*** MARIO TELO, GIULIA SANDRI, LUCA TOMINI (Eds.): L'état de la démocratie en Italie. Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles (26 av. Paul Héger, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 6503799 - Fax: 6503794 - email: editions@ulb.ac.be - Internet: http://www.editions-universite-bruxelles.be ). "Science politique" series. 2013, 168 pp, €20. ISBN 978-2-8004-1534-5.
In terms of democracy, should Italy be seen as a deviation among European nations or is it at the forefront of future trends in Europe? As the European Union, particularly the eurozone, is still reeling under the shock of the electoral results gained by Berlusconi and the Movimento 5 Stelle under Beppe Grillo in February's general elections, everyone will agree that such questions are of the moment. The answer given in this book is frankly disturbing - No, Italy 'is not (or not only) a deviation in terms of late modernisation of institutions and society'; Yes, it should be 'seen as an early model in many ways of future trends in other European democracies'! This is one of the main lessons emerging from this enlightening collection of essays, updated versions of presentations at a conference organised in December 2010 by the Université Libre de Bruxelles (the Centre d'Étude de la Vie Politique et l'Institut d'Études Européenne) and Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome, which analysed in an interdisciplinary manner changes in Italian politics, economy and society from the end of World War Two until now. Beppe Grillo only appears as a watermark, but all the shortcomings that explain his rising power and the continued encrustation of Silvio Berlusconi in Italian politics are laid bare.
In the introductory chapter, the book's editors set the backdrop by discerning a triumphant party-cracy that 'encouraged corruption and clientelism and contributed to the explosion of public debt and State inefficiency,' along with the constant inability of politicians to carry out institutional reforms that could have answered society's expectations. What has resulted is a real 'decline in the Italian political system's democratic performance,' which has generated a process of 'de-democratisation,' the 'abnormal concentration of media and political power in the empire (…) of Silvio Berlusconi' being one of the instruments of this, with the increasing refusal of Italian politicians (does this problem only apply to Italians, one wonders?) to 'take responsibility for political choices likely to have a negative impact on their electoral support' being one of its manifestations, Berlusconi having the impertinence to openly recognise it when he sent the following to Herman Van Rompuy in September 2011: 'If you decide to make this recommendation, then governments will be happy to increase the retirement age because they will be forced to do it (because of Europe. At the moment, they find it very difficult because if they increase the retirement age, they automatically lose votes.' Once could not more cynically admit to the way Brussels is used as an excuse or cover by some (by many?)!
Against this backdrop, the first contributions provide a theoretical and methodological framework for assessing the state of democracy in Italy in the European context. For example, historian Donald Sassoon of London University distances himself, despite the Berlusconi phenomenon, from the claimed 'exceptionality' of Italy, highlighting instead the problems of 'the power and extent of organised crime in Italy, which has no equivalent in Western Europe' and the 'tragedy' of the country's economic backwardness. All factors that lead Sassoon to say that 'at this point in Italian history, pessimism is a more realistic position to take than optimism.' A comment that the outcome of the recent elections can only endorse… In the second part of the book, based on a multidisciplinary approach, various key aspects of democracy in Italy are studied, from institutional changes to the consequences of waves of migration via various unsuccessful reforms of the State over the past decades, the impact of the recent economic crisis on the political system in the broad sense and the relationship between executive and judicial power.
Saving some of the choicest morsels until last, I have randomly picked two of the remaining essays. Firstly one in which Prof. Mario Telo makes a very fine analysis of changes in Italian democracy against the backdrop of European integration, which enables him to demonstrate that the traditional Italian Europeanism is no longer what it used to be and, moreover, there is many a slip twixt cup and lip when it comes to putting European policies into practice. This professor of political science at the ULB in Brussels ends by discerning three possible scenarios - continuity, with Italian elites 'adjusting to changes with petty reforms and self-preservation' (which would give a greater role to the European Union, but would raise the question of 'the domestic unintended consequences of this policy' describing it 'as a straitjacket on the legitimacy' of the European club, this question clearly being raised by the Grillo movement…); marginalisation and division of the country, with the situation being such as to manifest, 'like in Belgium, as a conflict between democracy and national unity,' which could translate into 'possibly leaving the eurozone' (the question would then, says the author, be whether the EU would have 'the ability to successfully counteract the separatist and populist trends'; or a new start for Italy which would imply a new start for Europe, the European Union becoming less of 'an imperative super-State that threatens and punishes' than a benevolent body with well-adapted economic governance mechanisms. Then there is a contribution by Marc Lazar (Sciences Po and Luiss Guido Carli) demonstrating in a highly convincing manner that Italy is not only a sign of general democratic malaise, 'but also of manifold attempts to invent a different democratic order, attempts seen at locations across the European Union.' Well before the February elections therefore, he wrote that Italians tempted by the Movimento 5 Stelle 'were expressing in this way a demand for participation, a desire to control elected politicians, a desire to be regularly involved in decisions.' A comment that no doubt sheds light on what has just happened in Italy, and which should help political leaders in the rest of the EU understand that this is perhaps no more than the Italian version of a wider political phenomenon - that of the Indignés. Clearly, they too are concerned by this!
Michel Theys
*** CARLO CURTI GIALDINO (Ed.): Codice dell'Unione europea operativo. TUE e TFUE commentati articolo per articolo con la carta dei diritti fondamentali dell'Unione europea. Gruppo Editoriale Simone (via Montenuovo Licola Patria, 131/c Pozzuoli. Tel: (39-81) 8043920 - Fax: 8043918 - Internet: http://www.simone.it ). "I Codici Operativi" series. 2012, 2,560 pp, €150. ISBN 978-88-244-3171-2.
The fruit of three years of work and the collaboration of a hundred or more individuals under the leadership of Prof. Carlo Curti Gialdino, this hefty tome is the very first to comment article by article, in Italian, on the treaties of the European Union and its functioning - along with the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. In the preface, president Barroso says that readers will find here explanations that will help them understand the deeper meaning of the venture undertaken by the EU27, that will perhaps help them to wish to contribute to the boosting and implementation of the potential of the Lisbon Treaty.
(MT)
*** GAËTANE RICARD-NIHOUL: Pour une Fédération européenne d'Etats-nations. La vision de Jacques Delors revisitée. Éditions Larcier (Groupe De Boeck, 39 rue des Minimes, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-10) 482511 - Fax: 482693 - email: commande@deboeckservices.com - Internet: http://www.larcier.com ). 'Europe(S) - Essais' series. 2012, 203 pp, €25. ISBN 978-2-8044-5170-7.
This is without any doubt a book that would have deserved pride of place, had it not arrived late in Bibliothèque européenne's nets. Political analyst at the European Commission's office in France, political scientist Gaëtane Ricard-Nihoul demonstrates - mostly very successfully - the pertinence of the idea of a 'Federation of Nation States' as Jacques Delors first described it in the 1990s while he was still president of the European Commission. In her view there is no doubt that this concept implying that it is 'possible to imagine the development of European integration without citizens having to give up their State or their nation' is now quite frankly indispensable 'for designing the present and future of the European project.' This is a fact because, as Jacques Delors foresaw in the preface he wrote in January 2012, the twenty-seven nation Europe is sailing 'right into crisis, accumulating shortcomings in governance and a call for an institutional botch-job,' the question being more than ever that of 'agreeing on a philosophy of institutions that answers the two-pronged demand of efficiency and democracy.' The author, a talented Oxford University-educated political scientist who first cut her teeth as secretary general of Notre Europe, the thinktank set up by his muse, gets down to the task of convincing readers that the solution is right there in front of them in the form of the 'unfinished' Federation of Nation States that is the European Union, as long that is as European decision-makers agree to finally make a move in this direction. Her essay is fully devoted to ensuring that the vision of a European Federation of Nation States, far from being an oxymoron, a contradiction voiced in terms that only a French mind could give rise to, is the only way of reconciling the indispensable federalism - 'No other philosophy of how to manage unity in diversity has yet been able to displace the federal heritage,' she hammers home, wondering in passing: 'Why deprive oneself of it when thinking about the future of the European Union?' - and the no less indispensable respect due to citizens who do not want 'to give up their nation or their State.' Starting from this presupposition (it still needs to be agreed that it should be allowed to be verified) which is simply a snapshot that does not prejudge in any way how citizens' reflection might develop in the future, the author demonstrates how the Delors concept could help solve three of the EU's existential problems, namely the question of European governance, the question of subsidiarity and the sharing of powers and finally the question of the club's democratic functioning. These ideas will not necessarily win agreement (not at least among national political leaders, whose 'lack of honesty or, worse, lack of clairvoyant vision' is openly criticised by the author for their role in ensuring that 'the democratic foundations of the European project' moulder and rot), but they will prove intellectually stimulating for anyone concerned about the future of Europe and its citizens while keeping an open mind.
(MT)
*** ERIC BUSSIERE, ENRIQUE MORADIELLOS (Eds.): Memorias y lugares de memoria de Europa - Mémoires et lieux de mémoire en Europe - Memories and Places of Memory in Europe. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Cuadernos de Yuste" series, No. 6. 2012, 267 pp, €38. ISBN 978-90-5201-796-9.
When the Charles the Fifth Prize 2008 was awarded to Simone Veil at the Royal Monastery of Yuste, the former president of the European Parliament pointed out that the last survivors of the deportations to the Nazi death camps would soon die out and it would then be necessary to 'find people to preserve their memories.' Hence the decision by the European Yuste Academy Foundation to have reflection on memory and places of memory as the topic of debate at a doctoral seminar it organised and which this book reports upon. In these pages, contributions shed light on how memory is constructed, how the European Union has portrayed the past in order to encourage the integration process, with other authors looking at the different readings of history in Poland and the Ukraine, politicisation of memory (the speech by Nikita Kruschev in 1956 condemning Stalin's crimes and how it was interpreted by the communist parties of France and Italy) and the use that is made of memory and places of memory.
(MT)
*** FRANCOIS AUDIGIER, DAVID COLON, FREDERIC FOGACCI (Eds.): Les partis politiques: nouveaux regards. Une contribution au renouvellement de l'histoire politique. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (see above). "France contemporaine" series, No. 4. 2012, 464 pp, €51-90. ISBN 978-90-5201-821-8.
In France, political history is struggling, but the history of political parties is bearing up well in the ambient swamp. That in substance is what François Audigier explains in the introduction to this book reporting on the work and outcome of a three year seminar led by this senior lecturer in contemporary history at Lorraine University in collaboration with the other two editors. As invited by Serge Berstein, the authors - many of them young doctoral students or senior lecturers, which confirms the resistance prevailing in this niche - understand the party as an arena for political mediation between speech and reality, as bearing witness to a stage of development of society or as the product of big historic crises. Opening with reflection on the 'party format' and the way this framework has been used, adjusted, valued and rejected by political families, the book examines in turn currents and trends, bridges that can exist between competing formations, governance, different categories of players (elders and youngsters, women, intellectuals and so on), networks and satellite organisations, modelling in space and time and the historians who follow their journeys. A French-based study that certainly deserves expansion into the European arena!
(MT)