The very tight outcome of Italian elections surprised

ITALY TO DRIFT

by Marc Lazar

Perrin, 176 pages, 13 euros.

The very tight outcome of Italian elections surprised. Rich, but short and clear, the book by Marc Lazar allows to better understand the resistance to Berlusconi, but also politics and society even if it does not all the promises of his Italian title.

Great Communicator, Berlusconi made the media standing mode of relations with citizens. First fortune Italy, owner of newspapers and television, he imported policy the marketing techniques. And able to turn the election campaign in a drama which he was the hero, alone against all.

But the "Cavaliere", created from its networks, a new party, Forza Italia, which claimed 250,000 members and thousands of elected officials, moved into the open space by the upheaval of the 1990s: after having dominated the political system, the Christian democracy (DC), to the Government for nearly fifty years, and the Communist Party saw their role to weaken. Past the 30 Glorieuses, feelings of class membership, the futile "party" was terminated. The Government inaction, corruption, widespread after the arrival to power of the Socialists, had attracted an aspiration to a "bang" and pushed the opinion to support the "clean hands" judges. The DC, the most concerned, exploded in small groups, left and right; the Socialist Party has disappeared; the PC is out of communism for the most part.

A "mutant" company

Against this backdrop, Berlusconi was able to build around Forza Italia an unlikely alliance, the House of freedoms, with remains of DC and two formations for legitimation, the National Alliance, which seeks, not without difficulty sometimes out of fascism, and the Northern League, who rejects the Italy unit. This right, he wants to give a legitimacy by the paragon of liberalism, individualism, encouraging the enrichment. But his Government did not engaged the Italy on a liberal path, says Marc Lazar. The "Cavaliere" rather benefited those who have the same interests as him.

The continuous presence of Berlusconi on the front of the stage will be mobilized the opposition: the movements of the "civil society", on the register of the moral conviction; trade unions and their 10 million members, making back the Government on the law of dismissal in 2001-2002; the left and centre-left parties together in the Union, with more than one million members. Their support beyond the circle of the workers and employees in the public sector, particularly in Central and South Central.

As the "Cavaliere" unevenly used social categories to which it is addressed. Certainly, his hostility to the elite appeals to the mass of non-graduates; the image of success, it offers to the categories in the process of ascension, seduced in a country rich in SMEs and in "independent", reluctant to meet the prevailing codes and rules of the State and bureaucracy they despise. But inequalities of income continued to worsen between the ends of the social scale. The weakness of controls and the "extreme indulgence" toward tax evasion have reinforced that before tax.

Drift is not foreign to the State budget. However, said Marc Lazar, economy languishes, part of companies lose their competitiveness. The Italian ability to rebound does not compensate for aging infrastructure, the "gaping" deficiencies in education and research. "Devolution" Act which entrusted exclusive powers to the regions may exacerbate differences, including the persistent delay in the South. It regretted only that Marc Lazar was no longer analysed these drifts he refers to as the paradox of a "mutant" Italian society