on a government remained in office for a total of just course to overcome the exceptional arrangements, 300 days, in other words nine months and 25 days. effectively reconstituting the parties that had been It stood down on 14 February 2014, the day after destroyed by the judicial enquiries of the 1990s. In- the leadership of the Democratic Party stated: “the stead, the 2013 elections gave rise to a party ma- need and urgency – in the words of the official chine that was unable to organize a government, press releases – to open up a new phase, with a 2017 plunging Italy into a crisis very similar to that experi- new government.” enced in Spain and Portugal. The latter two coun- The fall of the Letta government, which was exces- tries have, however, found a solution that, though sively lukewarm towards the German-style austerity precarious, is very different from what happened policy opposed by the US, fully revealed the degree and is still happening in Italy. of increasing deinstitutionalization that continued to Due to an electoral system that makes it impossible, envelope the movement of the Italian political class- even today, to establish a virtuous balance between es. The problem lay in the fluctuating movements of Mediterranean Yearbook members elected to the House and members elect- the political classes in the Democratic Party. This Med. Med. ed to the Senate, the Democratic Party was unable should be the government’s parliamentary mainstay IE and instead is proving to be its most determined op- ger of breaking down, as Mauro Calise so ably doc- ponent. There is a clear gap between parliamentary umented in his studies. Panorama legitimacy and party discipline: the factional spirit The members of government belonged to eight dif- calls into question the very foundations of parlia- ferent Parliamentary groups but the Democratic Par- mentary democracy and thus depends more and ty appointed the Prime Minister and nine ministers, more on external conditioning influences. while all the other parties were represented by one This is the new face of the Roman dictatorship that or two ministers and a few undersecretaries. The emerged with Mario Monti in 2011. Five years on, government majority in the Senate could count on this changed into a factional dictatorship and over- the support of the moderate right-wing Forza Italia, turned all the institutional balance, at the same time which thus continued to affect the Italian political sending the visceral waves in the factional power game. This was useful to Renzi because he did not relationships spinning straight into the parliamenta- have to depend entirely on the internal minority of the ry sphere, thus continually threatening the stability Democratic Party, which was deeply divided over and democratic legitimacy of the nation. the constitutional reforms that were gradually taking shape, amidst division over the role to be attributed to the electoral majority premium and the state’s re- There is a clear gap between centralization that Matteo Renzi aimed to fast-track parliamentary legitimacy and party by removing more and more power from the regions, primarily in the areas of energy and transport.