Whatever happened to Italy? The Crisis of the Italian Pattern of Development in the Era of Globalization

Abstract

The paper presents a political economy approach, aimed at achieving a better understanding of macro social change, with special reference to the case of contemporary Italy. The political economy framework outlined in the paper stresses the systemic nature of societal processes, starting from the changes occurring in economic activities, the division of labor, and class and regional forces in the aftermath of World War II. In this context, the public sector and, in particular, the class of political entrepreneurs and mediators has played a key role in the rise and the incipient demise of the Italian pattern of development. Finally, as far as the cultural sphere is concerned, the model outlined here focuses on religion and mass media as other relevant factors in a success story, which is now turning into decline.

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“…Finally, recent Italian emigration presents different features from those of the past in terms of the structural factors and personal motivations behind individual migration choices. Among the structural factors, an important role is certainly played by Italy's economic stagnation and the increasingly evident crisis of the development model followed by the country after World War II (Maddaloni 2016). Alongside this, the modernization of Italian society and its increasing permeability to globalization has allowed many Italians, especially young people, to become part of international networks of work and leisure.…”

In Search of a Good Life in a Southern European Country: The New Italian Migration to Athens and Valencia.

“…Therefore, the research results suggest that most of the Italian emigration towards other southern European countries could be best understood under some differentalbeit intertwined -perspectives. It could be seen, first, as a pathway to escape from a country living a systemic crisis (Maddaloni, 2016) -something worse than a purely temporary downturn. An exit solution (Hirschman, 1970) easily available to those who want to change something, but not everything, for example because they appreciate Mediterranean lifestyles or because they do not want to move too far from Italy.…”

Southern European Pathways across the Great Recession

“…The first is the proposal of innovative forms of political participation (Biorcio and Natale 2013, Biorcio 2015a, 2015b. The second is the protest against the arrogance and corruption of the Italian political class (Maddaloni 2015).…”

“…Moreover, since these changes are presented as inevitable and they are mainly imposed through non-democratic institutional mechanismssuch as the memoranda of the so-called Troika 3they seem to produce also an erosion of democracy in most of Europe (Gallino 2011(Gallino , 2015. Finally, in southern European countries such as Italy, the discrepancy between neoliberal discourse and neoliberal practices becomes even wider, since it leaves more and more room to the political class in relation to civil society, in a context dominated by the legacy of a divide between the rulers and the ruled (Maddaloni 2015). The aim of this paper is to deal with the micro-social dimension of these changes.…”