The results of the Italian elections, in which the centre-left coalition won a majority in the Chamber of Deputies, but not in the Senate, have led to fears that the country could become ungovernable. Jonathan Hopkin takes issue with this perspective, arguing that the results could have a number of positive consequences for both Italy and the Eurozone. The failure of Mario Monti to secure a sizeable vote share, and the success of Beppe Grillo’s M5S movement, might spell the end for technocracy and austerity in Italy.
Italy’s politics have long seemed opaque and unfathomable to outsiders, and election results have generally refused to conform to the hopes and expectations of foreign observers. The Economist magazine ran a lengthy campaign against Silvio Berlusconi, denouncing him back in 2001 as ‘unfit to govern Italy’, only to see Italy’s leading media baron win a thumping majority. This time around, the election of a Senate with no workable majority has provoked anguished reactions all round, with the words ‘chaos’, ‘ungovernable’ and ‘turmoil’ dominating the headlines. But is Italy’s election result really such as disaster? There are a number of reasons why this outcome could even help the Eurozone to emerge from its deep economic and political crisis.
The first reason is that despite Berlusconi coming alarmingly close to pulling off a shock comeback, it would have been a pyrrhic victory. Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition won only 29 per cent of the vote, down from 47 per cent in 2008, and his party, the PDL (Party of Freedom), won 21 per cent, down from 37 per cent. In short, despite Berlusconi’s desperate populist moves during the campaign, including offering a refund on the local property tax (IMU) which he had personally voted for in Parliament, he suffered one of the biggest defeats of a governing party in European electoral history. Although Berlusconi’s pivotal position in the Senate means that he retains significant political leverage which he will not hesitate to use, his political career is clearly in decline. This will undoubtedly be welcomed by Italy’s Eurozone partners.
The second reason for optimism is, paradoxically, the disappointing performances of the two parties most strongly backed by European leaders: the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and Mario Monti’s Scelta Civica (Civic Choice). Both parties represented continuity in maintaining Italy’s commitment to carry out a contractionary fiscal policy, which has squeezed the life out of the Italian economy whilst doing little or nothing to reduce the state’s debt burden. Incumbent Prime Minister Monti’s result is hard to read as anything other than a rejection of European technocracy and its insistence on pain and sacrifice as the way to recovery. Added to the growing chorus of criticism of austerity, including a striking mea culpa from the International Monetary Fund’s Chief Economist, Olivier Blanchard, the Italian vote may be decisive in forcing a rethink of an obviously failed economic strategy.
Third, the amazing performance of Beppe Grillo’s Five Stars Movement (M5S) – at 25 per cent the individual party with the highest vote share, despite being formed only 3 years ago – shows that many Italians, and especially younger voters, have had enough of the systematic corruption and lack of initiative of the country’s aging political elite. Of course, it would be naïve to imagine that such an improvised and incoherent political movement as M5S can provide an answer to Italy’s deep-seated problems, but the replacement of a political class that has presided over Italy’s two decades of stagnation is a pre-requisite for recovery. Moreover, unlike the troubling xenophobic parties that have benefited from the crisis in many other European countries, the M5S represents a more forward-looking, if inchoate, political programme, with a welcome emphasis on ecological issues and the revival of democratic participation. In the circumstances, it is refreshing that political protest has not been directed against the poor or immigrants, as has been the case in a number of struggling European economies.
Of course, this is not the first time that Italy has attempted to renew its political elite: Berlusconi himself entered politics in response to the collapse of the ruling parties in a wave of corruption scandals in the early 1990s. Simply deposing the existing elite does not provide an answer to Italy’s problems. But if nothing else, Grillo’s success sends a clear signal to the rest of the political elite that a large number of Italians have had enough of the corruption and incompetence that is holding the country back, and may embolden new political actors to enter the fray.
But perhaps the most important result of the election is that it will likely prove to be a turning point in the way in which the European Union deals with the debt crisis in the South. As was the case in Greece, the attempt to impose technocratic rule on a debtor nation to implement austerity and reform has been a political and economic disaster, as Valentino Larcinese argued on this blog. Political instability and economic decline in Greece has been a tragedy for the Greeks, but has had little impact on the rest of Europe. Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone, and the third biggest stock of government debt in the world. The Monti experiment produced no clear economic gains and has been decisively rejected at the polls. It would be reckless in the extreme of Europe’s leaders not to reconsider their approach.
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Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.
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About the author
Jonathan Hopkin – LSE Government
Jonathan Hopkin is a Reader at the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is mainly interested in political parties, elections, redistribution and inequality, corruption, decentralisation and the politics of Great Britain, Italy and Spain. His work has appeared in a range of journals including the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, European Journal of Political Research, the Review of International Political Economy, and West European Politics.
I think you should ask yourself why austerity was the recipe imposed on EU member states in the first place. Unless one asks the right questions, the truth will never come out. What happened is nothing short of a conspiration because it defies belief that the European Union could impose something which is much worse than the sanctions imposed on Iran. We thought we were a community until we discovered that some members of the community took pleasure in torturing and bringing to despair other members of the community with the pretext of helping them. As long as you don’t uncover the plot, talking optimistically won’t change the situation. Today the online version of Ethnos, the Greek newspaper, mentions something which is not being discussed in Italy at all i.e. a coalition made up of Bersani, Berlusconi plus Monti with Monti being tipped to become prime minister again (!). Which – come to think of it – stands to logic if you believe the conspiration theory, as I do. Even Frau Merkel is not worried about the “Italian case”, apparently she knows something that we still don’t.
Congratulations, your post is very insightful, which is not often the case as far as foreign commentaries on the Italian politics and economic situation are concerned. EU-imposed austerity is an abysmal failure. There is no way out of the eurocrisis unless the European Monetary System is reformed to reintroduce flexibility. http://bastaconleurocrisi.blogspot.it/2013/02/tax-credit-certificates-to-start-up.html
Jonathan,
I share the comments of Marco Cattaneo about the quality of your analysis and understanding of Italian politics.
However, I do disagree with your second “reason for optimism”. You say that “Both parties [the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and Mario Monti’s Scelta Civica (Civic Choice)] represented continuity in maintaining Italy’s commitment to carry out a contractionary fiscal policy, which has squeezed the life out of the Italian economy whilst doing little or nothing to reduce the state’s debt burden.”
The electoral campaign of both these parties – and of their leaders – has strongly stressed that the period of fiscal consolidation policies had to finish and that time was ripe for new actions to support economic growth. Neither of them proposed to prolong “austerity” measures. Even Monti, who strongly believes in fiscal consolidation as necessary precondition for growth-enhancing investments, stressed this. He repeatedly affirmed that time for austerity was over after the hard cure he had to inflict to Italians, considering the good – although still not excellent – state of the Italian fiscal situation. Bersani also insisted on the need to introduce measures to support growth (I think he never even thought about having some form of austerity measures…), and this was also one of the reasons why he contested the results of the MFF negotiations in early February.
Moreover, I believe that your (and other observers) statement that austerity “has been decisively rejected at the polls” is wrong: austerity has been decisively rejected by the electoral campaign!
Have you heard (or can you imagine) any of the candidates and parties state that the country needs to continue on the current austerity path? Not really, except if some of them wanted to commit political suicide.
Italians’ support to “austerity” ended when the electoral campaign started in January (starting from the far-from-being-proven assumption that these measures were ever really supported by Italians) and there was no need to wait for the results of the election to understand this.
I agree in part. It is true that italians are tired of corruption and procyclical policy (i.e. austerity). Austerity can not work theoretically and has not worked in practice (something the center left has missed in the political campaign). But m5s is creating expectations hard to meet. Think of permanent subsidy. Apart from economic considerations on incentives, can we afford it? Grillo (and some of his followers) say that we should not pay any debt back: simply i don’t understand what is the principale they have in mind. Differently from right wing party they are not against immigrants, in this case is even worse from an economic and political point of view: they are admittedly anti European and they don’t seem aware of the potential consequences of their possibile actions.
“Of course, it would be naïve to imagine that such an improvised and incoherent political movement as M5S can provide an answer to Italy’s deep-seated problems…”
Dear Jonathan, what makes you think that a group of honest (no exchange of favours, no political careers, no privileges whatsoever, see M5S rules), organised (see M5S in Sicily) and highly educated citizens (M5S MPs is the most educated group ever in parliament) cannot provide answers to Italy’s problem?
We’ll see!