Italy Today

Description

Italy Today represents one of the most comprehensive examinations of contemporary Italy. It is a provocative and an innovative collection that aims to highlight the current ‘crisis’ of the country through an analysis of several different ‘dark shadows’ of contemporary Italian society.

Italy already had a long history of ‘unsolved’ issues, several chronic problems and contradictions that have been ignored for a very long time, during which they have assumed dramatic proportions and gravity. The peninsula has now become the ‘Sick Man of Europe’, a country facing a veritable decline also caused by apparent incapacity and difficulties of the ruling economic, political and social elites.

Discussions include:

• an evaluation of the current predicaments of the political system
• analysis of emerging mafias, including new powerful crime organizations such as ‘Ndrangheta
• issues surrounding the ongoing presence of Fascism
• examination of the recent xenophobic tensions
• discussion of problems associated with the missed opportunity of the EU funding, and the increasing regional economic gaps
• outline of the systemic troubles of Italy’s economic and industrial system.

Written by leading experts in the field and covering a wide range of topics, this collection is essential reading for all those seeking to understand the issues and problems that are facing contemporary Italy.

Reviews

"Faced with the attention-seeking antics of Silvio Berlusconi and his political allies, increasingly the temptation is not to treat Italy seriously. The great achievement of the contributors to this excellent volume is to reach behind the façade of political posturing to show that Italy does matter, because the failure of Italy’s political system to come up with solutions to the chronic problems facing the country today poses questions that are relevant to all advanced democracies. Italy today, but where next?" - John Davis, University of Connecticut

"Written by well known specialists and young researchers from Italy or outside, this book is dedicated to Contemporary Italy, considered as the sick man of Europe. All the aspects of its decline are studied in an interdisciplinary approach.'' - Marc Lazar, Sciences Po, Paris, France

"When journalists talk about Italy, they have a tendency to focus their attention on the Prime Minister, his gaffes in public speeches, and scandals, and to dismiss other issues affecting the country. The book, Italy Today: the Sick Man of Europe seeks to fill this gap, providing an English-speaking audience with information about the Bel Paese that they will not find in regular newspapers.

[…] But Italy’s problems are not limited to Berlusconi’s lack of diplomacy and sense of the politically appropriate. Italy Today digs beneath the surface to explore the structural problems that would persist even if Berlusconi disappeared. Ultimately, the book offers a diagnosis of the malaise affecting the country; and as British historian Paul Corner suggests in the foreword, "Given the right diagnosis, sick men often get better".Anna Pitton, Journalist

"How is the current crisis and decline of contemporary Italy to be explained? Through its interdisciplinary analyses of old and new but unresolved issues affecting politics, the economy and society in Italy, this book seeks to give an answer to this important question. Across various sectors of the country, the past two decades have witnessed a growth in the explosion of latent problems in urgent need of extensive discussion. The book could not, therefore, be more timely.

Unlike the existing books on Italy and its ‘shadows’, which usually focus either on the political and electoral systems or on the scandals and the transition to the Second Italian Republic, this edited volume – including contributions from leading experts and young scholars – seeks to offer a comprehensive picture of the Italian situation, looking simultaneously at political life, the economic system, history and society. Moreover, it seeks to analyse both the causes and the effects of the problems that have become typical of Italy and, most importantly, to link the present and the past when offering possible explanations. […]Many of the chapters also offer recommendations regarding possible policy solutions for the problems of this ‘sick man of Europe’, and this can be considered a further merit of the book."Manuela Caiani, Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna

"Il volume collettivo Italy Today. The Sick Man of Europe […] si propone come un invito alla diagnosi dei mali d’Italia. Secondo la migliore tradizione saggistica anglosassone, la raccolta, ricca di dati e solidamente ancorata all’analisi, si segnala inoltre per l’agilità della struttura e dei singoli contributi, che pur senza rinunciare al rigore scientifico sono fruibili anche da parte dei non addetti ai lavori. Nel complesso, è un’ottima base di partenza per un dibattito, sia scientifico sia militante, sull’Italia contemporanea, in prospettiva interdisciplinare e internazionale."Gigliola Sulis, University of Leeds

"Ben ventidue studiosi tra storici, politologi, sociologi ed economisti hanno contribuito alla stesura di questo libro che cerca di mettere a fuoco i problemi del nostro paese […].

Il libro ha il pregio di fornire, attraverso contributi interdisciplinari, un quadro generale e composito che tocca tutte le problematicità italiane mai del tutto risolte e pone interessanti interrogativi e spunti soprattutto sulle nuove questioni scaturite dagli anni ’90 in poi."Rivista Italiana di Scienza della Politica

Contents

Preface Paul Corner 1. A ‘Sick Man’ in Europe A. Mammone & G. Veltri Part I: Politics and Society 2. Elites and the democratic disease Carlo Carboni 3. Common manifestoes and coalition governance: How Italian political leaders missed the window of opportunity Catherine Moury 4. The programmatic convergence of the Italian parties and their weakness in the policy-making Nicolò Conti 5. When politics matters: Federalism, Italian style Christophe Roux 6. Family Politics, the Catholic Church and the transformation of family life in the Italian second republic Stefania Bernini 7. The Italian media between market and politics Chris Hanretty Part II: History, Memory and Politics 8. The legacy of the Strategy of Tension and the armed conflict in a context of (non)reconciliation Anna Cento Bull 9. Fascism as Heritage in contemporary Italy Joshua Arthurs Part III: Institutional(ized) Exclusion? 10. The Northern League and its 'innocuous' xenophobia Martina Avanza 11. "Gypsies out of Italy!": Social exclusion and racial discrimination of Roma and Sinti Nando Sigona 12. The Catholic Church, universal truth, and the debate on national identity and immigration: a new model of ‘selective solidarity’ Eva Garau Part IV: Mezzogiorno: a never ending problem 13. The strongest mafia: ‘Ndrangeta made in Calabria Ercole Giap Parini 14. Revisiting Naples: Clientelism and organized crime Felia Allum and Percy Allum Part V: Economy and political economy 15. Industrialization, Convergence and Governance: the case of Italy Alfonsina Iona, Leone Leonida & Giuseppe Sobbrio 16. 20 years of European funding: Italy still struggling with implementation Simona Milio 17. Labour and Welfare Reforms: The Short Life of Labour Unity in Contemporary Italy Marco Simoni 18. The crisis of family firms and the decline of Italian capitalism Raoul Minetti

Author Bio

Andrea Mammone is a Lecturer in Modern History (post 1800) at Kingston University London. He has previously held visiting research and teaching positions at NYU Florence, State University of New York at Stony Brook (USA), and the Università di Siena (Italy). His articles on the extreme right, transnational history, and public memory have appeared in the journals Modern Italy, Contemporary European History, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Italia contemporanea, and The Italianist among others. He is currently finalizing a monograph on transnational neo-fascism across France and Italy (2010). He is also working on another monograph on the history of Italian neo-fascism (with S. Dechezelles and L. Guerrieri , Routledge Series on Extremism and Democracy), and co-editing two special editions of the Journal of Contemporary European Studies as well as two volumes on European right-wing extremism.

Giuseppe A. Veltri holds a Msc in Social Research Methods from the Methodology Institute of the London School of Economics (LSE) and a PhD in Social Psychology from the LSE. He is currently a scientific fellow at the European Commission JRC Institute for Perspective Technological Studies (IPTS). Before joining the IPTS, he has been a research associate at the Institut Jean Nicod (CNRS) in Paris. He has taught extensively in the fields of methodology of social research and social psychology. His research interests focus on public opinion research, social representations, behavioural economics and social psychology of economic life, and public understanding of science. He has published in journals such as Nature Materials and Public Understanding of Science.

Related Subjects

1. European History
2. European Politics
3. Italian Politics