Weak government: Renzi is a symptom, not the cause

New year new government? 2001 opens with the unknown of what will happen to Giuseppe Conte. An earl or just another government?

Beyond Renzi’s reasons for plunging Italy into chaos, in the midst of a pandemic, with an economic crisis to face and with the G20 Presidency of culture to assume, it is important to reflect on some data, which reveal how the senator from Rignano it is a symptom, but not the cause, which is the inefficiency of our institutions.

Since 1971, the UK has had 10 heads of government, Germany 5. In Italy, 22, and an average term of government of one year.

In no normal country, under these conditions, would one speak of a crisis. In Italy it happens. Unfortunately, the stability of our institutions, the electoral law and other technicalities like that do not warm the hearts of citizens, but the well-being of the entire population depends on these aspects. If I, as a businessman, were to invest in Italy today, I don’t know if in a year the conditions will be the same or different, because perhaps from exclusively parliamentary alchemy a government of the opposite sign will be born. This is a problem that directly affects the pockets of taxpayers and citizens in general, so it is time for the whole of Italy to tackle the problem of the efficiency of our institutions.

Local systemic instability also shows that the public discourse on the world’s most beautiful constitution that we chauvinistically enjoy is pure rhetoric. While acknowledging the mess that so many governments have made with successive electoral law reforms, the institutional design that emerges from the 1948 charter shows dangerous aging. Certainly excellent for mending an Italy devastated by fascism and polarized, but unable to guarantee governance today.

Polarized multi-partyism, which is a historical fact, added to an exasperated parliamentarism, given that our Prime Minister does not have the powers that his English or German counterparts have, not to mention the strength that the heads of government have in the French system or in presidentialism American, they do the rest.

The weakness of the executives and the parliamentary quagmire are transformed into political weakness, a structural fact even when there was party power.

Changing governments every year, in fact, means that it is not politics that dominates, but rather self-perpetuating bureaucrats and chiefs of staff in institutions and that perpetually novice politicians rely on to try and grasp some real power. . In fact, it takes at least 6 months for a new minister to understand how his bureaucracy works. It is obvious that in a year, apart from a few announcements, little can be done. While the measures that really affect the lives of citizens are those that technostructures take routinely. Here the paradox is triggered by which politicians are accused of doing nothing, the delegitimized politics is increasingly weak, but it is precisely the weakness that sanctions their impotence and the inability to affect interests. The true caste, that of the bureaucrats, continues to govern the country in a process of depoliticization of the government that digs an increasingly dangerous gap between institutions and citizens.

How does it come out? With institutional reforms. Which citizens should be mobilized, given that the future of the country depends on them. If Italy does not have more stable governments, we will continue to be less and less competitive and consume resources.

Do we want to talk about it?