Book123

    Free register and download UseNet downloader, then you can FREE Download from UseNet.

    Download without Limit " Audiobooks & Video Training Deconstructing Italy: Italy in the Nineties " from UseNet for FREE!

More

Salvatore Sechi, “Deconstructing Italy: Italy in the Nineties (Research Series : No 91)"

This volume stems from an international conference, "Decon- structing Italy," which was held at the end of March 1993 and spon- sored by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura of San Francisco (of which I was director in 1991-93), together with the Department of Italian, the Department of Political Science, and the left for Western Euro- pean Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Rather than simply editing the conference papers, I thought it would be valuable to set them in the context of the grave ethical- political (and identity) crisis that has beset Italy for the past few years. The country is in part Phoenician and in part Alpine. It creates a double temptation: either to fling onself down on the Levantine shores of Africa, or to reach for the mountains of Europe. The geo- graphic metaphor raises the question which has plagued Italians since at least the beginning of "Tangentopoli" (the kickback scan- dals) almost three years ago: Are we facing a crisis of transformation or the decline of democracy? The complex answers to this daunting question are what link these papers together. The crisis and transformation of Italian democracy are closely intertwined. The "Italian case" consists of a series of troubling ele- ments. Th e first is that Italy can be defined as a democracy only wi th d ifficult y. Whereas in other Western countries the governments can work from left to left and left to left, this has never been the case in Italy. Second, c riminal activity and corruption are e xtremely wide- spread. Third, by i nhibiting the alternation in powe r and thp t^irn- over of ruling elites, the p olitical sys tem closes in on itseljand favors t he preservation of the existing order over innovatio n. Fourth, the emergence o f a central group (the Polo della Liberta e del Buongov- erno) represents a break from the First Republic only from the point of v iew of the social bloc (c entered on the productive middle class)

and the anti-establishment culture. But from a political point of view, it is a phenomenon of renewal in continuity. In Italian history this has an old and infamous name: transformism. A more recent term, from the title of the brilliant novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lam- pedusa, could be "leopardism" {gattopardismo). The fundamental concept is similar: everything rnust change in order for everything to remain the same.

Buy Book at Lowest Price on Amazon

Download FREE:

No another mirrors, please! >>> Read RULES

Rating:
2.5 out of 5 by Book123