Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture
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the previous tradition, in most of their poems they revisit, rewrite and revitalize the poetic
trends of the century.
Further reading
Hainsworth, P. and Tandello, E. (eds) (1995) Italian Poetry Since 1956, Reading: University of
Reading Press (a general but comprehensive anthology with good introductions to each author).
Spatola, A. and Vangelisti, P. (eds) (1982) Italian Poetry, 1960–1980: From Neo to Post
Avantgarde, San Francisco: Red Hill Press (a useful and well thought-out anthology of the
poetry of the 1960s and 1970s).
ANDREA CICCARELLI
polenta
Italian polenta is enshrined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a type of ‘porridge’. In
medieval times it was made from broad beans cooked and crushed in a mortar, then fried
with onions and sage or—for a sweet variation—figs and honey. Since the eighteenth
century, polenta has been made by pouring cornflour into boiling, salted water and
stirring until it reaches a thick consistency.
In the past, polenta was the main food of the poor and rural people, especially in
northern Italy where it was often a substitute for more expensive bread. Later, it became
customary to eat polenta as an accompaniment to other foods such as game, meat and
cheeses. Northern Italians appear to prefer a firmer polenta, while in central Italy it tends
to be creamier. Cooked polenta can be sliced and baked in a variety of recipes. There are
several dishes expressly prepared to accompany polenta, their ingredients varying from
region to region (see regional cooking).
MARIELLA TOTARO GENEVOIS
Poletti, Ugo
b. 19 April 1914, Omegna, Novara; d. 24 February 1997, Rome
Cardinal
A leading figure in the Italian Church and reputed to be a confidential adviser to Pope
John Paul II, Poletti was widely regarded as the most likely candidate for the papal
crown in the 1978 conclave, though his bid proved ultimately unsuccessful.
After an early career as a seminary teacher and rector in his own diocese, he entered
the Roman curia in 1958 and was made head of the Pontifical Missionary Societies in
Entries A–Z 631
1964. In 1967 his career changed direction when he was appointed Bishop of Spoleto. In
1972 he was given the most important pastoral job in the Italian Church—the pope’s
Vicar for the Diocese of Rome—and a year later he was made a cardinal. In 1991 he
became head of the Italian Conference of Bishops. A constant critic of local government
in Rome, even when it was in the hands of the DC, Poletti was especially concerned
about the inadequacy of housing and other public and social services in the city As a
result, he was accused by some of opening the way to the PCI conquest of the capitol,
although he was very popular with ordinary Romans.
JOHN POLLARD
Poli, Paolo
b. 23 May 1929, Florence
Actor, singer, writer and satirist, Poli takes classical and modern, known and unknown
texts and reworks them with a devastatingly hilarious effect by presenting their
unintentional comic substance. After working in radio and university theatre, he gained
wider recognition in Aldo Trionfo’s experimental theatre in Genoa. From the early
1960s, most of his shows were written with Ida Omboni; later, sets and costumes were
designed by Lele Luzzatti but musical collaboration has been consistently with
Jacqueline Perrotin. Generally the shows have been performed with small companies,
with Poli playing a wide variety of roles, some in drag and some straight.
A philologist and an expert of popular song, Poli combines satire with affection for his
material. This has ranged from Roman literature (Apuleius’s Golden Ass) and medieval
hagiography (Rita da Cascio) to F.T.Marinetti’s ‘Il suggeritore nudo’ (The Naked
Prompter). Some shows have just been collections of songs and texts on a theme, as with
‘Feminilità’ (Femininity), performed with his sister Lucia. All have been extensively
revived.
JAMES WALSTON
police
Italy boasts a number of different police corps, the main ones being the polizia di stato
(state police) the carabinieri and the guardia di finanza (finance officers). Since,
historically, their relative roles and jurisdictions have never been satisfactorily
differentiated, these organizations are often in each others’ way. In spite of superficial
differences, however, the general notion of the police in Italy has remained that of a
‘police of the government’ which defends the political order against social opposition. In
fact, the police forces in the postwar period largely continued the tradition of fascist and
pre-fascist times. Even after the Second World War, the police were strongly militarist in
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 632
style: they lived in barracks, were subjected to strong discipline and were prohibited from
joining trade unions and political parties. Only very slowly after the war were some
elements of a ‘citizens’ police’, which protects citizens’ rights, introduced into the self-
and public perception of the polizia di stato.
First attempts at reform in the postwar period were in fact blocked by the Cold War,
which saw the Communist Party and worker organizations characterized as the major
threat to public order and therefore the criminal enemy. In fact, during this time police
organizational structure and training were mostly focused on crowd control and
containment of riots. In the 1940s and 1950s, the most common image of the police was
that derived from their often brutal suppression of protest marches and public gatherings.
About one hundred protesters and bystanders were killed in this way during this period.
The various police corps, overlapping in responsibilities but lacking in coordination,
were nevertheless centralized in the Ministry for Home Affairs, a Ministry that from 1947
to 1994 was firmly under the control of the Christian Democratic party (DC).
Notwithstanding a steady increase in the number of officers, the level of
professionalization remained very poor. Low salaries and miserable living conditions,
including the isolation from the population, made joining the police a sort of last resort
for the less educated. At the same time, police powers were extremely wide. Following a
tradition of strict control and preventive intervention, the police had the right to impose
restrictions on the movement, residence and activities of Italian citizens. It was only
beginning in 1956 that the newly created Constitutional Court started to declare
illegitimate some provisions of the police law, many of which dated back to the Fascist
regime.
The first indications of a possible change in police culture emerged in the early 1960s,
when the Socialist Party’s entry into government initiated hopes for a reform. The
political transformation was reflected in a less brutal control of political protest, and
between 1963 and 1967 there were no fatal casualties during police attendance at
demonstrations. This evolution towards a different perception of the police role, however,
came to a brisk stop when a long cycle of protest—starting in 1967–8 in the universities,
and then spreading to the factories in the so-called ‘Hot Autumn’ of 1969, and, later on,
to the most different social and political groups—again polarized the political culture (see
student movement). Demands for major reforms produced a backlash from the
governing elites. A series of bomb attacks by right-wing terrorists and attempted coups
by conservative generals helped to radicalize many groups of the opposition, some of
them ending up in the underground (see terrorism; extrapar- arliamentary Left). In a
situation characterized by strong demand for ‘law and order’, the police forces were again
deployed to repress protestors, and demonstrators again lost their lives during police
interventions. In the second half of the decade, emergency laws to fight terrorism and
organized crime increased police powers and reduced the rights of citizens and
defendants.
However, the 1970s were not only years of escalation. A most unexpected outcome of
the protest cycle of the late 1960s and early 1970s was the emergence inside the police
forces themselves of demands for long-delayed reforms. Already in the early 1970s,
against the will of their superiors, police officers started to denounce their poor living
conditions and miserable training and the arbitrariness of the command structure. The
protest cycle catalysed this discontent in two ways. On the one hand, working conditions
Entries A–Z 633
deteriorated even further when policemen were sent from one end of the peninsula to the
other, kept waiting for days in police wagons, and made to face the growing hostility of
the population. On the other hand, the mobilization of various social groups—including
those that, a few years before, would have never gone onto the streets—contributed to a
legitimization of protest, even inside the police. At the same time, the struggle against
terrorism increased an appreciation of professionalism. Demands for police reforms,
however, did not find support among those political forces traditionally considered
‘police friendly’, and almost a decade elapsed before a police reform bill was passed in
Parliament in 1981. The main effects of the reform were the demilitarization of the police
(though not of the carabinieri or the guardia di finanza) and the unionization of the
corps. The force also became open to women, who entered en masse. The salary as well
as the self-respect of the police increased, and so too did the educational level and social
background of the new recruits.
The development towards professionalization continued in the 1980s with the creation
of special bodies. After the struggle against terrorism, the struggle against the mafia gave
new legitimization to the police, contributing to their wider acceptance in the population.
The escalation of violence during the 1970s initiated learning processes both among
protesters and among the police forces, and efforts at de-escalation from both sides
considerably reduced the radicalism of protest. The image of the police as ‘citizens in
uniform’ emerged, with a growing sensitivity towards a ‘legitimization from below’.
This democratization of the police forces is not yet complete, however. First of all,
while the state police is demilitarized and more responsive to social needs, the
carabinieri and guardia di finanza remain military, and very secretive, bodies. Second,
the police reform was a reform moved from within, which focused more on the living
conditions of police officers themselves than on police accountability towards society.
The police remain extremely centralized, with the Ministry of Home Affairs still in full
control and no devolution of powers to the regions or the city governments.
Further Reading
Della Porta, D. and Reiter, H. (eds) (1998) Protest Policing: The Control of Mass Demonstrations
in Contemporary Democracies, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press (see
especially chaps 6, 9 and 10 which deal extensively with Italy, and the introductory chapter
which locates the Italian case in a cross-national perspective).
DONATELLA BELLA PORTA
Il Politecnico
Overseen by Elio Vittorini as commissioning editor, with Franco Fortini as co-editor, Il
Politecnico was committed to disseminating cultural news in a popular form. It began as
a weekly on 29 September 1945, becoming a monthly from 6 April 1946. Originally a
broadsheet, it moved to magazine format as a monthly, when it also became more a
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 634
journal of review and ‘agenda setting’ than of news. Given economic conditions in the
immediate postwar years, few of the magazine’s target readership could afford the 15 lire
cover price, so the move to a monthly appears dictated, in part, by financial
considerations. For the remainder of its life—whose extreme brevity now seems inversely
proportional to its significance in postwar culture—the magazine appeared more often bi-
monthly and sometimes quarterly.
Vittorini’s aims with the publication were pluralist, interdisciplinary and divulgative;
its tone was enthusiastic, its attitude a youthful irreverence and curiosity not entirely out
of keeping with the editor’s age (thirty-seven), nor with his intention to commemorate in
its pages those who had died in the recent war and Resistance. The project had
originated, in fact, in 1943–4 in clandestine discussions within the Resistance regarding
the need for a ‘new culture’ that, in contrast to fascist culture, was open to ideas
propounded in other parts of the world and was some advance on the liberal-humanist
culture that had proved insufficient to combat the rise of European fascism (see fascism
and neo-fascism). Significantly, the name was modelled on the nineteenth-century
periodical devoted to promoting culture and social improvement, published by Milanese
republican and federalist Carlo Cattaneo in the period leading up to the struggle for
national unification.
Within the limits of its low budget, the publication was graphically interesting,
innovative and original, particularly in the use of photographs and illustrations (including
cartoons and comic strips) and in its moderately ‘experimental’ page design. Among the
new fiction and essays it showcased were some sent in by un semplice lettore (a mere
reader) and first-time writer, Italo Calvino At the end of the first series, Vittorini
estimated a readership of 80,000 based on sales of 22,000.
While Vittorini had strong moral affiliations with the Left in the Politecnico period,
his assertion of a principle of imaginative and creative autonomy could not coexist with
the PCI imperative at the time that culture must serve political ends. In mid-1946, PCI
leader Palmiro Togliatti instigated a debate on this issue in the periodical Rinascita, as
well as in a letter which Vittorini published in Il Politecnico 33–34 (1946) and to which
he responded in no. 35 (1947). As a result, the publication was unable to survive the
opening up of ideological differences between its broad-minded editorial policy
(implicitly a libertarian politics) and the political force that could have been expected to
be its chief support and constituency. No. 39 (December 1947) was (unofficially) the last
issue; its lead article, significantly, dealt with the aporias of the anti-fascist culture.
Further reading
Gundle, S. (1989) ‘The Communist Party and the Politics of Cultural Change in Postwar Italy,
1945–1950’, in N.Hewitt (ed.), The Culture of Reconstruction: European Thought, Literature
and Film, Macmillan: Basingstoke.
Il Politecnico (1975), Turin: Einaudi; facsimile reprint.
Zancan, M. (1984) Il progetto ‘Politecnico’. Cronaca e strutture di una rivista (The Politecnico
Project: History and Structures of a Magazine), Venice: Marsilio.
SUZANNE KIERNAN
Entries A–Z 635
political parties
As Sergio Romano, ex-ambassador and political analyst, once pointed out:
Italy is the only western democracy in which a party secretary has more
influence than a minister and in some cases, even more than the Prime
Minister. Italy is the only large western democracy where a party’s
parliamentary group is less influential than its secretariat.
(La Stampa, 5 January 1997:1)
This particularly Italian phenomenon has been known as partitocrazia or ‘rule by
parties’, a term coined by Giuseppe Maranini in 1960s and much used to characterize the
failures of the so-called ‘First’ Republic, another term used to indicate the intricate
system of party dealings which typified Italian politics until the earthquake represented
by the 1992 elections and their aftermath. Romano’s observation is hardly less valid for
the so-called Second Republic.
The other keyword closely associated with both partitocrazia and the First Republic is
lottizzazione, literally the breaking up into lots, or more generally, dividing up the spoils.
Not only were government posts regularly divided up according to the electoral share of
the coalition partners—a normal and essential element of coalition democracy—but great
swathes of the Italian public sector were also carved up between the parties. The posts of
chief executive and membership of the boards of state agencies and companies like the
RAI, State Railways, the Southern Development Fund (see Cassa per il Mezzogiorno),
IRI and ENI were all filled according to party power first and competence second, if at
all. For as long as government controlled the chief executives and boards of major banks,
the same mechanism applied. At a regional and local level, lottizzazione was the usual
way of filling personnel in utilities and municipal agencies from bus companies to
hospitals and the local health units (USL). It goes without saying that civil service and
municipal jobs, and subsequent promotion or lack of it, were all dependent on party
loyalty. Even the magistrature, supposedly independent and in many ways much more so
than other parts of the state, was divided largely along party lines with the groups in the
High Council of the Magistrature (CSM) reflecting the parties albeit in a blurred way.
Beyond the state and other parts of the public sector and well into civil society, the
parties also maintained a pervasive influence. Associations as diverse in purpose and size
as a village bowls club and national trade unions with millions of members all came,
more or less, under the aegis of a political party. With very few exceptions, until the
1990s there were no free-standing single-issue pressure groups but there were groups
within the parties which fought for feminist issues and gay or housing issues.
Professional groups also had their party representative, so that there would be Christian
Democrat and Communist (and sometimes others as well) groups for small farmers,
craftsmen and so on. So it was too for recreation: young people either played table tennis
in the parish hall or in the local Communist headquarters.
The march of political parties into both the state and civil society began when the first
successful mass party, the National Fascist Party (PNF), made explicit efforts to take over
the state and, by implication, civil society. After the demise of the PNF, the idea and the
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 636
structures remained, even if Italy was no longer a one-party state. As Montanelli wrote in
1976, ‘They [Fanfani and other Christian Democrat leaders] did not say “Everything in
the party and nothing outside the party” because Mussolini had already proclaimed that.
But they thought it’ (Montanelli, 1976:109). The growth of a number of mass parties after
the Second World War, in particular the DC, the PCI and the Socialist Party, ended the
power of local notables thereby itself increasing the parties’ power.
The corruption investigations (see Mani pulite; Tangent opoli oli) and the collapse or
reorganization of all the traditional parties in the early 1990s meant that the mechanisms
of lottizzazione faltered for a time; resources could no longer be distributed through the
parties, since many of those parties had effectively ceased to exist. Nonetheless, as was
shown by Berlusconi’s immediate rush to fill the RAI with his own nominees when he
came to power, the desire to use party to control public resources was naturally carried
through to the ‘Second’ Republic.
As a result of the proportional electoral system in the First Republic, electoral
alliances tended not to work since parties attempted to increase their share of the vote by
accentuating differences rather than similarities (in organization, policies and style) even
where those differences were minimal. In the ‘Second’ Republic, by contrast, alliances
became essential in order to win seats in single-member constituencies. Yet, even if clear
alliances have been formed and—since 1994 Italy has indeed moved towards a system of
two big blocs—the actual number of parties has not decreased. L’Ulivo and the Polo
della Liberia are made up of a varying number of separate parties, even more numerous
than in the First Republic’s proportional system. Ironically, in spite of all the changes, a
very small political party could still bring down an entire government, as often happened
in the First Republic and as the Refoundation Communist Party (see Rifondazione
Comunista) was able to do with the Prodi government in 1998.
Ideologically, the Italian parties belonged to four main streams: a socialist one (the
PCI, the PSIUP which split, largely as a reaction to the Cold War, into the PSDI and the
PSI, with the PSDI soon moving into the secular centre and the PSI following in the
1980s); a Catholic one (the DC): a secular orientation (right and left, PLI, PRI, PR) and
a Fascist successor (MSI, later AN). In the late 1980s, the separatist Northern League
(see Lega Nord) was added to the four but, despite the reshuffling of names and the
borders between centre-right and centre-left, the parties of the ‘Second Republic’
maintained the same categories as before: PDS (later becoming DS) and Rifondazione
Comunista (RF) on the Left, the PPI, CCDCDU for the Catholics, Forza Italia
succeeding the secular centre and Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance) providing a
name change for the MSI.
See also: constitution; Parliament
Further reading
Bull, M. and Newell, J.L. (1997) ‘Party Organisations and Alliances in Italy in the 1990s. A
Revolution of Sorts’, West European Politics 20 (1): 81–109.
Carter, N. (1998) ‘Italy: The Demise of the Postwar Partyocracy’, in J.K.White and P.J.Davies
(eds), Political Parties and the Collapse of the Old Orders, Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press.
Entries A–Z 637
Farneti, P. (1985) The Italian Party System, 1945–1980, ed. S.E.Finer and A.Mastropaolo, London:
Pinter (a detailed study of all aspects of the Italian party system).
Golden, M. (1998) ‘Interest Representation, Party Systems, and the State. Italy in Comparative
Perspective’, in M.Donovan (ed.), Italy, Aldershot: Ashgate, vol. 1.
Hine, D. (1996) ‘Italian Political Reform in Comparative Perspective’, in S.Gundle and S. Parker
(eds), The New Italian Republic: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to Berlusconi, London:
Routledge.
Montanelli, I. (1976) I protagonisti, Milan: Mondadori.
Pasquino, G. (1997) ‘No longer a “Party State”? Institutions, Power and the Problems of Italian
Reform’, West European Politics 20 (1): 34–53.
JAMES WALSTON
Polo delle Liberià
The Polo delle Libertà was the last of a series of centre-right electoral alliances
engineered by Silvio Berlusconi between 1994 and 1996, often known simply as Il Polo,
and usually translated as ‘Freedom Alliance’. By 1997 it had become firmly based on two
pillars, Forza Italia and Alleanza Nazionale (see National Alliance), and less firmly on
a third formed by the small centre—right parties that had emerged in the wake of the
dissolution of the DC.
In 1994, Berlusconi created Forza Italia (FI) and negotiated two separate electoral
alliances to cover the single-member constituencies across the country. In the North, most
seats were divided between FI and the Lega Nord (Northern League), and the alliance
was called Polo della Libertà. In most constituencies, a candidate of the right-wing
Alleanza Nazionale (AN) also stood against the Polo and other candidates. In the South,
there was an arrangement between FI and AN, who put up a common candidate for each
seat under the name of Polo del Buon Governo (Alliance for Good Government). In both
alliances, there were candidates from the right-wing ex-Christian Democrats (CCD), the
Lista Pannella and the Unione del Centre (Union of the Centre) under the ex-Liberal,
Raffaele Costa. After the election, the term ‘Polo’ was used to refer to the government
coalition led by Berlusconi and made up of FI, AN, LN, CCD and the smaller groupings.
From April to December 1994, the divergences between Berlusconi and Umberto Bossi,
the outspoken leader of the Northern League, became increasingly apparent until the
government coalition dissolved. Over the same period, Berlusconi, Fini and Casini of the
CCD developed a separate alliance. In January the following year they were joined by
half of a further breakup of the ex-DC when the PPI split into the right-wing CDU under
Rocco Buttiglione and the left-wing under Gerardo Bianco. In opposition and in the
regional elections in 1995, during the elections of 1996 and in opposition afterwards, the
label Polo came to refer to an operational alliance made up mainly of FI, AN, CCD-CDU
and some smaller groups. They contested the election together with a common candidate
in all the single member constituencies and normally voted together in Parliament.
However, they maintained separate Parliamentary groups and did not present a common
manifesto at the 1996 elections.
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 638
There are important ideological and structural differences between the Polo’s three
main components—Forza Italia, Berlusconi’s company party, Alleanza Nazionale,
described by its leader Gianfranco Fini as ‘post-fascist’ or ‘social right wing’, and the
successor parties of the DC—which make the alliance both unwieldy and unstable. There
have been crucial differences on fundamental policy choices such as the extent of
privatization necessary to free up the public sector (see privatization and
nationalization) and the kind and amount of constitutional reform desirable (including
electoral reform and devolution). The smaller elements which have made up the Polo,
like Pannella and Costa, are even more disparate amongst themselves. The only clear
notion which all components of the alliance share is a common opposition to the
Communist Party and its successors, the PDS and the DS, and it was this orientation that
won it a relative majority of votes in the 1996 elections, although this was not effectively
translated into seats.
See also: political parties
Further reading
Bull, M. and Newell, J.L. (1997) ‘Party Organisations and Alliances in Italy in the 1990s: A
Revolution of Sorts’, West European Politics 20 (1): 81–109 (the Polo in the context of more
general changes in Italian politics in the 1990s).
JAMES WALSTON
Pomilio, Mario
b. 21 January 1921, Orsogna, Chieti; d. 3 April 1990, Naples
Novelist, critic and essayist
From his first appearance on the literary scene in 1954 with the novel L’uccello nella
cupola (The Bird in the Cupola), Mario Pomilio expressed his particular interest in
ethical and religious themes. He would continue to explore them in later novels such as Il
quinto evangelio (The Fifth Gospel) (1975), winner of the Best Foreign Book award in
Paris in 1978, and Il Natale del 1833 (The Christmas of 1833), winner of the Strega Prize
in 1983, as well as in many newspapers articles, later collected as Scritti cristiani
(Christian Writings) (1979). Pomilio also participated in the intense cultural and political
debates of the 1960s, on the one hand by representing the crisis of the postwar leftist
ideology in the novel La compromissione (Compromise) (1965), on the other by strongly
opposing the neoavantgarde movement, as documented in his essays Contestazioni
(Protests) (1966) and short stories Il cane sull’Etna (The Dog on Etna) (1978).
FRANCESCA PARMEGGIANI
Entries A–Z 639
Pomodoro, Arnaldo
b. 23 June 1926, Morciano di Romagna
Sculptor
Arnaldo Pomodoro produces abstract sculptures based on geometric forms, such as
cubes, cylinders and pyramids, with smooth outer surfaces. Sections of the skin and
segments of the shapes are then cut away to reveal complex insides which may look like
anything from organic forms to the internal structures of machines or computers. His
works can be seen in public places in Cesena and in Rimini, where he grew up.
Asse di movimento (Axis of Movement), from 1983–7, is a square pyramid of bronze.
A major, jagged horizontal slice has been taken out, like a gaping mouth, which, with
some vertical jags, seems precariously poised, as if about to clamp shut. There is the
sense that these are subtractions, complete forms with some vital part removed, but that
of course is illusion. Arnaldo has struck upon a very rich vein of abstract imagery, which
he mines with talent.
See also: sculpture
Further reading
Barilli, R. (ed.) (1995) Arnaldo Pomodoro, 2 vols, Cesena: Il Vicolo (illustrated catalogues of
exhibitions at Cesena and Rimini, with text in Italian and English).
MAX STAPLES
Pomodoro, Giò
b. 17 November 1930, Orciano di Romagna
Sculptor
Giò Pomodoro’s technical background is evident in his abstract sculptures, which
experiment with the possibilities of materials and form. Grandi contatti (Big Contacts) of
1962 shows his interest in giving a rigid material like bronze the unusual appearance of
having been folded. From the 1970s onwards, Pomodoro intentionally worked against the
fashion of ephemeral art created for private display by producing works in marble and
bronze for exhibition in public places, and which encouraged community participation.
Unlike his brother and fellow sculptor, Arnaldo Pomodoro, who tends to base works
around one monumental geometric form, Giò’s works are more a combination of many
geometric shapes. Sole-serpente (Sun Serpent) of 1988–9 has the appearance of a jumble
of threedimensional letters of the alphabet.
See also: sculpture
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