Modern Italian culture, in all its facets, has been a particular interest of mine, ever since I "discovered its existence"in plain sight, Christopher Columbus-like, about 40 years ago. A little background on the national scene follows--please bear with me and I will try to be brief. Then I will go into more depth about the likely outcomes and the major personalities involved.
Italy since World War II has prospered spectacularly, but unevenly. By most measures, Northern and Central Italy are on par with the most developed countries of Europe, but the Southern part of the boot and Sicily have lagged. This has been true much longer; one could say that the initial disparity present at the founding of the modern state (mid-19th century) has never been remedied. The Parliamentary state has consistently disappointed people's expectations, but there is still strong support among the people for democratic ideals. The Italian economy is recovering more strongly recently after a long, slow recovery from the Great Crater, but it is still a difficult place to do business, for many reasons. The wealth of the people comes from their great assets: land and people, and to a large extent, the interaction of the two.
Why Does It Matter?
I will make this quick. It is a significant country in Europe, and if its election is won by the right--which has various Trumpian characteristics among its leaders, including xenophobia, corruption (though probably not with Russia so much), immigration, turning the economy to the favor of the wealthy, and clownish behavior--it will be very harmful for the European Union as we currently know it. Many of the center-right coalition openly advocate going the Brexit route, and Italy, unlike Britain, is a core member of the EU initiative from its very earliest form in the postwar EEC.
If we think more narrowly, the result is also significant for the US, in the sense that it is yet another very relevant test of democracy and of the public desire, or lack of desire, to reject tribalist and ultra-nationalist thinking, and thus a possible portent of upcoming US political soundings. Unlike the US, Italy has a very real current immigration problem--poverty-stricken people coming over to Italy in boats from Libya (after migrating there from many other Third World countries), and there is also a general Italian view that the country has not been properly supported by the rest of Europe in handling this peaceful, but unwanted, burden of handling mass migration.
The Scenarios and Their Chances
So, to the political structure (of the moment): This parliamentary election will be conducted March 5 under different rules from the last one, five years ago. (In a somewhat rare occurrence among Italian governments since the postwar republic replaced constitutional monarchy, the Parliament remained intact for the full five-year term.) The new Parliament will be composed of a mixture of proportional representation and "first-by-the-post" election of individual districts by plurality (like the US House). The distribution of seats among the parties for the proportional portion* is somewhat apparent from the opinion polling--opinion moves fairly slowly, in general. The wild card is how the individual seats may play out, as the balances are very fine. There are a number of possible coalitions, in classic Italian fashion.
On this one, I have some small skin in the game (predicti.org); I will make some references to the market they have on this election: "Who will be Prime Minister on July 31?"
Here is my list of the possible outcomes, in order of likelihood:
1) Generally unclear, no coalition easily identifiable. This has two major variations:
a) totally indecisive result, and everyone sees that it's so (no party or coalition above 30% or so)--the Parliament might seat, make some new rules, or not, but just call a new election.
b) no surprises in the outcomes, continuing discussions, no new outcome on the horizon. This could go on for a very long time--the 7/31 deadline is a good reference point, as it is shortly before the midsummer break called "ferragosto" when everyone, and especially the politicians, shut it down and go on vacation. In this case, there could be a continuation of the caretaker government that has been running since the collapse of the Renzi government (see below). Paolo Gentiloni is the Prime Minister, from the Partito Democratico (yes, the Democratic Party, and it is very comparable to the US one). He's a dignified, moderate techno-bureaucrat; few would regret the result, though it would be a defeat for:
2) The Center-right coalition. This is the only currently-announced coalition that has any chance to get close to a governing majority by itself. The leader of this combination of five parties is none other than Silvio Berlusconi, back for another run at it after his conviction and retreat from the scene. His party is called Forza Italia (I would translate it as "Go, Italy!"), and it's the only one of the alliance that has meaningful national appeal. The problem is, because of his conviction, he's supposed to be ineligible to actually serve in the new government. So, there's a very interesting range of possible PM's. My money (in predictit.org) for this scenario is on Antonio Tajani, the most respectable of the leaders of Forza (FI). His odds have surged--I bought him at .14 a month ago and he's up to .33 (on a .01 to .99 scale, pre-election; after it's decided 7/31, values will go to 0 to 1.000). Good gains so far, and I may hang around to see if I can make more.
3) Center-left coalition. There are two big parties in this (potential) space: the PD (Dems), who had control of Parliament the last five years, and the one-of-a-kind Italian invention called Movimento Cinque Stelle ("Five Star Movement", abbreviated as M5S). It just missed five years ago, when headed by a sharp-tongued comedian, Beppe Grillo; it has shown some staying power after some purges and other separations se and is now headed by an emergent 31-year-old talent, Luigi di Maio. Its themes have been opposition to the Establishment and all the other parties, use of 21st-Century technology to create democracy, bloc voting, and eternal internal squabble. If di Maio has conquered that last tendency then he would be truly deserving of leadership, but probably not as the PM this time around.
They (M5S) and the PD will be the leading single parties in the proportional vote (as they were in 2013) dividing 50-60% of the total. The question is whether these two could get together; every early indication is no (M5S has sworn off all alliances), but that underestimates the Italian impulse to conspire: I believe that if the PD and M5S both became convinced that their alliance (after the election, of course, first they have to attack each other all through the campaign) were necessary to prevent someone like Berlusconi winning, they might find a way.
If there were to be an actual agreement, I would think the likely form would be to agree upon someone unexpected, neither Gentiloni nor di Maio (and not PD leader Matteo Renzi): they could find some sap from another of the many tiny parties sprinkled through this range, maybe someone who won their district but whose party didn't reach the 3% threshold level for proportional representation. (In predictit.org terms, all Yes bets would then lose; if you liked this theory, you'd bet No on everyone and make a relatively small profit.) More likely that M5S would fulfill their promise of non-participation by abstaining for some center-left variation of government formation, thus allowing it to happen.
4) "La Truffa" - Somehow, the center-right find some tricky way to put Berlusconi at the head of the government (despite his not being in the Parliament): they make a law to allow it?
5) A PD-dominated government - This is a variation on #1 in which the PD does surprisingly well, such that they--and any smaller partners they can find--get to 40% or so of the Parliamentary seats. Then, suddenly, a government headed by Renzi would become a possibility.
The problem is Renzi, for my taste the best prominent politician--intelligent, honest, uncorrupted--that Italy has had for a long time. (At least since the deaths of Aldo Moro and Enrico Berlinguer, for those like me who've been following this stuff for decades.) Naturally, everyone hates him--except for his admirers, who have become a lot less numerous since he became a loser. That happened with the electoral referendum last October. He openly staked his career on it, a valiant but ultimately and totally unsuccessful crusade to make the company more governable by making it less democratic.
Shards of his old support have since dropped off to various splinter groups (and the M5M) since then. He is now seen by the left as a would-be Napoleon who betrayed the working class; most of his remaining appeal is to the moderate left wing of the former Christian Democrat party, from whence he came. I would say his game now is to let someone else try for a few years--and eventually fail. He would hope to maintain his role until when he could then make a comeback. He's still only 43.
Additional Notes
It is rather unlikely that the scenario will present itself immediately from the electoral results (though we will not have to wait long to hear them--the polling is very efficient, as is the tabulation). Instead, certainty that there will be no electoral majority, and the multiplicity of parties, will mean that the outcome will take weeks or months to emerge. A recent article in The Economist suggests an obscure southern Italian party (Noi con l'italia--"we are with Italy"), recently formed, could get a surprising number of local district wins and become a critical factor. In the respected Italian weekly magazine L'Espresso, a writer under the name of "corleone" (could he be from Sicily, perhaps?) points to the elections for the President of the two houses of Parliament (scheduled for March 23, or 18 days after the general election) to get a clue where this thing will be going.
The other alternatives to Tajani or Berlusconi as PM for the center-right range from scary to laughable; the most noteworthy miscreant after Silvio is Matteo Salvini, the leader of the Lega Nord (Northern League), who leads a party popular in the North whose supporters are tired of the welfare queens and foreigners from Third World countries getting all their tax dollars. You can see the appeal, right? His party will be the second-largest in the center-right coalition, earning 13-15% and winning a number of constituencies. He is pretty much disqualified from being the PM because of the intense distaste everyone else has for him, but he would be a force* in the government if it happened: I imagine he would then be able to lobby for sending the Italian navy down to patrol the Libyan shores, a provocative military stance that could either work--stopping the boatpeople, and their exploitative aggregators, at the Libyan ports--or start actual conflict. (Libya was an Italian colony for decades, until the Fascists lost it during WWII.)
I have a lot of (very cheap) shares on Renzi, who is currently viewed as a longshot with no chance; a few on Gentiloni, hoping to average down sometime down the road; and a moderate bet on Tajani (another for which I will add more shares if his price drops). I have No bets on Berlusconi, Salvini, and Di Maio. The current polling--Wikipedia is maintaining an excellent graph which shows each data point for each party over time--indicates eight parties will make it past the 3% threshold (while several others will win seats through having localized strength. If you'll permit me to use the TLA's (two-letter acronyms, or three-letter acronyms) I reviewed above, one gets, approximately, the following current values for those who name their choice: M5S 28%, PD 23%, FI 18%, LN 13%. Left Alliance 6%, 5% for a neo-Fascist remnant now called Fratelli d'Italia ("Brothers of Italy", a quote from the first line of the national anthem), and about 8% for others.
*Sorry for the word, couldn't resist.
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1 comment:
It is doubtlessly the case that Putinist bots will intervene to sow discord and opposition to democracy. The questions are whether it will be detected, and will it be effective? Maybe it is already having the desired effects.
One thing to say, though: there is plenty of evidence that the US interfered substantially during the Cold War to prevent the entry into any Italian government of the Eurocommunists. By the way, our government's secret agents were quite successful in that objective.
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