Italy History and Politics - Essay Example

Italy - History and Politics For years, Italy has suffered as a victim of its own stereotypes. You've seen it a dozen times: Marlon Brando with hisgravely voice, talking about giving his competitor "an offer he can't refuse". It would be easy to laugh off the caricature if it wasn't based in fact. And the facts are that South of Rome the "Italian System of Corruption" still runs rampant. In Sicily you have the Mafia, in Naples you have the Camorra, meanwhile in the Puglia region you have the Sacra Corona Unita, and finally in Calabria you have La N'dragheta. Certainly all 4 families flex their muscles throughout Italy and beyond its borders, but the strength of corruption's grip is felt most noticeably in the South. Consider this: although a large flow of cash is continually funneled through political parties and persons in positions of power [reference Silvio Belusconi's rise, fall and subsequent rise to power as an example], Italy's underworld makes it's biggest profits from the lowest common denominator: the public sector. Hence the existence of the "tangenti" better known as the bribe or kickback. Used as a means to buy into businesses and the lucrative contracts that come with it; in areas as diverse as construction, trash removal and produce distribution to name just a few ( Moody 1 ). The rampant use of the tangenti reached epic heights during the 1980's and 1990's. Paul Ginsborg touches on the phenomenon is his epic volume Italy and It's Discontents where he briefly examines the kickback scandals inherit to the later half of the 90's as well as the murky relationship between seven-time Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and the Mafia. Money wasn't buying power so much as it was buying position. Consider one of the most well known Italian kickback scandals of the last 20 years involving computer giant Olivetti. In a face-to-face admission with Milan prosecutors, Olivetti Chief executive officer Carlo De Benedetti confessed that his company $6.8 million in tangenti between 1988 and the end of 1991. Most of the money, he said, was funneled to the Socialist and Christian Democrat parties in return for contracts to nearly $400 million worth of computers and printers to Italy's national postal service (Moody 4). Why the motivation to play with the bad guys Before Olivetti involved itself in tangenti, the company's annual sales to the post office totaled just over $1 million. The next year after tangenti payments kicked in and money was delivered to the political parties Olivetti revenues soared to nearly 4150 million. A coincidence Recalled De Benedetti: When I stopped paying, we (Olivetti) didn't get any more business with the Italian post office. But what hurt more is that our business outside of Italy suffered. It was impossible to sell any- anything to the Dutch, for instance, since we couldn't get a good reference any longer from within Italy. (Moody 3) Thirty years later and same type of hardball is still played. As recently as 5 October 2005, Federal investigators were unraveling a huge kickback scandal involving the Mafia and construction companies bidding for multi-million dollar lucrative contracts to build a bridge that will link Reggio Calabria and Mesina and cut travel time in half.(La Republica, 6). In sharp contrast, it's not like Italians haven't at least tried to rebel against this type of underhandedness. Widespread state corruption, historically endemic in the country, accelerated during the 1980's and both the ruling parties were systematically involved in clientism, and stealing from the public purse. The mafia thrived thanks to collusions of the state. Key figures in Italy's various crime families did deals with politicians which guaranteed votes of immunity from prosecution. The "maxi-trial" against the mafia led by independent magistrates Giovane Falcone and Paolo Borselino began in the late 1980's and threatened to expose the links between politicians and Mafiosi. A wave of anti-Mafia fervor was the result of the assassinations of both Falcone and Borsolino in 1992 (Trudell 4). This type of protest has reared its head at specific times of crisis. Almost as though at an interval when the Mafia oversteps the boundaries of what the people will put up with. Unfortunately, the discussion of corruption and tangenti is neither black nor white. Both seem to be inexplicably ties to politics and Italy's burgeoning entrepreneurship. The question remains, would the rampant kickback mentality be as ingrained in Italian society if Berlusconi hadn't so thoroughly endorsed the free markets of the late 1980's Comments Ginsborg: On the one hand, a return of the unquestioned acceptance of hierarchy, by the increased power of monopolies and oligopolies, by the new and deleterious influence exercised by commercial television, by a mass passivity in strong contrast to earlier social patterns of mobilization. On the other, there were distinct signs of growth of an autonomous and active civil society (Ginsborg 96). Ginsborg clearly illustrates the bitterness with the political and free market systems felt by millions of Italians and the ripple effect kickbacks and bribes were having on the social system in general (Ginsborg 39). By the early 1990's there were more than 6 million Italians living in poverty, disproportionately - though not exclusively concentrated in the south. In Palermo alone, one third of the city's population was living below the poverty line. Jump ahead 3 -5 years and by late 1996 unemployment among the under-25 age group was sitting at nearly 35 percent across the entire country (Ginsborg 96-97). Thirty years later unemployment is not much better and a new crisis looms as Italy is facing a very real problem of too many pensioners and not enough baby's ( La Republica 1). The solution is no where in sight. Under the questionable leadership of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy has tried to re-invent itself with little success. With more splintered political parties and even more corruption and racketeering (as the Italian underworld allies itself with the strong arms of Albania, Romania and Russia) Italy faces a long tired road if it wishes to break away from such murkiness and develop itself as a real force in the European Union. References: Moody, John."You Pay What You're Told". Pg 1. Time Magazine Europe 2001 Ibid. pg 3 Ana Maria Martelli. Organized Crime in the South. La Republica. August 2005 Trudell, Megan. From Tangentopoli to Genoa. International Socialism Journal. Issue 95. Summer 2002 Ginsborg, Paul. Italy and its Discontents: Family, Civil Society, State 1980-2000. pg 96 Lane 2001 Ibid. Pg 39 Ibid. Pg 96-97 Ana Maria Martelli. Organized Crime in the South. La Republica. August 2005 Grew, Raymond. Italian Politics at a Cossroads University of Michigan Press 2003 Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943-1988 Sondra Z. Koff and Stephen P. Koff, From the First to the Second Republic (London: Routledge, 2000) Hilary Partridge, Italian Politics Today (London, New York: Manchester University Press, 1998) Donald Sassoon, Contemporary Italy: Economy, Society and POlitics since 1945 (London: Longman, 1997) Read More