Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture

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regional government

Regional government is a comparatively recent development in Italian political life, but a

strong association with the culture and history of a territorio has been an enduring feature

of society in the peninsula and islands of the contemporary Italian state.

Because Fascism had destroyed what little autonomy the provincial and communal

administrations had once enjoyed, the Constituent Assembly, in its determination to

make Italy a democratic Republic, placed a strong emphasis on decentralization in the

provisions of the 1948 constitution. In 1948, four ‘special’ regions were created in

Sicily, Sardinia, the Aosta Valley, and in Trentino-Alto Adige (the South Tyrol), to

which was added Friuli-Venezia-Giulia in 1963. The so-called ‘ordinary regions’ were

created in 1970, including Calabria, Basilicata, Puglia, Molise, Abruzzo, Lazio, Umbria,

Marche, Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, Liguria, Veneto, Lombardy and Piedmont. The

twenty-year delay in implementing regional government had much to do with the

Christian Democrats’ fear of conceding political space and institutions to the Left. Yet it

would be unfair to single out the DC as the sole obstacle to regional reform, since many

leaders on the Left were hostile to the idea of creating a ‘balkanized’ republic. Thus it

was that Italy’s experiment in regional government began sotto voce.

Every five years, each region elects its own assembly which varies from 30 to 80

members, depending on the size of the regional population. The regional council then

elects a president and a giunta, which is constituted in a similar way to the provincial and

communal authorities (see local administration). Unlike ‘lower’ tiers of government, the

regions have the power to draw up their own statutes and to pass legislation which

applies within the regional territory. These powers may be exercised so long as they do

not conflict with the constitution or with national statutes. An early important legislative

initiative was to formally recognize the existence and activity of neighbourhood councils

which had been pioneered in Emilia-Romagna in the 1960s. However, only in 1972 did

the funds finally arrive from central government, together with the administrative

personnel and the delegatory powers necessary for the regions to begin their work.

Yet if regional politicians and electorates had expected to see a swift devolution of

power from Rome to Italy’s regional capitals, they were to be disappointed. Funding,

which had never been generous, was frozen until the mid-1970s while central

government spending continued to grow. It was clear that national politicians and the

senior civil servants who headed the powerful spending ministries were resolutely

opposed to giving regional governments real powers. Regional advocates realized that

they faced an uphill battle to implement in full the decentralization measures that the

constitution had promised.

A change in the national balance of power in 1975 and 1976, during which the Italian

Communist Party (PCI) won control of several major Italian cities and further extended

its influence over regional government, coincided with the period of the ‘historic

compromise’. With the Christian Democrats reliant on the PCI’s external support,

Andreotti’s government agreed to a number of concessions which speeded up the

transfer of powers and funds to regional government. The Interparliamentary Committee

for the Regions also played a key role by helping to secure the passing of law 382 in

1976, giving Parliament greater powers in relation to governmental decrees concerning

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the regions. The following year saw the first concrete moves to transfer personnel and

resources to the regions. The so-called ‘616 decrees’ saw the relocation of 20,000 offices

from the national bureaucracy and the transfer of primary responsibility for planning,

social services and health. Health care is now the most important and costly service that

the regions administer, and by 1989 it accounted for over a half of the regional budgets

(see health service). Largely as a consequence of the health reforms, by the early 1990s

one-tenth of Italy’s GDP was being spent by regional government. However, many

regional politicians were to complain that their role was limited to passing on central

government funds to the local health authorities, while health policy as a whole continued

to be decided in Rome. This complaint was amply borne out by the De Lorenzo

corruption scandal at the height of Tangentopoli, which revealed how easy it was for one

minister to dictate extortionate terms to the whole pharmaceutical industry.

Regional politicians’ attitudes towards regional autonomy, their relations with Rome

and with their national party hierarchies since the 1970s have been analysed by Robert

Putnam. His research suggests that regional politicians have become more independent of

their national party leaderships and are more willing to enter regional coalitions. As the

decentralization of powers to the regions has continued, elected councillors in regional

governments have also been less ready to criticize central government interference,

suggesting that an appreciation of their mutual roles is developing. Central government

has been less happy about regions establishing direct links with the institutions of the

European Union, but this has not prevented Italian regions opening offices in Brussels.

Indeed, so important are highly industrialized regions such as Lombardy to the

transalpine economy that strong links have been established with neighbouring regions

such as Bavaria in Germany and Rhones-Alpes in France in order to discuss issues of

mutual concern such as transport infrastructure, labour markets and multinational

investment plans.

Inevitably, the success of dynamic and affluent regions such as Lombardy and the

Veneto is caught up with the problems associated with Italy’s historic economic and

social divide between North and South. Whereas Lombards have a higher average

income than most Germans, Galabrians exist on approximately half the average income

of other EU citizens. To the extent that regional government is able to tackle such

disadvantages, it is widely conceded that the efficiency and the transparency of southern

regional administrations leaves much to be desired. Nevertheless, observers such as

Putnam do concede that, as institutions of civic development, regional governments have

succeeded in nurturing a more professional, pragmatic and less self-serving class of

politicians and administrators. Tangentopoli revealed that ‘civic mindedness’ had not

been uppermost in the minds of many regional politicians in the North who fell foul of

the judicial authorities, leading in some cases to the paralysis of local government (a

process that was exacerbated by the collapse of the PSI and DC, who had governed many

regions in coalition in the 1980s and early 1990s). The Northern League (Lega Nord)

and the National Alliance have been strengthened as a result, although both parties have

diametrically opposed views on the subject of federal autonomy (the former being

strongly in favour, the latter mostly against).

Since its election in 1996, the centre-left Ulivo government has committed itself to the

reform of subnational government in a federal direction, and regional government expects

to be the main beneficiary. However, the regionalist lobby will have to contend not only

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with the ‘centralizers’ in Rome, but will also have to deal with the powerful association

of communes and provinces and the increasingly influential big city mayors who will be

loath to see their own powers absorbed into what many consider to be politically weak

and inexperienced regional administrations. But, although the prospects for regional

government continue to appear uncertain, there is no doubt that they represent a rare

example of successful institutional reform in postwar Italy.

Further reading

Hine, D. (1993) Governing Italy: The Politics of Bargained Pluralism, Oxford: Oxford University

Press (see ch. 9, ‘Regional and Local Government’).

Levy, C. (ed.) (1997) Italian Regionalism: History, Identity and Politics, Oxford: Berg (an

informative collection of essays on regionalism in Italy since unification).

Putnam, R. (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press.

SIMON PARKER

regions

Italy’s regional diversity is proverbial, yet ‘region’, ‘regionalism’ and ‘regional identity’

remain elusive as concepts and problematic as social realities. In fact, in spite of the

widespread myth, the Italy of the regions is no more the ‘real’ Italy, nor is it markedly

more stable or more socially cohesive, than the national framework.

The geography of the peninsula is extremely varied, ranging from the Alps, to the

flood-prone alluvial valley of the Po, to the bleak deforested hillsides of the South and

Sicily. Furthermore, between the fall of the Roman empire and political unification in

1860–1, different parts of Italy lived very different histories. Sicily, to take perhaps the

most extreme example, passed through the hands of virtually every dominant power in

Europe and the Mediterranean. Italy also offers a wide variety of minority languages and

dialects, which in places differ between neighbouring towns. The divide in living

standards between Italy’s richest and poorest areas (see Southern Question) is the widest

of any major European state.

Since the war, considerable power has been devolved to sub-national tiers of

government. Yet the regions remain problematic entities. The map of Italy’s

administrative structure shows the peninsula neatly divided into five ‘special statute

regions’, established in 1948 (Sicily, Sardinia, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia-

Giulia and Valle d’Aosta), and fifteen ordinary regions, established in 1970 (Piedmont,

Lombardy, Veneto, Liguria, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Marche, Umbria, Lazio,

Abruzzi, Molise, Campania, Apulia, Basilicata and Calabria). Yet, despite the range of

powers arrogated to all of these regions on paper in the constitution, they are perhaps the

least powerful tier of authority, as is evinced by their very limited financial autonomy,

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and by the far greater numbers of people employed in municipal, provincial and national

government. Nor is the regional sub-division systematically mapped over dialectal or

linguistic areas, except in the peripheral cases of Valle d’Aosta, Trentino-Alto Adige and,

to some extent, Friuli-Venezia-Giulia. Venice has certainly shaped the historical identity

of the Veneto, as the comparatively progressive Grand Duchy did that of Tuscany before

unification, but Italy’s regions cannot all be said to be the product of sedimented

historical realities dating back to the pre-unification period. For example, the old

Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was centralized in Naples and embraced Sicily and the

mainland Mezzogiorno (South). Nor are these regions all territories powerfully rooted in

the imaginations of their inhabitants. The pattern of geographical loyalties varies widely

between the administrative regions: any ‘Campanian’ identity is dwarfed by that of

Naples. Indeed, local identities tend to be centred on the city, town or village, producing

historical rivalries—such as those between Modena and Bologna, or Pisa and Livorno—

far stronger than regional sentiments.

‘Regionalism’, a term which historically has tended to be employed to abuse

‘unpatriotic’ enemies rather than for social scientific purposes, also sometimes refers to

the whole issue of subnational geographical identities inasmuch as they are deemed to

impede the spread of an Italian identity and undermine the legitimacy of the national

state. The fact that the regions were set up so late in Italy’s history is indicative of the

strong sense of the new state’s fragility which influenced the ‘unitarian’ perspective of its

national ruling classes up to and including Fascism. But it may also be taken to betray the

surprising lack of centrifugal regional movements ‘from below’ in Italian history even

after the war: the Lega Nord is in this respect an anomalous product of recent years.

Local interests have traditionally preferred to preserve margins for autonomy within the

existing machinery of government. Politicians become mediators managing complicated

exchanges of resources, favours and votes between the local and the national levels.

Italy displays other ‘regional divides’ which, while they are not recognized

administratively, describe the country’s social contours and historical transformations at

least as well as the twenty regions listed above. The villages and towns of rural

Lombardy and the Veneto were, until recently, the heartland of a ‘white’ (i.e. Catholic)

subculture. The central ‘red’ belt of Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, particularly the latter,

was the domain of a rooted Communist subculture. There is the northwestern ‘industrial

triangle’ of Milan, Turin and Genoa, and now the Third Italy characterized by

specialized, family-run light industries in the centre and northeast. There is, of course, the

North—South divide (see also Southern Question), although one must be careful not to

forget the great diversity internal to each of these areas. The South has never been a

banner for a political movement, although in the postwar period the state devoted huge

resources to a special Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (Southern Development Fund) in an

effort to alleviate the region’s ‘backwardness’. Stereotypical constructions of the South as

a metaphor for corruption and parasitism have been a constant in Italian history. The

North had no institutional or political meaning until the early 1990s and the emergence of

fanciful Lega Nord plans for a ‘Republic of the North’ or ‘Padania’. Italian political

opinion remains divided over the degree of decentralization the country needs, and over

the most appropriate level at which regional government should operate.

See also: minority languages; regional government

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Further reading

Ginsborg, P. (ed.) (1994) Stato dell’Italia (The State of Italy), Milan: il Saggiatore (pp. 114–223

contain useful short portraits of each of the regions).

Levy, C. (1996) ‘Introduction: Italian Regionalism in Context’, in C.Levy (ed.), Italian

Regionalism: History, Identity and Politics, Oxford: Berg (a welldocumented analysis of the

entire range of problems which come under the heading ‘regionalism’).

Hine, D. (1996) ‘Federalism, Regionalism and the Unitary State: Contemporary Regional Pressures

in Historical Perspective’, in C.Levy (ed.), Italian Regionalism: History, Identity and Politics,

Oxford: Berg (deals specifically with the political and administrative problems of the Italian

regions).

Mack Smith, D. (1974) ‘Regionalism’, in E.R. Tannenbaum and E.P.Noether (eds), Modern Italy:

A Topical History since 1861, New York: New York University Press (a survey of the problem

of regional identities since unification).

JOHN DICKIE

La Repubblica

A novel idea in Italy, where newspapers were traditionally identified with their city of

provenance, La Repubblica was founded in Rome in 1976 by Eugenio Scalfari with the

specific intention of being a national daily. Its declared political orientation was left-wing

but not partyaligned (‘independent but not neutral’, as it characterized itself in its first

issue). In tabloid format—also unusual in Italy at the time—it originally appeared only

six days a week with its twenty pages dedicated overwhelmingly to commentary of

national and international news, a central double page devoted to culture and several

other pages of economic discussion. Its succinct style (shorter, well-defined articles,

clearer language) and its smaller, more manageable format made it attractive, especially

to members of the post-1968 generation, and within three years it reached national sales

of 145,000. The paper gradually grew in size and influence, and eventually came to

include sports and entertainment as well as magazine supplements. In 1986 it finally

succeeded in overtaking Il Corriere della sera and although Il Corriere subsequently

regained a slim lead in the 1990s, La Repubblica was firmly established in the front rank

of Italy’s daily press.

GINO MOLITERNO

Republic

Modern Italy became a Republic in June 1946 through a popular referendum, which

chose an elected republican form of government over the hereditary reigning monarchy

which had, amongst others things, appointed and supported the Fascist regime and thus

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become tainted with all its faults. Italy had previously had brief experiences of republican

government: there had been republics in Rome in 1798–9 and then, more notably, in

1849, led by Giuseppe Mazzini. Between 1943 and 1945 the German occupying forces

had supported the Fascist Italian Social Republic, also called the Republic of Salò (see

MSI), which had governed Italy, at least nominally, until Liberation. The modern

Republican constitution was drafted by the Constituent Assembly in 1946–7 and came

into effect on 1 January 1948. All the subsequent dramas of postwar Italian political life,

from the centrism of the 1950s and the ‘opening to the Left’ of the 1960s, the response

to the threat from terrorism in the 1970s and the consolidation of the ‘partitocracy’ (see

political parties) of the 1980s, took place against the backdrop of this Republican

constitution and within this form of governance.

From the 1980s onwards, constitutional reform became a serious issue, and following

the debacle of the 1992 elections and the subsequent Tangentopoli and Mani pulite

(Clean Hands) investigations, there came to be much talk of a ‘Second Republic’ which it

was hoped would inaugurate a new era in Italian political life, ending the rule by the

parties and the clientelism and corruption which appeared to have characterized the

‘First’ Republic. For the first time since the war, thoroughgoing constitutional change,

and in particular a more differentiated function for the two houses of Parliament and a

stronger role for a possibly directly elected President of the Republic, appeared on the

political agenda. A Bicameral Commission to explore the possibilities was set up;

however, given the complexity of rewriting the 1948 constitution and the mutual vetoes

of the numerous parties, the original charter was not changed.

Some have argued that nevertheless, the material constitution had been transformed

and that Italy had de facto become a ‘Second’ Republic. Certainly, in terms of political

culture, the exposure of systemic corruption and the effect it had on the old parties was a

major warning to the new and transformed parties which emerged in the mid1990s not to

follow the same path. Institutionally, the new electoral system introduced in the wake of a

1993 referendum, which replaced proportional representation with a three-quarters

plurality vote (see electoral systems) encouraged the formation of two stable alliances of

parties (the Ulivo or Olive Tree Alliance and the Polo delle Libertà or Freedom

Alliance) each competing to govern in what was called a party system of ‘imperfect

bipolarism’. If, as Italy crosses over into the new millennium, such a bipolarism were to

be consolidated to become less ‘imperfect’, it would most likely end the phenomenon of

permanent government facing permanent oppositions which has been such a major

feature of Italian politics since unification.

Further reading

Hine, D. (1981) ‘Thirty Years of the Italian Republic: Governability and Constitutional Reform’,

Parliamentary Affairs 34:63–80.

Pasquino, G. (1998) ‘Reforming the Italian Constitution’, Journal of Italian Studies 3 (1):42–54.

MARK DONOVAN

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Resistance

Between September 1943 and April 1945, Italy became the battleground between diehard

fascist supporters of the Republic of Salò, backed by the Germans, and opponents of the

regime. Eventually, tens of thousands of armed partisans would fight against the Nazis

and fascists in the belief that they were attempting to create a new Italy.

The communist wing was the best organized and numerically largest segment of the

partisan movement but socialists, Christian Democrats and liberals also participated in

what came to be called, simply, the Resistance. Indeed, a key motive for opposing

Mussolini in his last days was often nationalism, or rather, a patriotism which considered

that the military disasters of the Fascist regime and its current subservience to Nazism

had humiliated Italy and threatened the whole national project. Members of the

Resistance in fact often spoke about the need for a ‘new Risorgimento’ or political re-

awakening.

In 1945, the liberal democrat section of the Resistance briefly came to government

under Prime Minister Ferruccio Parri and his Partito d’Azione (Action Party). The

Actionists, however, possessed a minimal popular base and the Republic was eventually

constructed by the Christian Democrats and in the atmosphere of Cold War rather than

through the more radical ideas of the Resistance. Contemporaries spoke about the ‘wind

from the North’, where the Resistance had been regionally concentrated, being

treacherously ‘diverted’ by Rome and the South, where liberation had come at the hands

of the Allied armies.

Nevertheless, in the following decades, a certain ‘myth of the Resistance’ came to play

an important part firstly in cultural and then in political life. By the 1970s, it was

frequently argued that the Republic was indeed heir to the Resistance and that anti-

fascism both provided its moral base and grounded its political practice. In the same

decade, however, left-wing terrorists took to defining themselves as the ‘New Resistance’

and justified their violent acts, including the murder of Aldo Moro, by appeal what had

once been done by partisans.

The brutality of the terrorists’ treatment of Moro in turn provoked a conservative

counteroffensive. This led to a major re-assessment of the Resistance experience in the

1980s and 1990s, in which historians and other commentators tended to emphasize the

mixture of motives which turned people into partisans and the ambivalence, at best, of

peasant support for the Resisters. Conservatives, especially, claimed it was difficult to

distinguish ethically between the violence of the Resistance fighters and that of the

repubblichini (Salò republicans), and also pointed out that the killing itself did not

completely stop with the end of the war. Even a moderate leftist historian like Claudio

Pavone was led to suggest that the period from 1943–5 might best be regarded as a time

of ‘civil war’. Present-day Italy is no longer sure about the legacy of the Resistance.

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Further reading

Pavone, C. (1991) Una guerra civile: saggio storico sulla moralità nella Resistenza (A Civil War:

Historical Essay on the Morality of the Resistance) Turin: Bollati Boringhieri (the most

important book written on the Resistance since 1945).

R.J.B. BOSWORTH

Il Resto del Carlino

Bologna’s daily newspaper, Il Resto del Carlino, was founded on 21 March 1885 by four

law graduates. Its name is attributed to the fact that the newspaper was first sold in

tobacco shops and the original price of the paper was roughly the change (il resto) that

one received when one bought a cigar with a coin of the local currency (the carlino).

From 1886 to 1907 it was regarded as one of the most modern of Italian newspapers due

to the variety of information it provided and the calibre of its writers. Among its most

prestigious literary collaborators were Carducci, Pascoli and D’Annunzio. After the

liberation of Italy, the daily changed its name to Il giornale dell’Emilia (The Newspaper

of Emilia) for a brief period, but reclaimed its original name in 1953. Giovanni Spadolini

and Enzo Biagi have been among its best-known editors, and since 1995 the paper has

been under the direction of Giovanni Castagnoli.

BERNADETTE LUCIANO

Rete Quattro

The publishing group Mondadori inaugurated Rete Quattro in January 1982, in order to

compete with Silvio Berlusconi’s Canale Cinque by providing higher quality

information and cultural programmes. The policy failed to attract audiences, however,

and the subsequent flop of the expensive serial, Venti di guerra (Winds of War), left the

network in dire financial straits. Debt-ridden, in 1984 it was acquired by Berlusconi’s

Fininvest, thus setting the seal on the magnate’s national television empire.

Rete Quattro immediately began targeting the female audience, in particular

housewives. Screening an abundance of telenovelas and soap operas like Sentieri (The

Guiding Light), it soon became the most watched channel throughout Italy. In the wake

of the provisions of the Mammì law of 1991, it initiated its own national live news

programme, TG4. Presented by the eccentric and rather histrionic Berlusconi supporter,

Emilio Fede, the programme was characterized from the beginning by a melodramatic

tendency to sensationalize the news and a continual attempt to ‘scoop’ the other news

programmes. After Berlusconi’s entry into politics in 1994, TG4 openly and consistently

celebrated the exploits of his party, Forza Italia.

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RICCARDO VENTRELLA

Ricci, Franco Maria

b. 2 December 1937, Parma

Publisher

Born in Parma in 1937, Ricci started his publishing house in his native city in 1965, his

first manuscript being a facsimile of Giambattista Bodoni’s Typographic Manual of

Parma. The unexpected success of that reprint set the tone for the future of Ricci’s

enterprise. His flair for the beauty of a text, for the proportion and harmony of its layout,

and for everything that adorns it lies at the core of his books. Among his most memorable

series are I segni del tempo (The Signs of Time) and La Biblioteca di Babel (the Library

of Babel), edited by Jorge Luis Borges. Other notable publications include the reprint of

the Encyclopedic of Diderot and d’Alembert (18 volumes, 1970) and the FMR

Enciclopedia dell’Arte (15 volumes, 1990). In 1982 Ricci founded an exceptional art

Magazine, FMR, published simultaneously in English, Spanish, French and Italian. He

has achieved international fame as both graphic designer and editor, and his books and

his magazine continue to evoke a unique and unmistakable artisan style which has greatly

influenced the way art is perceived by Europe’s cultural elite.

BERNADETTE LUCIANO

Ricciarelli, Katia

b. 18 January 1946, Rovigo

Soprano

Katia Ricciarelli’s career has demonstrated particular strengths in the bel canto repertoire.

Her studies in Venice led to a stage debut as Mimi in Mantua in 1969. A year later she

won the Verdi Award and appeared in Rome as Joan of Arc to considerable acclaim. Her

American debut in 1972, as Lucrezia (I due foscari) in Chicago, launched a successful

worldwide operatic career. She sang at La Scala in 1973 (Angelica) and at Covent

Garden the following year (Mimi), and made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in this

latter role in 1974. The 1970s were dominated by the major Verdi and Puccini roles,

which she went on to record for companies including RCA and CBS. From 1981 to 1989,

Ricciarelli performed many of the Rossini operas at Pesaro. Her admirers point to her

effectiveness as a direct, communicative actress and to her expressive and flexible voice.

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Further reading

Blyth, A. (1990) ‘Katia Ricciarelli’, Opera 41:28–33.

JOHN KERSEY

Ridolfi, Mario

b. 5 May 1904, Rome; d. 1984, Piediluco

Architect

A leading member of the Movimento Italiano per l’Architettura Razionale (Italian

Movement for Rational Architecture), Ridolfi was influenced both by German

Expressionism and by the Roman School of Giovannoni, Del Debbio and Aschieri. After

the Second World War, he shifted from rationalism to ‘organic architecture’, expressing

his views in Metron, which he co-edited with its founder, renowned urban planner and

architect Luigi Piccinato. Ridolfi’s fascination with architecture as ‘organic’ is linked to

Giovannoni and to Bruno Zevi, both of whom also promoted ‘organic architecture’ in

Italy.

After 1945, Ridolfi participated actively in the debate concerning the reconstruction of

the city: while emphasizing the necessity to standardize building materials and

construction principles, he also stressed the need to protect the historic centres. In his

1946 Manuale dell’Architetto (Architect’s Manual), Ridolfi proposed design guidelines

later incorporated into Italy’s government-subsidized housing. His study of the house also

contributed fundamentally to Italian culture and his extensive research on vernacular

architecture was particularly praised for its appropriateness to postwar Italian conditions.

Further reading

Rebecchini, M. (1990) Architetti italiani, 1930–1960: Gardella, Libera, Michelucci, Ridolfi, Rome:

Officina (the chapter on Ridolfi covers his important buildings and unbuilt projects).

FASSIL ZEWDOU

Rifondazione Comunista

When the PCI broke with its Marxist past in 1991 and reinvented itself as the Democratic

Party of the Left (PDS), a number of dissident delegates led by Amando Cossutta broke

away and, together with other leftist groups like Proletarian Democracy (see Democrazia

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