The Italians

"John Hooper is a long-time Rome correspondent for the Economist. His book dwells more on contemporary Italy and its socio-political peculiarities. He cleverly dissects the Italians’ inborn difficulty with ascertaining truth, the enduring role of the Catholic Church, the hard-to-eradicate strength of guilds and corporatism, the sometimes funny dynamics within Italian families, the phenomenon known as Berlusconism, and the question of national identity I talked about before. Probably, yes. You can easily summarize the recent history of Italy the French way, with the idea of three republics. The first republic was the first 50 years, when we had a single political party ruling the country, the Christian Democrats. It was not a dictatorship. It was a completely democratic setting, but the strong fear of communism made most voters coalesce around the centre—also because the painful memory of fascism allowed no leaning towards the right. It was an age of economic boom for Italy, but the country also witnessed an increasing chasm between the well-managed private sector and businesses and a gargantuan, inefficient public sector. It was an era of strong polarization between the Christian Democrats and the powerful, USSR-backed Italian Communist Party, but when you don’t have a change in the ruling party for 50 years, you have corruption, cronyism, wrongdoing and overspending. Then, all of a sudden, in 1992, a nationwide judicial investigation, mani pulite (‘clean hands’), swept away almost an entire political generation. The Christian Democrats and many other parties, overwhelmed by their judicial ordeals, ceased to exist. “Since Italy became a republic in 1946, no minister has lasted a full term” There was a huge gap which was filled almost immediately by Silvio Berlusconi, a tycoon-turned-politician. The second republic was born. It was a completely different way of doing politics. Before it was politics by profession, you had to wait until you had grey hair before you could reach any post. Berlusconi’s entry into politics—and a growing number of scandals—opened the way to another 20 years of extreme political polarization in Italy, this time between Berlusconi and the Left. The third republic started when Berlusconi lost influence. In 2013, the Five Stars , a bottom-up movement led by comedian-turned-politician Beppe Grillo—who is from my hometown, Genoa—achieved an astonishing result at national elections. He created a party that suddenly got 25% of the vote. They stood on a fight against corruption, a reduction of parliamentary privileges and environmental protection. Most of its MPs were newcomers with no political experience and the new Italian parliament was the youngest, by average age, of the republican era. The Five Stars decided not to form or support any government, so for the subsequent five years Italy was governed by a left-to-right grand coalition that included both the Social Democrats and Berlusconi’s party, though they eventually left the coalition. After the 2018 election, Five Stars finally entered government—not once, but twice. The first time, rather shockingly, it was with the rightist (Northern) League and then, after a cabinet crisis, in coalition with the left-leaning Social Democrats. This is another feature of Italian politics: trasformismo , the ability to switch coalition. Now the situation is more scattered. There are more parties than there used to be. It’s another era again. There is no room right now for politicians by profession, so there is no one who has had 10, 20 or 30 years to hone their craft. You can have a political party with 3% of the vote that then gets 30% at the following election. Politics is very liquid nowadays, in Italy. I think they were very tired with the old politics. At a certain point, politicians didn’t even bother to make promises, because you voted for a symbol. You voted for the Communist Party or you voted for the Christian Democrats or a tiny minority for the right wing. Berlusconi brought in some freshness at the beginning. He made promises. He said, ‘I’m going to deliver this.’ It was very analytical, very detailed. Also, remember he brought commercial TV to Italy. He was very successful with his football team, and football is an obsession for Italians. So he was in every household and people linked him with success, which always helps. I voted for him initially. I was 19 years old. “Italians definitely struggle to abide by rules” What I was surprised by is when people kept voting for him. He lost two national elections, but he always succeeded in coming back. How could you vote Berlusconi in 2008, after he had been in power for five years? And again, five years later? He didn’t win but performed well. A brilliant journalist once said that Berlusconi voters fall into two categories, either they’re clever and they vote for him because it’s in their interests or they are fools. I don’t know, it’s millions of people, so it’s not easy to categorize them. It’s a bit of a mystery. Maybe, sometimes it’s a subconscious idea of tearing everything apart? Yes, it’s the same with Donald Trump. I think sometimes people want to build and sometimes they want to destroy, so they can build again. But Italians don’t like to be lectured. You have to make jokes. Berlusconi is quite sick right now and there was a TV show. People were asking what his greatest achievement is. I said his greatest achievement is that he will never have to pay for all the things he did which were against the law."