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Italy / The Lessons of Kosovo and Bologna

Categoria/Category
Anno XXXIV, n. 150, maggio-agosto 1999
Editore/Publisher
Centro Einaudi

Abstract

Testo disponibile solo in lingua inglese.
The “Italian transition” would appear to be never-ending. It is impossible to predict the direction it is going in and the time it will take to settle. This is due to the fact that it consists of a great collective crisis of identity, which invests not only the political, but also the social and cultural sphere. Faced with a crisis of this nature, no system of rules can stand up. The old tools of political mediation are unusable, but no new ones are available. To find a solution to the problem, it is necessary to look to the political and institutional history of Italy which, we discover, has always been negatively marked by a rift between majority and government. This is where we have to intervene, if we are to emerge from the transition. In different ways, the crisis in the Kosovo, the results of the European elections and those of the municipal elections in Bologna show that it is precisely this type of innovation that citizens are asking for: in short, the possibility to choose clearly and simply between elites and counterpoised political and cultural proposals. For this to be possible and irrespective of the electoral law adopted, it is important only for the rules of the system to envisage that the leader of the winning coalition is automatically also head of the executive.