Xenophobe's Guide to the Italians

Politics

Centuries of government by foreign powers have given the Italians a strange idea of government. It is not viewed as a friendly public organism designed to protect and look after their interests at home and abroad. Rather it is seen as an alien, hostile organisation to which the people have no real link or sense of belonging, one that is hungry for taxes that will go into the pockets of the current group of fat cats who are running it. Fortunately, it can conveniently be blamed for the nation’s problems. An old political cartoon sums up the Italians’ attitude. A man is standing on his doorstep looking out at the pouring rain. The caption reads: ‘It’s raining. The Government’s a bunch of crooks.’

Italy has had upwards of 58 different governments since the Second World War, but until 1994 its politics were basically dominated by one political party, the Christian Democrats, kept in power by a coalition of allies. Cambio di governo came to mean a cabinet reshuffle rather than a ‘change of government’. So, as it was always obvious who would win any election, the majority of Italians became used to being on the winning side. Much of the present uncertainty in Italian politics is that people are no longer sure which is the winning side.

Italian politicians behave in much the same way as their ancestors. The power struggles, political corruption and clientalism that plagued the Late Roman Empire are alive and well in Italy today.

Italy is a country which seems to survive despite the efforts of its politicians to ruin it. The Italians love playing politics and the aim of the game is often difficult for foreigners to understand. One of the rules of Italian politics is that nothing which is said means exactly what it appears to, and de-codifying the speeches of the nation’s leading politicians is an art form in itself.

Politics permeates Italian life, and office or boardroom meetings can be fraught with tension. The most highly charged meeting of all is that held annually in every apartment building, the riunione di condiminio. No holds are barred as administrators and homeowners spend hours heatedly debating whether the front façade should be redecorated. If you can survive one of these meetings successfully and have actually enjoyed it, then you are probably ready to become a rising star on the Italian political circuit.

Achieving power and patronage are regarded as all-important goals; a Sicilian saying runs ‘Comandare è meglio di fottere’ (‘Ruling is better than screwing’). And yet, perversely, in Italian politics it is often considered more important to destroy what your rivals are trying to build than to try and build something yourself.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), the Italian people, like the Roman mob of old, can still be kept happy and quiet with ‘bread and circuses’ and Italian politicians and leaders know this. It is no accident that Italy has one of the best football league championships in the world. Matches starring the world’s most expensive football players have replaced the gladiatorial combats and displays in the Colosseum.

The labels of Italy’s political parties have often been very confusing. The Liberals were never particularly liberal, the Socialists not especially socialist, the Communists definitely not communist, and the Christian Democrats neither very Christian nor very democratic.

Italians, particularly those on the left, worry enormously about what should be labelled right- and left-wing. Debates take place over whether bodybuilding is right-wing, or whether employing a home help is left-wing, anxieties not lessened by the increasing awareness that it really makes little difference either way. And in the end, despite their great individuality, the Italians tend to follow the herd instinct. It was one of their own, Italian journalist Indro Montanelli, who said that they are ‘pecore indisciplinate’ (undisciplined sheep).

All Italians believe that long bureaucratic procedures are of the utmost importance, but for gli altri, of course, not for themselves. Without these procedures other Italians would most certainly get up to every kind of mischief. Moreover, there are so many powerful interests involved in the Italian bureaucratic system that it is unlikely that anything will change. The Italian state earns vast revenues from the fact that many bureaucratic or legal procedures involve carta bollata (taxable, officially stamped paper), and the same procedures also keep hundreds of thousands of civil servants in gainful employment. The longer the bureaucratic process, the greater the number of people involved. Furthermore, without the long bureaucratic process, there would be no point in circumventing it, and the thousands of galoppini (unofficial specialists in accelerating bureaucratic procedures) would also be without employment.

There are so many laws and ministerial directives in the Italian system (it has been calculated that to be entirely in line with the law, an Italian citizen should know some 800,000 rules), and they are so diverse, complicated and often contradictory, that their strict application can more or less paralyse any bureaucratic procedure. And because even minor civil servants have very strong powers in Italy, to accept, refuse or delay requests or procedures, they are treated with enormous respect and courtesy, especially when they are wearing uniform. Conversely, the officials ‘become’ their jobs when they are in uniform and expect to be treated with the kind of deference northern Europeans reserve for crowned Heads of State.

Italian bureaucracy needs to be approached tactically. If approached the wrong way, officials become intransigent and will make little or no effort to help you solve your problem. If approached the Italian way, it can be flexible enough to permit a solution to be found.

Every citizen knows that falling foul of the system, by upsetting the wrong official or not contacting the right middle man could mean years of waiting. Officials can make your life easy or difficult, depending upon their whims. A Californian teaching at an Italian university wanted to take some courses. In order to enrol he went to the university admissions office and was told that he would need a copy of his university degree certificate, with a translation certified by the Italian consulate in Los Angeles. Having gone to California during the summer vacation and obtained the necessary certificate and translation, he returned to the admissions office. “Ah, very good, now all we need is a copy of your high school diploma.” The Californian’s protestations that obviously he couldn’t have entered university without a high school diploma were of no avail. According to the admissions office he had to return to Los Angeles, get it and have its translation certified by the Italian consulate there. In the end he was forced to do what he had wanted to avoid doing at the beginning, which was to ask one of his senior colleagues to do him a favour and intervene so that he could by-pass the official.

While officials are treated with respect by Italians, this is not the case for places or objects that are public. The Italian has no feeling that these things are his, and therefore he should treat them well. His house or flat will be spotlessly tidy and clean, but he will think nothing of leaving litter and rubbish untidily on the pavement and street outside; there they become the city council’s responsibility, not his.

From time to time the Italians are called upon to vote in referenda on important issues, such as divorce, abortion, nuclear power, the use of pesticides in farming and the number of television channels any one Italian citizen can own. This gives them a sense of being involved in political decision-making.

A referendum requires a 50% turn-out to be a valid quorum. Thus, despite an increasing number of Italians wishing to protect the country’s ever-diminishing number of birds and beasts, a referendum on the issue only resulted in a 45% turn-out and new legislation was blocked. On the other hand, the Italians turned out in force to vote in favour of having television films and documentaries interrupted by commercials.

Mafia is a word used all over the world both for criminal organisations and for coteries of power, so that people talk about a sports mafia, an arts mafia or a business mafia, yet the model is always the Italian mafia.

In Italy ‘mafia’ covers several different bodies each ruling over a well-defined territory, the main ones being the Camorra in the region around Naples, the ’Ndrang-heta in Calabria (the tip of the boot), the Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia (the heel), and Cosa Nostra in Sicily; but whatever its name, they mean the criminal organisation.

Mafia in all its local forms has for centuries been a way of life in the South of Italy – except for some for whom it has been a way of death. The reason for its success is simple enough: in the absence of a recognisable or effective government, it was the only organised system ordinary people could refer to when they needed say, a permit to work or to get married.

Most Italians are terrified and fascinated by the mafia at one and the same time. They know its tentacles of power reach to the highest levels in politics and business since the mafia have always specialised in making offers that cannot be refused, knowing that everything and everyone has their price. They also know that the code of omertà (silence) is so strong that the odds are that the mafia will never be defeated, and every time one of its tentacles is lopped off, hydra-like others will grow again, stronger than before.

The mafia is seen as a cancer that is slowly destroying the Italian state. The Italians have to live with it and alongside it, a state within a state, sharing their country with it as they always have done. And yet they secretly believe that, just as the right treatment in time might be able to cure a tumour, sooner or later the right treatment will be found and administered in time to defeat the mafia.

Much of the time the mafia is divided, as its various families fight out their latest power struggle in time-honoured ways. Dark-suited men carrying violin cases still burst into barbers’ shops in the back streets of Palermo and gun down the bosses of rival clans. Luckily, the closest most Italians will ever get to the real thing is the latest gripping episode of one of the many highly popular television series on Italy’s organised crime, such as Distretto di Polizia (Police Precinct) which replaced La Piovra (The Octopus).