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Italy: dependence and political fragmentation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Alan R. Posner
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Abstract

Italy's political economy is characterized by international weakness and internal fragmentation and polarization. Since 1947, Italy's foreign economic policies have been defined by a broadly-based political and social coalition dominated by the Christian Democratic party (DC). This coalition has incorporated or maintained close links with ministerial bureaucracies, the Bank of Italy, state-controlled industrial and commercial enterprises, large corporations, and Catholic trade unions. It has attempted to foster a postwar climate receptive to business interests and to foreign investment; one which would facilitate the maintenance of a stable domestic political and social order. At the same time, the DC coalition is so fragmented by factionalism and personal competition that economic policy making has lacked direction and has been marked by personalism and by improvisation. Italian policy makers operate in a precarious environment in that they must use political and economic weaknessin order to mobilize the international assistance needed to maintain the internal social order as well as external economic survival.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1977 , pp. 809 - 838
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1977

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References

1 This essay is, in part, based on a larger study of Italy's Atlantic policies which focused on the interaction between Italy's external policy and its domestic politics and political culture. This earlier study included interviews in Rome and in Brussels with parliamentarians, party publicists, diplomats and government functionaries, interest group representatives, journalists, and scholars. Peter Katzenstein's advice and suggestions were invaluable to me in preparing this essay and I am grateful for Peter Lange's comments on an earlier draft.

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100 Peter Lange has suggested that PCI inclusion may make for a more assertive foreign policy. See Lange, p. 239.

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117 Other figures for individual countries are: Netherlands,–16 percent; Germany, –12 percent; France, –7 percent; Britain, –1 percent. See Prodi, Romano and Clô, Alberto, “Europe,” in “The Oil Crisis: InPerspective,” Vernon, Raymond et al. , Daedalus Vol. 104, No.4 (Fall 1975): 101Google Scholar.

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121 There were left-wing Socialist elements in Italy in the late 1940s who maintained that Italy could be radically Socialist (but not Stalinist or pro-Russian) and would not haveto join an American bloc in order to receive American economic assistance. They felt that the United States would be more interested in an Italy that was strong and stable than in fostering a conservative and volatile client state.

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