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Justice, television and delegitimation: on the cultural codification of the Italian political crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Roberta Sassatelli
Roberta Sassatelli*
Affiliation:
Department of Economic and Social Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom. E-mail [email protected]
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Extract

Pier Paolo Giglioli, Sandra Cavicchioli and Giolo Fele, Rituali di degradazione. Anatomia del processo Cusani, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1997, 243 pp., ISBN 88–15–05713–7 pbk, 28,000 Lire.

Recent developments in Italian politics, such as the emergence of Forza Italia, became possible only after a much deeper process had taken place, the delegitimation of Italian politicians. In the early 1990s, much of the political class which had dominated Italian politics since the Second World War was publicly exposed and removed from politics. The old parties of government, the Christian Democrats (DC) and the Socialists (PSI), were swept aside. What appeared to be a civilized evolution had its visible peak in the difficult struggle conducted by a few magistrates, the Milan-based Mani pulite (Clean hands) team, against political corruption. The so-called Tangentopoli (Kickback city) investigations have been indicated as the turning point of contemporary Italian politics. They certainly represent the moment when a rhetoric of ‘old’ and ‘new’ was divulged, when the Italian Republic began to be felt as a collapsing venture, giving an opportunity for change and reform which has not yet been grasped.

Type
Review Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , May 1998 , pp. 108 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

1. See, for example, Ginsborg, Paul, ‘Italian political culture in historical perspective’. Modern Italy, 1, 1, 1995, pp. 3–17; Putnam, Robert, Making Democracy Work. Civic Transition in Modern Italy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993; Salvadori, Massimo, Storia d'Italia e crisi di regime. Alle radici della politico italiana, Il Mulino, Bologna 1993.Google Scholar

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3. See in particular the contribution of Donatella della Porta, in della Porta, Donatella and Mény, Yves (eds). Political Corruption and Democracy, Pinter, London, 1995.Google Scholar

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