Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture

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taxation

Contrary to anecdotal evidence, the Italian tax system is reasonably efficient in gathering

revenue, most Italians do pay taxes, and the tax design does not differ much from that of

Italy’s partners in the European Union. As is often the case, however, the devil is in the

details.

Taxes were the object of a comprehensive reform in 1971–4. This was the point of

arrival of a long debate on the modernization of the tax system, which had started in

Parliament with a commission set up in 1962, chaired first by Cosciani and later by

Visentini. Since the end of the Second World War, and particularly during the debate on

the constitution, tax policy had been the object of a conflict between the liberalism of

Luigi Einaudi, who advocated a tax system centred around the ideas of neutrality and

market efficiency, and the redistributive social doctrine of Ezio Vanoni. Italy opted for

the latter, and later in the 1960s the tax system was perceived by policy makers as Vanoni

had conceived of it, that is, as an indispensable element of the national plan for economic

development. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the impetus for modernization, until the

1970s Italy remained with a tax system which penalized instead of sustained economic

activity and citizens with low incomes.

The 1971–4 tax reform improved the coherence of the whole tax system, introduced a

modern European tax the value-added tax—and gradually boosted revenue. In 1979 taxes

and social contributions were only 26 per cent of the gross domestic product, against the

35.6 per cent of the European Community average, but in 1994 Italy reached the

European average of 45 per cent. The tax reform of the 1970s had the merit of disposing

of an archaic tax system, but was not without its own problems. During the 1980s it

became clear that the heaviest burden of taxation had been placed on specific categories

of citizens. Small firms, the self-employed and agricultural rents were not only granted

favourable tax regimes, but poor assessment criteria and an ineffective tax administration

led to an extremely limited contribution of these categories to revenue gathering. In

addition, estimates of tax evasion have almost invariably ranked Italy within the top

positions. Accordingly, steeply rising marginal tax rates hit a rather narrow tax base,

which consisted mainly of employees’ labour income. At the same time, myriad tax

exemptions, a maze of different tax regimes for alternative types of capital income (at the

beginning of the 1990s there were thirty-seven different taxes on capital income and

financial intermediation), the widespread use of tax amnesties (a short-term response to

the need for more revenue), the pathological state of litigation (in 1994 more than three

million cases were still pending), and the lack of simplification all contributed to create a

widespread perception of unfairness in the tax system, epitomized by the expression

evasori e tartassati (evaders and tax harassed). This was an unbearable burden for most

taxpayers, amidst ample areas of exemptions and evasion. The situation was compounded

by the tax wedge between taxes and expenditure: taxation was centralized, whereas

spending power remained with regional government. The result was a politicization of

tax issues in the 1990s, with the emergence of the Lega Nord, symptoms of tax revolt in

the northeast, and a debate on fiscal federalism as a component of major proposed

institutional reforms.

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Economic integration within the European Union also helped to make the tax system a

serious handicap for the Italian economy. High statutory corporate tax rates, the tax-

induced bias for debt financing, high employer social security contributions, and the lack

of efficient and simple rules for the taxation of capital income all made Italy a rather

uninteresting place for multinationals. The liberalization of capital movement, following

the 1988 directive of the European Community, and the proliferation of financial

innovation exacerbated the inefficiencies of Italian tax policy in the context of the

European single market. The absence of incisive reform of tax administration intensified

the problems of the Italian tax system. The neglect of administrative reform (see

bureaucracy), in line with a political culture more interested in macro-design than in the

implementation and delivery of public policy, was a crucial failure. Not only would the

modernization of tax administration be an essential component of better fiscal relations

between the state, the citizen and the economy, but effective international tax

enforcement and mutual assistance between tax administrations would require tax

inspectors who were up to the job of managing the tax system in the global economy.

Not surprisingly, then, by the 1990s proposals for tax policy change reached the

political agenda. In 1994 a White Paper was presented by the Berlusconi government but

was never discussed in Parliament, and in 1997 the Prodi government obtained from

Parliament the power to issue tax legislation. Following this, a new regional tax

simplified the taxation of economic activity and corporate taxation was changed with the

aim of aiding companies willing to reinvest profits or to use equity risk capital. Due to

political obstacles to the reform of the welfare state, and the consequent impact on public

expenditure, taxes remained a major element in the Italian strategy for coping with the

criteria on public finance established by the Treaty of Maastricht. In 1996–7, a so-called

‘tax for Europe’ symbolized the determination of Italians to qualify for the single

currency. However, the more fundamental problem of tax administration was yet to be

tackled, with the attempt made in 1991 having yielded only scarce results.

Further reading

Ceriani, V., Frasca, V. and Monacelli, D. (1992) ‘Il sistema tributario e il disavanzo pubblico:

problemi e prospettive’ (The Tax System and the Public Deficit: Problems and Perspectives), in

E.Einaudi (ed.), Il disavanzo pubblico in Italia: natura strutturale e politiche di rientro (The

Public Deficit in Italy: Structure and Adjustment Policies), Bologna: Il Mulino, 601–819 (a

comprehensive presentation of the Italian tax system and its problems).

Guerra, M.C. (1993) ‘Tax Policies in the 1980s and 1990s: The Case of Italy’ in A.Knoester (ed.),

Taxation in the United States and Europe: Theory and Practice, London: St. Martin’s, 328–54.

Lupi, R. (1996) Le illusioni fiscali. Risanare gli apparati per riformare il fisco (Fiscal Illusions:

Healing Administration to Reform Taxation), Bologna: Il Mulino (a non-technical discussion of

tax administration by a scholar who has been personal advisor to several Italian Ministers of

Finance).

OECD (1996) OECD Economic Surveys: Italy, Paris: OECD (ch. 4, ‘Reforming the Tax System’,

contains a concise analysis of tax policy and policy recommendations for reform).

CLAUDIO M. RADAELLI

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Telemontecarlo

Born in 1974, Telemontecarlo was the first legal private television channel after a

judgement of the Constitutional Court allowed the broadcasting of foreign frequencies

into Italy. Beamed from the municipality of Monaco, it originally transmitted in two

languages, Italian and French, and only reached north and central Italy. From the early

1980s it went through a long series of financial changes. First the RAI, and then

Brazilian television Rede Globo and the Ferruzzi group gained control. At the same

time, lacking a strong identity and consistent programming, it suffered in competition

with Berlusconi’s Fininvest channels. The situation improved when Telemontecarlo

decided to privilege sport, especially football, which was highlighted in the popular

programme Galagoal (presented by showgirl Alba Parietti), and skiing, celebrating the

victories of Alberto Tomba. In 1995 the channel was acquired by the Cecchi Gori Group,

who united it with the music channel Videomusic, then named TMC 2, in an attempt to

create a ‘third television pole’ along with RAI and Fininvest. A year later, in a stunning

coup, Cecchi Gori acquired the rights to prime football broadcasting, taking these away

from RAI for the first time in television history. However, after a legal battle, the rights

were shared between them and, still in financial trouble, the channel’s future remains

uncertain.

RICCARDO VENTRELLA

telenovelas

Appealing to the same taste for melodrama and romance which made the fotoromanzi so

popular, telenovelas became an important launching platform for Italian commercial

television and appeared in abundance on Italian television screens during the 1980s.

Usually produced on low-budgets in South and Central America, these long-running

serials could be acquired at reasonable prices and so became a staple of daytime

programming. The Brazilian Anche i ricchi piangono (Rich People also Cry), screened on

Rete A, was the first successful telenovela of the early 1980s. Networks like Rete

Quattro subsequently based much of their programming on such serials in a successful

effort to target housewives, especially in the morning period. The popularity of the serials

also spawned a number of magazines, and actresses like Veronica Castro and Grecia

Colmenares became superstars with regular fan clubs. Either from surfeit or merely as a

sign of changing times, the number of telenovelas on Italian screens decreased markedly

in the 1990s.

RICCARDO VENTRELLA

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television talk shows

A genre well-known in the United States, the television talk show was something of a

milestone in Italian television, initiating a new form of communication with the audience.

The inventor of the Italian talk show was Maurizio Costanzo with his Bontà loro (With

Their Kind Permission) in 1976. Previously there had only been Processo alla tappa

(Stage Under Trial), a programme dedicated to cycling and to the Giro d’Italia, but for

the most part this was no more than a clarification of the rules of the game. Costanzo’s

show was something different. Cleverly mixing important guests and ordinary people (a

plumber, for example, on the first night), an interest for the private dimension of life and

a touch of polemics, the television screen was soon transformed into lively forum where

people could speak, confess and quarrel. Under the watchful eye of the camera, Costanzo

allowed his guests—politicians, actors, sportsmen, writers—to reveal all their virtues and

their vices. A significant novelty for Italian television, Bontà loro also demonstrated the

viability of programming after 10 p.m., a time slot which until then had virtually

abandoned.

Having inaugurated it, Costanzo went on to become the master of the genre, with

Acquario (1978–9), a slight variation on the previous format and then, from 1982, the

never-ending Maurizio Costanzo Show, in which the television studio was replaced by a

real theatre, encouraging the appearance of new characters and ‘masters of improvised

thinking’ like Vittorio Sgarbi. Another of the early talk shows, Pronto Raffaella (Hello,

Raffaella), presented by Raffaella Carrà, introduced viewer participation through the use

of the telephone. Even extremely silly games (‘Guess the number of beans in this jar?’)

were a huge success as the spectator’s feeling of being part of the show both destroyed

the screen as a barrier and confirmed television as a miracle object. More private, painful

stories invaded later talk shows, from love affairs in L’amore è una cosa meravigliosa

(Love Is a Many Splendoured Thing) to divorces and family life in Stranamore

(Stangelove), youth problems in Amid (Friends), female matters in Harem and the news

of the day mixed with games in I fatti vostri (Your Business).

The fundamental inspiration of the talk show is the idea of television as a meeting

point for the spectators. Television becomes a virtual drawing room: one can sit on a sofa

and just chat, as in Tappeto volante (Flying Carpet), sometimes about culture (Parlato

semplice (Simply Speaking)) or even about television itself (Telesogni (TeleDreams)).

The discussion can become heated and extremely polemical. A master of this type of

Italian ‘battle’ talk show is Gianfranco Funari, with his A bocca aperta (Mouth Wide

Open). Aggressively shouting in Roman dialect, Funari plays the intermediary between

opposing factions. The duels on the show are extremely popular, and Funari, with his

gruff, vulgar style, has become one of the most famous Italian television anchormen.

Given Italians’ love of sport, many talk shows address particular sports, especially

football, like the long-running Il processo del lunedì (Monday’s Tribunal), which

analyses the weekend games, and Galagoal, a Sunday afternoon football discussion

which lasts seven hours (see also sport and society). In more recent times, especially

after the explosion of Tangentopoli, justice has become the subject of talk shows: in

Forum, for example, a real judge passes a real sentence. Political discussion (such as

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Bruno Vespa’s Porta a Porta) and current affairs (Enzo Biagi’s Il Fatto) also continue to

attract a stable audience.

Catering to Italians’ natural sense of curiosity and conviviality as well as to their

addiction to television, the talk show has supplanted telenovelas as the most visible and

popular television genre in the late 1990s.

RICCARDO VENTRELLA

tennis

After a pause of fifteen years (due to events preceding the Second World War),

international tennis returned to Italy in 1950 with the championships on red clay played at

the Foro Italico in Rome. In that year, Annalisa Bossi became the first player of the

postwar period to win in front of her compatriots (she was also the only Italian female to

be ranked in the top ten, 1949–50). Fausto Gardini took the podium for Italy in 1955,

followed by Nicola Pietrangeli in 1957, who won again in 1961. During his exceptionally

long career (1954–72), Pietrangeli became the most successful Italian tennis player of all

time. In 1959–60, he won the French men’s singles championships. Affectionately known

as ‘Mister Davis Cup’, Pietrangeli still holds the record for the highest number of

matches played (164) and won (120) in Davis Cup history. Pietrangeli also excelled in

the doubles competitions. He and Orlando Sirola collected a series of victories which

confirmed them as one of the most formidable pairs in tennis history. Together, they

reached the men’s doubles final at Wimbledon in 1956, which they lost but which

remains the bestever Italian performance at the English tournament. In 1959 they took the

men’s doubles in Paris, then the Italian championships in 1960, and played the Davis Cup

finals in 1960–61 (losing it both times to the Australian team). In 1958, Pietrangeli also

won the mixed doubles in Paris with Shirley Bloomer. Pietrangeli, the only Italian to

have been inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame, was ranked in the top ten six times

between 1957–64, climbing all the way to the number three spot in 1959–60.

After retiring from competition, Pietrangeli became the non-playing captain of the

Italian Davis Cup team, leading Adriano Panatta, Corrado Barazzutti, Paolo Bertolucci

and Antonio Zugarelli to victory in 1976 against Chile. The victory was tinged with

bitterness as the fierce political controversy regarding the situation in Pinochet’s Chile

affected the tournament. Many, both in and outside of Italy, contended that Italy’s

success was possible only because other countries had previously refused to play against

Chile. Nevertheless, the Italian team reached the Davis Cup final again in 1977, 1979 and

1980.

The success of the Italian team was due largely to the talent of Adriano Panatta,

nicknamed ‘the goalkeeper’ for his frequent driving returns. His moment of glory

(outside of Davis Cup competition) came in the summer of 1976, when he won the Italian

championships after having survived a first-round match in which his opponent reached

match point against him eleven times. Soon afterwards, Panatta triumphed in the French

Open, beating the great Björn Borg in the semifinal and Harold Solomon for the title.

These victories made him the number five player of 1976.

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This string of successes helped to popularize what was once an elite sport, fostering

new generations of tennis hopefuls. However, after the accomplishments of Panatta and

his team, it took Italian players almost twenty years to return to international success.

Andrea Gaudenzi was among the top ten in the mid-1990s, and Gaudenzi and Diego

Narciso led the Italian team to second place in the Davis Cup of 1998.

PAOLO VILLA

Terra, Stefano

b. 1917, Turin; d. 1986, Rome

Novelist, poet and essayist

Forced to abandon Italy during the Fascist period because of his pacifist and democratic

beliefs, Terra (real name Giulio Tavernari) moved to Egypt, where he published

passionate denunciations of the regime. After the war Terra returned to Italy, where he

worked as a journalist for the newspaper La Stampa while continuing to write novels and

poetry. His prose manifests a taste for a neo-romantic style, while his poetry takes

inspiration especially from the classical world and the Greek landscape which he had

come to know through a long stay in Athens. In his novels, Terra combines the narration

of simple daily events with the evocative power of remembrance of the exotic countries

which he visited. Among his most memorable works are the novels La generazione che

non perdona (The Generation that Does not Forgive) (1942) and Alessandra, Le porte di

ferro (Alexandria, The Iron Doors) (1979) and his collection of poetry Quaderno dei

trent’anni (Notebook of the Thirty Years) (1956).

ANDREA RICCI

terrorism

Terrorism, understood as clandestinely organized damage to people and property to

achieve broadly political objectives, has been a recurrent feature of Italian public life

since 1945, though its antecedents go back much earlier. In fact, each of Italy’s three

political regimes since 1860 has been closely linked to the exploits of armed groups:

Garibaldi and his Thousand forcing completion of the Risorgimento; Fascist squadrismo

in 1920–2, followed by the March on Rome and the establishment of an authoritarian

state; and the Resistance in 1943–5 as the anti-fascist foundation of the postwar

Republic. The Italian state itself has not been reluctant to use violence to suppress

protest: military campaigns against southern peasants in the 1860s, the army’s assault on

rebellious working-class neighbourhoods in Milan in 1898, the intimidation and coercion

of the Fascist regime, and the deaths at the hands of police of more than 200

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demonstrators, especially in the South again, after 1945. This history has provided a rich

store of models and myths for activists who want to believe that controlled violence can

be successfully used to accelerate or obstruct political change.

Terrorism in the borderlands

Postwar terrorism first appeared in the German-speaking South Tirol where, in 1957, the

Be-freiungsausschuss Südtirol, a conspiratorial group based in Austria, began a bombing

campaign in an attempt to overturn the 1919 division of the Tirol between Italy and

Austria and to ensure autonomy for its German population. Altogether, 227 bomb attacks

took place, resulting in 37 deaths and 556 injuries, mostly of Italian police. The violence

ended in 1969 with an agreement between the Italian and Austrian governments which

granted special rights to the German-speaking population of the province of Bolzano.

At the other end of Italy, the routine low-level violence of the mafia has regularly

been punctuated by acts of terrorism to discourage insider defection or outside

interference. Murders of left-wing politicians, trade unionists and public antagonists have

served warnings against attempting to change the social and political order. Slain high-

ranking policemen such as General Dalla Chiesa testify to the dangers of investigative

zeal and the long series of ‘excellent cadavers’ (judges and politicians) since 1980,

accompanied by bombings of trains and public buildings across mainland Italy, have

asserted mafia power and reminded sections of the political elite that withdrawal of its

protection will not be tolerated. Local politics in many parts of southern Italy have been

deeply corrupted by the threat of violence and intimidation.

Terrorism at the centre

The most sustained terrorist assault on postwar political institutions was launched by the

neo-fascist Right (see fascism and neo-fascism) with a bomb massacre in Milan in 1969,

and ended with the murder of a Christian Democrat intellectual by the leftwing Red

Brigades in 1988. For two decades, Italy’s political parties and institutions resisted the

convergent violence of both political extremes, dominated first by the Right (1969–74),

then by the Left during the anni di piombo (years of lead, 1975–80), then once again by

the Right (1980–84). The militants of the extreme Right, helped by conspirators in the

parliamentary MSI, the armed forces and the security services, pursued a so-called

‘strategy of tension’ (see strategia della tensione), a campaign of bombs and murder

designed to make Italians regret and reverse the democratization of workplace and

society initiated by the student and worker movements of 1968–9. At the other political

extreme, some members of the extraparliamentary Left wanted to push that

democratization further, impatient with the insufficiently revolutionary pace and direction

of change. First responding in kind to right-wing violence, the semi-clandestine left-wing

groups in Rome and the major industrial cities of the North began a systematic assault in

1975 on major political and economic institutions, their representatives and defenders:

politicians, industrial managers and factory personnel, police, magistrates and journalists.

Between 1969 and 1982 the attacks from both political wings cost nearly 400 lives and

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more than 700 serious injuries: damage to property was estimated at $1,360 million. In

the late 1970s, the scale of the assault on Italian democracy can be gauged from the seven

attacks recorded per day and the more than 500 group signatures adopted by the

assailants.

The impact of the attacks was, however, diminished by the public disagreements

among the users of violence about what their primary targets and aims should be and

whether violence ought to accompany or replace ordinary political activities. Eventually

the failure of even the most dramatic attacks (the kidnapping and murder of Moro in

1978 and the bombing of Bologna railway station in 1980) to show that violence by

clandestine groups could achieve what negotiation by political parties and trade unions

could not provoked widespread disillusion among militants who, after 1980, began to

abandon their groups and turn state’s evidence in increasing numbers. Laws rewarding

confession (see pentiti) with greatly-reduced prison sentences encouraged defection, and

mass trials of the 3,000-odd former activists became a public spectacle of the 1980s.

Revelations of the ramshackle nature of even the apparently best-organized terrorist

groups and the haphazard selection of their targets encouraged the longstanding suspicion

that terrorism had been deliberately encouraged, or at least allowed to develop

undisturbed, by powerful groups in or outside Italy for their own political or strategic

advantage.

The consequences of violence

Most of the consequences of the violence of the 1970s for Italian politics and society

were unintended. The terrorists’ hopes that their actions would drive public opinion into a

polarization between right-wing reaction and left-wing radicalism were disappointed.

However equivocal they might be about defending a clientelist and corrupt state, Italians

showed no enthusiasm for the prospect of civil war. Electoral allegiances even in the

cities most directly under attack were barely altered, and demonstrations against violence,

organized mainly by the PCI and trade unions, attracted substantial support. Responses

by governments to terror did not result in any serious curtailment of civil liberties, partly

because the major parties disagreed about its political origins and real aims, making it

impossible to assemble sufficiently broad support for draconian anti-terrorist measures.

Although Italy’s dominant party, the DC, suffered the most direct damage, violence also

had a substantial impact on the PCI. In defence of the historic compromise and the state

which the party aspired to direct, the PCI was driven into a conservative stance unpopular

with its supporters. Moreover, coming to power in 1975 in the cities where violence was

most intense, the PCI had to divert vital administrative energies and personnel to the

mobilization against any acceptance of violence as a legitimate political tactic. Among

magistrates, the need to prosecute groups operating in several jurisdictions produced new

forms of collaboration which were later copied in the successful investigation of mafia

(see Giovanni Falcone) and political corruption (see Mani pulite).

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