Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

Published - Sunday, July 13, 2008

GUEST VIEW: A questionable democracy: Italy is increasingly dysfunctional

By Keith Knutson

Italy today is groaning under the weight of immense structural problems. It suffers from the slowest economic growth rate in the European Union. Italians have lost faith in their political leaders’ abilities to find solutions to the long-term malaise that has set upon this nation, whose territory houses so much evidence of past greatness.

The collective funk here is readily apparent in conversations on the street. It is confirmed in opinion polls showing that Italians are now the least happy people in Europe.

The mayor of Rome has acknowledged that his compatriots have lost their will for the future, and display more fear than hope. Visitors may enjoy Italy’s low-tech way of life. But both Internet use and commerce are anemic. And therefore so is foreign investment.

In the second half of the 20th century, Italy charted its way forward by integrating itself into the unique political process that has built the European Union and its single currency, the Euro. However, EU membership has not overcome this country’s deeply fractured politics, its uneven economic growth, organized crime nor a tenuous sense of nationhood.

The modern Italian state came into existence through the Risorgimento — a national unification movement contemporaneous with the American Civil War. A political party in the current government — the Northern League — actually advocates dividing Italy into two separate states. The party’s leader, Umberto Bossi, is the Minister of Institutional Reform and Federalism. He resents his country’s less prosperous southern half — the Mezzogiorno — to which the north transfers significant amounts of wealth via government redistribution programs.

But I learned on a recent trip that the industrialized north has been shipping toxic waste south via the mafia-dominated waste removal industry. (Maybe the mafia just naturally dominates certain economic sectors?)

The south’s leading city —Naples — has been rent asunder by its own trash throughout 2008. The remarkably green northern German city of Hamburg has temporarily agreed to accept train-loads of Neapolitan waste. But Italians will need to address their own waste disposal solutions. Their current government seems peculiarly odious enough as to potentially have the connections to solve this problem.

Not only does the Northern League advocate breaking up Italy, but it also wants to leave the EU. Apparently, the League is prepared to have Italians suffocate under their own trash.

In 1987, Italy celebrated achieving economic parity with Britain. Today, pensions, public debt and the cost of government are higher in Italy than anywhere in Europe. Not only have Italians slid back behind Bitons, but Spain has used EU membership since 1985 to outpace and step over its Mediterranean neighbor that is shaped like a boot.

Even the Italian family is clouded with doubt — 70 percent of Italians between 20 and 30 years old still live at home. They are not constructing families of their own. And these young people are condemned to extended underproductivity that is demoralizing them.

Small and medium sized businesses have been the backbone of postwar economic and social progress. But in the 21st century they struggle in a globalized economy. No longer a major trading partner with the United States, Italy plays a diminished role in our foreign policy.

Third-time Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is intent on changing this. However, the 71-year-old billionaire is accused of complicity with the Bush administration’s torture policy. The charge is that Berlusconi facilitated the extraordinary renditions by which our CIA agents captured suspected terrorists and moved them to countries that torture detainees. Italians may be in a social-psychological funk, but they seem unwilling to take it out on others through torture.

Berlusconi epitomizes Italian corruption in both government and business.

He’s been burdened for a decade with different legal procedures resulting from bribery charges that stem from putting together his huge (and sleazy) media empire. The Italian head of government is now on record charging his country’s judiciary as being anti-democratic.

Every time Berlusconi becomes prime minister, he gets the national legislature — controlled by his coalition — to pass laws protecting him against prosecution. Can a political system that allows its leaders to place themselves above the law really be considered a democracy?

Keith Knutson teaches history at Viterbo University, with an emphasis on European history and politics. He recently returned from several weeks in Europe.