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Italy and Its Discontents: Family, Civil Society, State
A major bestseller in Italy, Paul Ginsborg's account of this most recent and dynamic period in Italy's history is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand contemoprary Italy. Ginsborg chronicles a period that witnessed a radical transformation in the country's social, economic and political landscape, creating a fascinating and definitve account of how Italy has coped or failed to cope as it moves from one century to the next. With particular emphasis on its role in italian life, work and culture Ginsborg shows how smaller families, longer lives and greater generation crossover have had significant effects on Italian society. Ginsborg looks at the 2000 elections, the influence of the Mafia, the decline of both Communism and Catholicism, and the change in national identity. This is modern history at its best.
536 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 23, 2022
Great history of recent Italian history (until the beginning of the 21st century. Left-wing point of view. But also handsome sociological perspectives.
September 21, 2025
A useful account of late-twentieth-century Italy, with some noticeable interpretive weaknesses. Ginsborg gives a largely compelling broad-strokes portrait of the dominant social trends of the period. His analysis of the underlying structural weaknesses of the Italian state and its "deformed" relationship to its citizens is partly carried over from his previous book on the postwar period, but includes some revealing new elements, especially his discussion of the Mafia and of corruption. Probably the main thing I was looking for from this book was an explanation of the crisis of the early 1990s which swept away the parties of the Cold War period and paved the way for the contemporary political landscape, and Ginsborg's account of this period is generally quite clarifying.
On the other side, this is very much an ex-leftist, end-of-history kind of book. It seems like since the Italian working class and its organizations had failed, Ginsborg's hopes for solving Italy's problems had been transferred to European integration and to a section of the middle class who he tries to argue had taken up a "reflexive" attitudes toward various social problems. Aside from my political disagreements with this perspective, I think it's analytically confusing at a number of points. Ginsborg doesn't demonstrate very clearly that the "reflexive middle class" existed, much less that it played a major role in the period's developments. His arguments for the positive effect of European "external constraint" on Italy are already so qualified as to undermine them, and have been brutally refuted by the decades since.
On the other side, this is very much an ex-leftist, end-of-history kind of book. It seems like since the Italian working class and its organizations had failed, Ginsborg's hopes for solving Italy's problems had been transferred to European integration and to a section of the middle class who he tries to argue had taken up a "reflexive" attitudes toward various social problems. Aside from my political disagreements with this perspective, I think it's analytically confusing at a number of points. Ginsborg doesn't demonstrate very clearly that the "reflexive middle class" existed, much less that it played a major role in the period's developments. His arguments for the positive effect of European "external constraint" on Italy are already so qualified as to undermine them, and have been brutally refuted by the decades since.
March 20, 2010
This has been in a pile of books next to my bed for a couple of years (birthday present from Anneliese I think - thanks!) and the feeling that I really needed to understand what happened to the Itlian left finally reached critical point, so I read it....
And a fascinating read it is as well' Ginsborg's line of reasoning comes from his appreciation of just how fragmented Italian society and its political structures have been for centuries, and how, in the absence of the rule of law, all sorts of family and regionalist formations have rushed in to fill the vacuum. His core argument is about the strength of 'vertical' authority in Italian society, with the elder generatins crowding out the space which might be more richly occupied by merit. Add to this the prevalence of 'clientism' - the sense that 'things get done' because of favours being bestowed and repaid between myriad actors, has meant that the notion of citizenship within the context of a modern democratc state has remained underdeveloped.
But Ginsborg tells us that, despite this, the heroic aspect of Italian political life as been the struggle to establish and maintain a democracy. During the post-war period all the parties remained committed to this ideal, the the Christian Democrats prepared, at crucial moments, to resist the autocratic tendencies of its Catholic heritage, and the Communist dittow with their own obviously autocratic antecedents.
The 20 year covered by this book saw a working through of all the dllemmas of 'the Three Italies', its inept state structure, and the corruption of its social mores, with the historically important parties in the centre of it all. The critical character is Bettino Craxi who led his Socialist party through mires where the modernisation of corruption seemed to be the main project. His party of technocrats held those wanting to maintain honest standards in public life in contempt, celebrating instead the machinations and the wheeler-dealing as a joyously liberating approach to the fusty business of striving for power. And wgho was Craxi's amin backer during these years? A certain Milanese buisnessman by the name of Silvio Berlusconi....
The Communists has no strategy to contain these debiliating approach. The honourable Enrico Berlinguer offered a vision of austere, anti-consumerist austerity which maintained the unity of the PCI cadre in its purtian fervour, but offered little to the new formations which were emeging around the postion of women in Italian society, and the currents wyich moved through the middle classes. The CD, with its bitter internal factions, and despite the sophistication of characters like Guilio Andreotti, had no programme for modernising reform. The party's uber-clientalism implicated their southern stronghold in the crimes of the Mafia.
Yet it was a component of the Italian state itself which emerged during this period as the force bent on challenging the multiple forms of corruption that prevailed across the syste, The corps of investigative magistrates crashed into politics, arraigning the party bosses and the Mafia families in a campaign which transformed the politcal scene.
The 1990s marked the end point for this crisis. The ploitical system was transformed as the once great Socialist party was truned inside out by the magistrates, the PCI lost all sense of direction and liquidated itself into an ill-thought out experiment in modernisation, and the CD factions catapulted themselves out of effective collaboration. It became a moment when a new political alignment could come onto the scene to cry 'eough', and to restablish thepolitical coherence of the Italian state ion new principles. The contending forces turned out to be the Forza Italia movement founded on the basis of Berlusconi's busines empire, and a new centre-left for whom the task of reform had to be driven by the task of deeper integration into the EU.
Berlusconi's early efforts to unite the right proved problematic, having, as was needed, to bring the very different forces represented by the regionalist, racist, pro-market Northern League, into an arrangement with the Statist authoritarians of the neo-fascist MSI. The failure of the first 'pole of freedom' government opened the way for technocratric, centre left European project led by Romano Prodi, who's achieved the notable success of bring Italy into monetary union and into a place in the European councils markedly different from the place of contemptuus ridicule it had occupied in the past.
But though it enjoyed their support, this was never a project for the popular classes which has sustained the parties of the left in the past. The 'Olive Tree' coalition has shallow roots, and was cast over during Berluscon's second assault on power, gained through eventual success in bringing the right back into coopation.
The book stops at 2001, but it leaves us at a point where it is possible to regnise the present moment, nearly a decade later. The right remain at the drivers of the Italian state, with the left a disaparate force sacttered into small pockets of resitance. Ginsborg could not say this at the time, but it could well be that the conditions for the long period of rights domination was sucured by Prodi in ahiciving the very thing for capital that Berlsconi could not have attempted - namely closer intergration into Europe, Since that date the political elites of the continent have looked more and more Berlusconi-like, with their grandstanding populist rhetoric. No doubt history will turn again at some point, but at preswent, there seems to be no real sense of what the left will look like when this happens and whether it will be in a position to meet the new challenges of that day.
And a fascinating read it is as well' Ginsborg's line of reasoning comes from his appreciation of just how fragmented Italian society and its political structures have been for centuries, and how, in the absence of the rule of law, all sorts of family and regionalist formations have rushed in to fill the vacuum. His core argument is about the strength of 'vertical' authority in Italian society, with the elder generatins crowding out the space which might be more richly occupied by merit. Add to this the prevalence of 'clientism' - the sense that 'things get done' because of favours being bestowed and repaid between myriad actors, has meant that the notion of citizenship within the context of a modern democratc state has remained underdeveloped.
But Ginsborg tells us that, despite this, the heroic aspect of Italian political life as been the struggle to establish and maintain a democracy. During the post-war period all the parties remained committed to this ideal, the the Christian Democrats prepared, at crucial moments, to resist the autocratic tendencies of its Catholic heritage, and the Communist dittow with their own obviously autocratic antecedents.
The 20 year covered by this book saw a working through of all the dllemmas of 'the Three Italies', its inept state structure, and the corruption of its social mores, with the historically important parties in the centre of it all. The critical character is Bettino Craxi who led his Socialist party through mires where the modernisation of corruption seemed to be the main project. His party of technocrats held those wanting to maintain honest standards in public life in contempt, celebrating instead the machinations and the wheeler-dealing as a joyously liberating approach to the fusty business of striving for power. And wgho was Craxi's amin backer during these years? A certain Milanese buisnessman by the name of Silvio Berlusconi....
The Communists has no strategy to contain these debiliating approach. The honourable Enrico Berlinguer offered a vision of austere, anti-consumerist austerity which maintained the unity of the PCI cadre in its purtian fervour, but offered little to the new formations which were emeging around the postion of women in Italian society, and the currents wyich moved through the middle classes. The CD, with its bitter internal factions, and despite the sophistication of characters like Guilio Andreotti, had no programme for modernising reform. The party's uber-clientalism implicated their southern stronghold in the crimes of the Mafia.
Yet it was a component of the Italian state itself which emerged during this period as the force bent on challenging the multiple forms of corruption that prevailed across the syste, The corps of investigative magistrates crashed into politics, arraigning the party bosses and the Mafia families in a campaign which transformed the politcal scene.
The 1990s marked the end point for this crisis. The ploitical system was transformed as the once great Socialist party was truned inside out by the magistrates, the PCI lost all sense of direction and liquidated itself into an ill-thought out experiment in modernisation, and the CD factions catapulted themselves out of effective collaboration. It became a moment when a new political alignment could come onto the scene to cry 'eough', and to restablish thepolitical coherence of the Italian state ion new principles. The contending forces turned out to be the Forza Italia movement founded on the basis of Berlusconi's busines empire, and a new centre-left for whom the task of reform had to be driven by the task of deeper integration into the EU.
Berlusconi's early efforts to unite the right proved problematic, having, as was needed, to bring the very different forces represented by the regionalist, racist, pro-market Northern League, into an arrangement with the Statist authoritarians of the neo-fascist MSI. The failure of the first 'pole of freedom' government opened the way for technocratric, centre left European project led by Romano Prodi, who's achieved the notable success of bring Italy into monetary union and into a place in the European councils markedly different from the place of contemptuus ridicule it had occupied in the past.
But though it enjoyed their support, this was never a project for the popular classes which has sustained the parties of the left in the past. The 'Olive Tree' coalition has shallow roots, and was cast over during Berluscon's second assault on power, gained through eventual success in bringing the right back into coopation.
The book stops at 2001, but it leaves us at a point where it is possible to regnise the present moment, nearly a decade later. The right remain at the drivers of the Italian state, with the left a disaparate force sacttered into small pockets of resitance. Ginsborg could not say this at the time, but it could well be that the conditions for the long period of rights domination was sucured by Prodi in ahiciving the very thing for capital that Berlsconi could not have attempted - namely closer intergration into Europe, Since that date the political elites of the continent have looked more and more Berlusconi-like, with their grandstanding populist rhetoric. No doubt history will turn again at some point, but at preswent, there seems to be no real sense of what the left will look like when this happens and whether it will be in a position to meet the new challenges of that day.
August 10, 2016
A brilliant book! If you want to understand why Italy is the way it is, this is a very useful book to read. Also recommended for anyone considering doing business in Italy - it can help people understand Italian culture.
Want to read
May 11, 2010Just as I lamented that I had not seen a book that covers modern Italian politics, post 1988, I came across this to place on m to-read list.
April 13, 2014
There is never a dull moment when reading about Italian politics, and therein lies the tragedy!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews