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Italy in the EC: Confronting Competition
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18542 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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4 / 1991 |
2,067 Words |
| Author
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Paul Cook
Paul Cook is deputy director of European studies at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. |
In a referendum held during the June 1989 elections for the European Parliament, 88 percent of the Italian electorate registered their support for Italy's total integration into a greater European federation. Long consumed with the confusing and often impenetrable intrigue of government coalition maintenance, scandal, and crisis, Italian voters seemed to be appealing not to but for a higher authority.
Indeed, a common interpretation of the referendum result was that the Italians had lost virtually all faith in the capacity of their own government to rule effectively in economic matters and would prefer a Brussels-based international bureaucracy to a Rome-based administrative apparatus. Yet, the referendum was nonbinding, and in the same elections, the historically dominant Christian Democratic Party once again out-polled all rivals.
In 40 years the Italian electorate has never voted the Christian Democratic Party out of the national ruling coalition--a fact that suggests that Italian voters are not as outraged as most foreign observers are. But complaints about the predominantly Christian Democratic government's stewardship of Italian public life nevertheless seem ever more frequent.
Italian society is preparing itself for a harshly competitive single European market. Italy's business leaders such as Olivetti's Carlo De Benedetti like to point out that the countries that are likely to prosper in the new Europe will be those whose governments foster the conditions most conducive to efficient and profitable business operations. It is widely feared that Italy's political and bureaucratic structures will not meet this systemic challenge. Many Italians worry that their politicians and bureaucrats can never recreate the efficient practices of their northern European counterparts, and thus Italy will find itself perpetually disadvantaged vis-à-vis its European competitors after 1992. Yet, the Italians rank among the European Community's most ardent supporters.
Students of Italian political culture revel in these kinds of paradoxes. In Italy, so the old adage goes, things are never what they seem. And one must take Italian self-depreciation with a grain of salt. After all, Italy is coming out a decade of tremendous accomplishment. The economy grew faster than virtually any other in Europe during the 1980s, unemployment fell, and Italy's presence in world export markets grew substantially. Italian officials are terribly proud of the fact that the country's per capita GNP passed that of Great Britain late in the
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