The Italian regional question is threefold. It is important to distinguish between regions as administrative entities, regional policy, including regional development, and regionalism/federalism as a political movement and current of thought. In Italy all three have played a part in shaping national as well as local politics since Unification, although at different times and with alternate fortunes. Indeed, it is only in recent years that these different aspects of regionalism have all become deeply enmeshed and achieved prominence at one and the same time, the catalyst for this being the formation of new regionally-based political 'Leagues'.
The main issues arising from the Italian regional question are the following:
To enable the reader to follow the historical development of these three aspects of Italian regionalism from Unification to the 1980s, I will first consider them separately. When discussing present-day Italy, however, I will consider regionalism as a single, though multi-faceted, issue precisely because, as I mentioned earlier, all the above aspects seem to have become inextricably linked.
At the time of Unification, the Italian Government was faced with the dilemma of administrative centralisation or decentralisation. In those days 'Piedmontisation', i.e., the hurried extension of Piedmontese legislation to the newly annexed Italian regions, was resented in the North as well as in the South, although perhaps not to the same degree. The Piedmontese and the Lombards were different peoples with very different political-historical experiences, and so were the Tuscans, Emilians, Sicilians, Neapolitans etc. Only 2.5% of the population knew Italian at the time of Unification, a figure that includes the Tuscans, upon whose dialect the national language was based (De Mauro, 1963, p. 43).
The diversity of Italy's component regions as well as growing resentment in the country against Piedmontisation convinced Cavour as well as many other Italian political leaders that some measure of devolution ought to be granted. Cavour himself was a believer in decentralisation although, in the words of Mack Smith, 'he hardly had time to make up his mind' (Mack Smith, 1968, p. 341). In this, as in other instances, the Liberal Governments of Italy genuinely professed certain ideals but in practice had to introduce something very different when faced with the reality of Italian society and politics.
A scheme of regional devolution - the Farini-Minghetti bill - was prepared in 1861 and approved unanimously by the Cabinet but later withdrawn when it became clear that centrifugal forces, particularly in Southern Italy, could jeopardise the newly unified kingdom. Cavour himself changed his mind after Unification, shortly before his death in June 1861: 'despite the fact that he continued to deplore centralisation as illiberal, expensive and inefficient, he had been compelled to modify his views when he saw the danger that Italy might fall apart if a uniform administrative system was not quickly imposed on the whole kingdom' (Mack Smith, 1985, p. 263).
The most pressing agenda for the Italian ruling class at the time was how to 'harmonise' regional differences. In this context both the supporters of a centralised state and those of a federal state (see 2.2 below) had a common aim, although they differed in what they saw as the means to achieve this aim, alternatively 'from above', i.e., through the imposition of a uniform and centralised state apparatus, or 'from below', i.e., through a slow process of amalgamation and progressive elimination of local/regional differences. That the solution adopted was centralisation from above should be seen as a measure of the weakness of the Italian agrarian and industrial bourgeoisie which had been the driving force behind Unification and its inability to impose cultural and political hegemony over society as a whole.
Thus in place of the Farini-Minghetti bill the Government passed a Law in 1865 (Law N. 2248) which introduced a rigid prefectorial system along Napoleonic lines. The prefect became the representative of executive power at local and provincial level with wide-ranging authority over numerous spheres of influence, including education, law and order, administration and justice.
It was not until the end of the Second World War that administrative decentralisation was once again seriously considered. One of the reasons for this was a general agreement that Fascism's rise to power had been made easier by the centralistic character of the Italian Liberal State. A more balanced division of power would prevent the recurrence of an authoritarian solution. Another powerful motive-force was the climate of reforms prevalent after the war, which led to a widespread consensus that the reconstruction of the Italian political system ought to take place along new democratic lines and not be remodelled around pre-fascist Liberal institutions.
Despite these common aspirations of the anti-fascist parties, there was no clear convergence on the question of regional autonomy. The Socialist and Communist Parties, in particular, were suspicious of any form of federalism in case it promoted reactionary political tendencies at the periphery: the left-wing parties in this respect showed only limited appreciation of the innovative potential of a regional political system (Ragionieri, 1976, p. 2481).
The end-result was that the Italian Constitution, elaborated in 1947 and formally introduced on 1 January 1948, established the regions as administrative entities with limited legislative powers in a number of fields, including police, health services, town planning, tourism, local transport and communications, public works, agriculture and forestry. The regions were denied 'primary' legislative responsibility, i.e. the authority to legislate independently of the State and were attributed only 'concurrent' and 'subsidiary' legislative responsibility, in other words the authority to formulate legislative initiatives complementary to or within the framework of national legislation. The 1948 Constitution provided for the establishment of twenty regions, of which five were to enjoy 'special autonomy' (or 'Statute', equivalent to a region's constitution) and the remaining fifteen 'ordinary autonomy' (or Statute).
In this, as in other fields, the Italian Constitution was not applied for several years. The Statutes of four of the five special regions (Sicily, Sardinia, Valle d'Aosta and Trentino Alto Adige) were approved in February 1948; the fifth special region, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, was established in 1963. There were specific political reasons why these regions received favourable treatment, namely the fact that they included considerable ethnic minorities (the three northern ones) or had shown separatist tendencies (Sicily and Sardinia).
The 'ordinary' regions had to wait until the 1970s, despite the left-wing parties' change of heart vis-à-vis decentralisation after they were ousted from government in 1947 and after their defeat in the general elections of 1948. The Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia Cristiana, or DC) was in power and had no intention of strengthening the Communist Party ( Partito Comunista, or PCI) in the latter's regional strongholds in Central Italy. Nor were there strong demands for decentralisation coming from Italian society. According to Nanetti, 'it was a society with a small number of élites whose economic and political interests were served well by centralised institutional decision-making [...]. These demands [for regional government] had to wait for the political events and economic and social changes of the 1960s' (Nanetti, 1988, p. 80).
Thanks to these changes, above all the development of an increasingly pluralistic society with the emergence of new social and interest groups accompanied by the political success of the Left parties, pressure mounted in the country for breaking the Christian Democrats' monopoly of political power and for a degree of power-sharing. The creation of the regions in 1972 was granted by the then Prime Minister, Andreotti, in response to this new social and political pressure. Great hopes were held at the time regarding the regenerating effect administrative decentralisation would have upon the Italian system of government, which by then had shown itself unable to implement radical reforms in line with the country's rapid industrialisation. Yet cautionary notes were raised from various quarters. Earle summed up the various reactions to the regional experiment at the beginning of the 1970s as follows: 'At best it can inject new vigour and more direct democracy into the machinery of government, acting as a vehicle for progress and enrichment of life at all levels. At worst, it can insert a parasitic layer of maladministration between the central government and the ninety-four provinces, adding to the opportunity for clientelismo, intrigue and corruption' (Earle, 1974, p. 90). As we shall see, both forecasts turned out to be correct.
A series of laws were passed in the 1970s to set up the regional system. The 1972 decrees followed the 1970 regional elections granting the regions limited powers. Law 382 of 1975 gave the regions wide-ranging powers within the scope of the Constitution (no primary legislative authority therefore). The 616 decrees in 1977 'institutionalised the regions as real centres of policy-making' (Nanetti, 1988, p. 81). The decrees gave the regions control over 25% of the entire national budget (Putnam, Leonardi and Nanetti, 1985, p. 80). It should be noted, however, that according to Art. 119 of the Constitution the regions enjoy 'financial autonomy in the forms and within the limits prescribed by the Republic's laws which co-ordinate it with the finance of the State, Provinces and Communes'. The prevalent interpretation of Art. 119 has always been that the financial autonomy of the fifteen ordinary regions is very limited, as they cannot impose new taxes or regulate the imposition or distribution of taxes which are already in place. Thus the 'financial autonomy' attributed to the regions by Art. 119 consists mainly in the autonomy to administer directly their income as fixed by the State. Greater financial autonomy is attributed to the five regions with special Statute, although only in exceptional cases do they have the power to impose their own taxes.
As for regional government, Art. 121 of the Constitution states that 'the organs of the Regions are the Council, the Junta and the President', whose functions correspond roughly to those of Parliament, the Government and the President of the Republic. The council is made up of between 30 and 80 councillors and has legislative, regulating and administrative responsibilities, as well as functions of political control over the junta and the president and also over the region's policy-making. The junta is the executive body and is elected by council, whereas the president, also elected by council, is both the region's representative and the president of the junta. Councils approve the regions' Statutes, which require an absolute majority and have to be approved by Parliament by law. The Statutes regulate the internal organisation of the region, including the composition of the junta and the system for electing the junta and its president. They also regulate relations between the different regional government bodies and their functions. Regional Statutes, however, cannot regulate or modify the type or number of regional Government bodies, the functions of such bodies, the electoral system for councillors or the widening of a region's territory. Statutes also contain regulations concerning popular legislative initiatives and regional referenda.
Below the regions, administrative decentralisation rests with the provinces and the communes. The provinces, after the creation of the regions, became rather hybrid institutions, since many of their powers were lost. Many experts advocated the abolition of the provinces but a recent Law, passed in 1991, retained them as administrative entities (see below). The communes are the only territorial bodies to pre-date Italy's Unification and indeed the Constitution simply granted them official recognition, as opposed to creating them ex novo.
Since the establishment of the regions, the two main areas of contention and ambiguity have been precisely the relation between and respective spheres of influence of the regions and the State on the one hand and the regions and the other tiers of local government (provinces and communes) on the other (Cammelli, 1990). As far as the regions and the State are concerned, the main limitation to the autonomy of the former is the Government's power to contest the constitutionality of a regional law. The Government can invite the regional council to reconsider any law this has passed; such a law can be re-approved by council, provided it is approved by an absolute rather than a simple majority of councillors. After that, central government has fifteen days in which to appeal to the Constitutional Court. Conversely, the regions themselves can resort to the Court against the State if in their opinion it violates their functions.
There have been numerous cases brought to the attention of the Constitutional Court since the regions started to operate. The Court's initial tendency was to rule in favour of the State thus in the 1970s the prevalent attitude on the part of the regions was to find a compromise with the State and avoid recourse to the Court for fear of this body's anti-regional orientation. (Rodotà, 1986, p. 91). In the 1980s the attitude of the Court towards the regions became much more positive. In the same decade, regional autonomy vis-à-vis the State increased considerably so that this aspect can no longer be treated as a central issue; rather, it has been replaced by a struggle between regional and local government (Putnam, 1993, p. 46).
Have the regions found popular favour? Have they commanded attention and established roots? These ques tions need to be considered alongside the question of the performance of the regions, which also achieved new prominence since the overcoming of the main problem posed by State-regions relations. Both the above questions, i.e. popular affection/disaffection towards the regions and regional performance, are closely linked, since new institutions need to have a positive impact upon the society in which they operate in order to establish roots and command popular support.
According to Hine, the performance of all regions has been disappointing in so far as they have become an integral part of the Italian political system and are in themselves entrenched in 'partyocracy'. 'The parties act as channels through which regions and regional party leaders can bring pressures on the centre' (Hine, 1993, p. 271). Despite their limited financial autonomy, for example, the regions operated large deficits in the 1980s in the knowledge that the centre - and the national taxpayers - would bail them out, which regularly happened. From this point of view the pessimistic forecast that the regions would add another layer to the clientelistic Italian body politic can be deemed to have been correct. The recent Italian scandal known as ' Tangentopoli', from the word 'tangente' meaning a cut paid by private and public companies to political parties in exchange for public contracts and favourable treatment, has involved many local and regional executives throughout Italy. The scandal was uncovered in Milan but it soon spread to other parts of Italy, involving all the main political parties, above all the Christian Democrats and the Socialists ( Partito Socialista, or PSI). Whereas scandals of this type had previously often been associated with party politics and State intervention in the South, Tangentopoli seemed to have unified all Italy on the basis of maladministration. Yet this may well turn out to be a rather superficial picture.
Beyond and above the clientelistic aspect typical until recently of Italian politics at all levels, it is possible to distinguish between two different groups of regions in terms both of performance and popular esteem. Various studies have brought to light the consistently better performance of the Central and Northern regions vis-à-vis the Southern ones (Leonardi, Nanetti and Putnam, 1985; Putnam, 1993). The perceptions of the performance of local and regional government on the part of Italians vary sharply, accurately reflecting this geographical division. Northern and Central Italians are generally satisfied with their local and regional governments whereas they express dissatisfaction for central government; by contrast, Southern Italians are dissatisfied with all tiers of government, judged to be inefficient, ineffective and corrupt (Putnam, 1993, pp. 54-6). The reasons for this are varied and have been traced back to different levels of economic development, uneven distribution of resources, historical traditions and, more recently, different degrees of 'civic-ness', measured in terms of active participation in democratic and political associations, trust and solidarity, community values and political equality (Putnam, 1993, p. 86-120).
As these issues concern the social and political cultures of different regions of Italy, rather than the regional system per se and bring back to prominence the Italian 'Southern Question', they will be discussed in some detail below, together with the new regionalist political movements and approaches to regional policy and regional development.
Strictly speaking, one cannot speak of a federal political movement at the time of Unification. The two great political leaders of the Italian Risorgimento , Cavour and Mazzini, were both anti-federalist, although they were in favour of some measure of devolution of power. There were, however, various federalist thinkers who were in varying degrees influential among the political and cultural élite, despite lacking popular following. Among these one should mention Carlo Cattaneo (1801-1869) and Giuseppe Ferrari (1811-1876), both from Lombardy. The former was a radical Liberal who believed that individual freedom came before nationalism and the respect of local/regional diversities before the need for a strong, centralised State. Before 1848 Cattaneo was ready to accept autonomous rule for Lombardy within a federal Austrian Empire (Mack Smith, 1968, p. 92) and even after that date he was more concerned with the abolition of trade barriers between the various Italian regional States than with national unity. Cattaneo was not a political leader and his influence on Italian society and politics remained limited, although in Lombardy itself he was a popular figure. Likewise, Ferrari was an intellectual and philosopher who remained at the margins of active politics. He, too, advocated a federal Italy, on the grounds that 'our history rejects the possibility or desirability of our becoming a unitary nation; on the other hand a federal system will enable us to reach the very highest goals [...]. We may regard federalism as the purest form of constitutional government, founding liberty on a written pact, on a multiplicity of assemblies, on the inviolability of all internal frontiers, and the solemnity of its central parliament' (Speech to Parliament, 8 October 1860).
Vincenzo Gioberti (1801-1852), a Piedmontese, advocated a federal union sponsored by the Pope, a project which collapsed when Pope Pius IX turned against Liberalism and the cause for National Unification after the 1848-49 revolutions. Gioberti had a clear vision of the fact that an Italian people did not exist and needed to be created taking into account existing divisions in 'government, laws, institutions, popular folklore, customs, sentiment and habits'. To this end he judged the creation of a single unitary State to be either madness or, if brought about by force, an immoral crime.
As Donzelli (1992, p. 6) pointed out, the federalist current of thought that can be traced back to the Italian Risorgimento tradition can be defined as 'instrumental in ascent', that is to say, a federalism which identifies strong ethnic, linguistic, social and cultural differences within a territory seen as capable of achieving national unity. The federal system is seen in this context as a transitory system, an instrument to bring about the 'harmonisation' and real unification of a State's regional components.
Today's federalism - the federalism of the Italian Northern League Party (Lega Nord) - differs fundamentally from that of the Risorgimento and can be defined (Donzelli, 1992, p. 6) as 'instrumental in descent', despite the League's protestations that they are Cattaneo's natural heirs. By this expression Donzelli refers to the League's secessionist aspirations and its openly-held convinction that Northern and Southern Italy represent two distinct and non-converging societies which ought to be free to go it alone. The League's position presupposes the total rejection of the Italian Fathers' aspirations to achieve complete unity through the creation of a common people.
Paradoxically, the revival of federalist/ethnic sentiments has taken place at a time when Italy has reached a high degree of cultural homogeneity, not least from a linguistic point of view. Apart from minority ethnic groups, linguistic unification is now an accomplished reality. Census results indicate that Italian is now prevailing, although the dialects have not disappeared. Most people can speak both Italian and a dialect, and the percentage of people who speak only or mainly Italian is constantly growing (Lepschy and Lepschy, 1991; Lepschy, Lepschy and Voghera, 1993).
The Northern League strongly defends the use of the dialect and has provocatively asked for the 'Lombard' dialect to be used as official language. Yet it was not linguistic 'nostalgia' that provided the stimulus for the new federalism. Rather, it was the deterioration of political institutions, the growth of organised crime, and the systematic use of corrupt practices in business transactions involving party and State officials unearthed by the recent 'Tangentopoli' scandal. In the eyes of the League the 'Southernisation' of the Italian State as evidenced by the emergence of a widespread corrupt and clientelistic system of government is a clear sign that the process of national unification, far from promoting the homogeneisation of the country around 'Northern' laws, practices, institutions and economy, has succeeded only in imposing 'Southern' deviant practices upon the whole of the country.
In addition, socio-economic development remains uneven. The North/South divide is, as we shall see, still highly relevant, but there are also differences between the other regions. Back in the 1970s Bagnasco (1977) identified 'three Italies' in terms of social and economic structures: the industrial, urban-centred and large-firms-dominated North-West; the newly developed, still semi-rural, small-firms-dominated North-Eastern and Central regions; and the under-developed South. Since then much important research has been produced attempting to explain the reasons behind as well as the characteristics of each area (or model) of development.
The federalism of the League, as put forward in the party's 1992 electoral programme, appears to have been rather crudely inspired by the findings of Bagnasco and other sociologists. The League advocated the creation of a Federal State made up of three macro-regions or Republics (North, Centre and South), each considered as homogeneous from a socio-economic point of view. The Federal State would be responsible only for foreign affairs, defence, justice, general finance and higher education. The emphasis was on the creation of a Northern Republic made up of Lombardy, Piedmont, Venetia, Liguria, Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany, represented in the party literature as the most socially advanced part of Italy, governed and 'oppressed' by the Southern-dominated State bureaucracy and party system.
The starting point for setting up the three macro-regions - or at any rate the Northern one which was the one that really mattered for the League - was, according to the party, a formally legal and constitutional procedure. Art. 132 of the Constitution states that it is legitimate to provide for the fusion of existing Regions by Constitutional Law, as long as this is requested by a number of Municipal Councils representing at least a third of the interested population, and provided that the proposal is approved in a referendum by a majority of the same population.
The Northern League was considered in the late 1980s a fringe protest movement, with an extreme populistic political programme which would fail to make inroads into the more educated and middle-class electorate. However, this prediction turned out to be wrong. The party obtained good electoral results in the Northern provinces, particularly in Lombardy, at the 1990 administrative elections, did surprisingly well in the 1992 general political elections and won across the Northern regions in the 1993 local and provincial elections, gaining Milan as well as scores of minor wealthy industrial towns.
The collapse of the Socialist and Christian Democratic parties following the Tangentopoli scandal appears to have created a new division in the country in terms of political behaviour, with the possible consequence of a more drastic political split. As the federalism of the 1990s brings us back once again to the question of the North/South divide, I will discuss it in greater depth below.
The Italian Regional Question centres around the under-development of the South, and both regional policy and regional development schemes have been dominated by the need to solve this basic North/South divide. The first serious attempt to promote economic and social development in the region occurred in the first decade of the twentieth century, when successive Italian Governments, headed by Giuseppe Zanardelli first and Giovanni Giolitti later, prepared a series of laws designed for a few Southern regions. At that time Italy had begun to industrialise (the country's first industrial take-off is deemed to have occurred between 1896 and 1913). Provision was made for measures of agricultural improvement, public works and health schemes. As for industrial development, the city of Naples was designated as an industrial growth area and a new steel plant was set up in one of its suburbs. The policy largely failed, partly due to the absence of an indigeneous entrepreneurial culture but above all, according to Clark, to a lack of resources as well as corruption: 'here are the beginnings of constant themes in twentieth-century Italian politics: the distribution in the South of subsidies and patronage by central State development agencies, and the use of such agencies to win political support' (Clark, 1983, p. 133).
In the 1950s the Italian State made a much more decisive attempt to develop the Southern economy. In August 1950 the Law establishing the Cassa per Opere Straordinarie di Pubblico Interesse nell'Italia Meridionale , better known as the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, was passed. The function of the Cassa was clear from its title, namely to undertake 'extraordinary interventions' over and above what normal government Ministries could achieve. In the intentions of the legislators the Cassa was to be a public body with its own legal status, largely independent of the civil service. Yet it was made responsible to the Minister for the Mezzogiorno and subject to government control. The Cassa's efforts to develop the South can be divided into three main phases: 1950-57 when the emphasis was on modernising agriculture and building infrastructure related primarily to agriculture; 1957-71 when industry was singled out (Law 634 of 1957) as the sector that needed to receive greatest attention; 1971-84, i.e., the post-'heavy industry' and recession years.
The first phase was marked, as well as by the creation of the Cassa, by the land reform laws of 1950: Legge Sila in May, Legge Stralcio in October and Legge Siciliana in December. These laws were aimed at reducing the power and the size of the estates of the large absentee landowners ( latifondisti). Part of their land was expropriated and sub-divided into small plots of land which were assigned to landless labourers or petty land owners. The farming plots thus created had the short-term effect of reducing the chronic unemployment and under-employment of the area and easing social tensions, as well as stealing the thunder of the Communist Party, which had backed the Southern peasants' agitations of the 1940s and received growing political support from them in return. The policy of favouring the peasant farm model, however, was not economically viable and when Italy joined the European Community the backward state of Southern agriculture became even more evident. Emigration to the North at the time of the country's economic miracle also drained human resources from the Southern countryside and resulted in the abandonment of many of the newly created family farms.
The shift in regional policy from promoting agriculture to promoting industrial development was thus inevitable. What kind of industries should be promoted became a key issue. An important objective of regional devel opment was to encourage the formation of small and medium-sized firms and the emergence of indigeneous entrepreneurship. In reality, however, the Italian State had to rely on the public sector, mainly the two giant State holding companies IRI and ENI, to make investments in the South, with the consequence that many industrial plants set up in the Southern regions were in the capital-intensive, 'heavy' industrial sector, whose success turned out to be deeply conditioned by external events. With the energy crisis of the early 1970s and steel over-production throughout Europe the fate of these plants became highly uncertain. Furthermore, there were few 'trickle-down' effects upon the local/regional economy and these large plants' failure to stimulate the growth of small and medium-sized firms earned them their famous nickname 'cathedrals in the desert'.
Lack of co-ordination and planning, excessive bureaucracy and sheer corruption were blamed in the 1970s for the poor results achieved by the Cassa. Excessive centralisation was another factor judged as having a negative effect on Southern development. After the creation of the regions in the 1970s pressure mounted for delegating some or all of the powers of the Central Agency to the regions; indeed in the late seventies there were increasing demands for the suppression of the Cassa. The Cassa was finally abolished in 1984, and in 1986 Law 64 gave extraordinary powers to the regions in what constituted another major policy shift. It was felt that if regional governments were left to formulate and implement their own plans, intervention would be far more effective as the regions were more familiar with local conditions, needs and resources.
One of the main problems identified with the functioning of the Cassa was the gap between legislation and its transmission and translation into action. This has been largely explained on the basis that the Cassa was used to fulfil a political function: local Christian Democrat leaders systematically plundered resources to give their party a strong power base (Chubb, 1990). In this context it mattered little whether the plans were actually implemented, so long as money continued to sustain the party's own clienteles. In the 1980s the Socialist Party exercised a similar role.
Law 64 of 1986 has recently been subjected to intense scrutiny and it has incurred severe criticism. The regional governments have proved largely incapable of drawing up - let alone implement - development projects themselves, and the usual problems of clientelism and corruption are still apparent, this time on a regional level. Given what was said under The Regions since 1970 above, regarding the maladministration of the Southern regions, regional policy and regional development have not yet found their best administrative/political framework.
Today, despite the ever-present gap between North and South, it is the very concept of regional development which is being put into question. This is partly due to the fact that the failure to develop the South in the past decades has led many Northerners to doubt the wisdom of subsidising the South (Becchi, 1992). Less 'noble' motives include fiscal pressure (harsher in the North), the immense Government deficit and the economic recession which has hit Northern industry.
A study promoted by the Regional Council of the Veneto Region shows that between 1985 and 1990 four Northern regions, Lombardy, Piedmont, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna paid 45% of national taxes, 62% of VAT, and 63.5% of local taxes. They were given by the State 33.9% of the funds redistributed to local and regional governments. Thus for every 100 Lire paid to the State the Lombards received back for their own use 24.5, the Piedmontese 30, the Venetians 35 and the Emilians 37. By contrast, Molise could spend 80, Campania 64, Puglia 58, Calabria 84 and Basilicata 85 (La Repubblica , 1 April 1992, p. 14). The Southern regions depend on government financing and 'are terrified that the Government may ultimately expect them to depend on their own resources and taxes instead of giving them lavish subsidies' (Haycraft, 1985, p. 19). As Hine explains, in Italy's present regional system the coalition between the Ministry of Finance and the Southern regions has numerical superiority over the Northern regions, which are often politically divided among themselves. The new federalism advocated by the Northern League must thus be viewed in the context of this increasing frustration and sense of impotence on the part of the richest half of the country.
In June 1990 a new Law on local government (Law N. 142) was passed, with two primary objectives. The first objective was to reduce clientelism and encourage local governments' accountability to their electors, mainly through greater participation by ordinary citizens ( via referenda, petitions or proposals - Art. 6), access to information (Art. 7) and the creation of a 'difensore civico' or guarantor of impartiality and good administration (Art. 8). The second objective was to regulate relations between the three tiers of government, central, regional and local. Greater importance was attributed to the regions in this tri-partite relationship compared to that allowed for by Articles 117 and 118 of the Constitution. Whereas these articles stated that 'Provinces and Communes are autonomous bodies within the context of the principles established by the laws of the Republic which determine their functions', Art. 3 of Law 142 elevates the regions to a position of superiority vis-à-vis the provinces and communes in terms of socio-economic and territorial planning. The regions are assigned the important functions of determining general policy objectives, although local and provincial governments contribute to their formulation. Law 142 is, in this respect, ambiguous since it does not clarify in what ways and on the basis of which criteria communes and provinces contribute to general policy planning.
Despite the wider functions attributed to the regions by the new Law, they are far from being satisfied. The rise of the Northern League Party, and the (until recently) extreme form of federalism it advocated, provided the regions with both new ammunition and a new sense of urgency. On 19 December 1990 the regional council of one of the regions with special Statute, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, approved, with the support of the Christian Democrats, Socialists, Communists and Greens, an agenda for a federalist reform of the Italian State. A similar request was put forward by Trentino-Alto Adige on 19 February 1991. On 8 March it was the turn of another 'special' region, Valle D'Aosta. On 26 February 1991 one of the 'ordinary' regions, the wealthy Northern Emilia-Romagna, requested a new type of regionalism. The main target of all the above regions was Art. 117 of the Constitution, which limits the functions of the regions.
The Northern regions' demand for a federal State has as its model the German division into Länder, with the central State left with a co-ordinating role and the regions entitled to financial autonomy and full powers of intervention in all sectors within their territories. The central State would be left with international relations, national defence, justice and monetary policy. The Northern regions' proposals for a Federal State reject the division of Italy into three macro-regions (virtually three separate States) which characterises the political programme of the Northern League and in particular that party's provocative suggestion that the North should form its own Republic, fully integrated within the EC, leaving the rest of Italy to its own destiny. Yet the League itself has shifted position in recent times. If there is a convergence between the strategy of the Northern League (and perhaps even of the Democratic Party of the Left, i.e., the offspring of the old Partito Comunista) and the Northern regions' aspirations to greater political and financial autonomy, we can expect regionalism in Italy to gain an almost unstoppable momentum.
I have already emphasised the growing success of the Northern League at recent political and administrative elections. The rise of this new party to a dominant position in the north of the country has been accompanied by its increasing efforts to appeal to the middle classes and become less associated with extreme political views, including secessionism. Whereas Miglio, the ideologue of the party, appears to remain firm in advocating the creation of three macro-regions on the basis of economic and social homogeneity, the powerful leader of the League, Umberto Bossi, proposed in April 1993 changing the name of his party from Northern League to Federal Italy League, implying that he now accepted the unitary State created by the Risorgimento and no longer advocated a process of political dismemberment of the Italian peninsula.
The mood of the Italian people, meanwhile, appears to have turned decisively in favour of the regions, if only in protest against the maladministration of central government. On 18 April 1993 Italians were asked to vote in eight referenda, two of which were sponsored by the regions. One of these concerned the abolition of the Ministry of Agriculture, the other the abolition of the Ministry of Tourism; in both cases the functions of the Ministries were to pass to the regions. Both referenda were approved by a majority of Italians.
A third referendum was to determine whether Italians wished to extend to all towns the majority system which assigns two-thirds of the seats to the winning list and to elect the mayor directly in municipal elections. This referendum was also approved, together with a fourth which established that 238 Senators out of 315 were to be elected with a majority system and only 77 with the system of proportional representation established in Italy after the fall of Fascism. These last two referenda represented the clearest indication yet of the will of the Italians to change their electoral and political system at the roots and to create their 'Second Republic'.
The political situation in Italy is at present evolving so rapidly that it is almost impossible to predict how the country's political institutions will be reformed, including the regional system. In the administrative elections of June 1993 the picture that emerged was of an Italy divided politically into three, the North dominated by the Northern League (with the exception of Emilia-Romagna), the Centre by the PDS (the Democratic Party of the Left, i.e. the former Communists), and the South governed by heterogeneous coalitions, generally made up of anti-Mafia and anti-Camorra alliances, although in some cases the vote-controlling criminal/clientelistic machinery survived almost unscathed.
More recently, at the March 1994 elections, two new parties emerged which put national unity and even nationalism back on the political agenda: Forza Italia , led by the media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, and Alleanza Nazionale, made up largely of the neo-fascists (or ex-fascists as they prefer to be considered). Geographical divisions have not disappeared, however, since the Northern League remained strong in the northern regions and Alleanza Nazionale was primarily successful in the south. At present the new Italian government is made up of an uneasy coalition between these three parties.
Whether the more extreme or the more moderate form of federalism (or simply a more substantial devolution of power to the regions) will prevail, the Italian regional divide is clearly there to stay. The question is, will a federal State or a more radical form of regionalism promote or hinder the cause of national harmonisation? Would it simply represent the triumph of the new 'selfishness' of the richest regions, or could it also be considered as a step forward for the least developed ones?
More than forty years of regional policy and regional development have left the south at best modernised but certainly not developed. There now seems to be a growing consensus that there must be an end to indiscriminate subsidies and politically-motivated, centrally-controlled transfers of money from the Northern to the Southern regions. The League's solution would be a neo-Liberal one, where incentives to development should consist of lower wages (justified on the basis of an alleged lower cost of living in the south), tax incentives for businesses on the basis of strictly documented profits on their part, and an end to all State subsidies. At times the League seems to accept the concept of a transfer of funds, provided this takes place directly from the Northern to the Southern regions under the control of the former as opposed to that of the State.
The traditional parties are more oriented towards the preservation of some forms of direct subsidies, but with more rigorous methods of control. The two new parties which emphasise national unity, Forza Italia and Alleanze Nazionale, have not spelt out a clear policy for the south. Now that they are in Government the temptation to resort to a renewed version of clientelism is no doubt strong, particularly in the case of Alleanza Nazionale which depends to a very large extent on a southern electorate. As things stand at present it is extremely difficult to predict whether the Northern League will be able to impose its own neo-liberal policies or whether the south will be tied to central government via clientelism and patronage as so often in the past.
Italy was a founder member of the European Community and the Italian population has consistently showed firm support for European integration (Hine, 1993, p. 286). European unity is not a political issue in the country; if anything, the recently formed Northern League is even more pro-European than the traditional parties. This is due to the fact that they believe that a Europe of regions will eventually supplant the existing Europe of nation-states and thus allow Northern Italy to rejoin its transalpine neighbours.
As Umberto Bossi stated in his autobiography: 'What is the meaning of having frontiers between Piedmont and Savoie, or South Tyrol and Austria? Their ethnicity is substantially identical, from a naturalistic point of view. From a socio-cultural point of view [...] nothing unites Trentino or Lombardy with Calabria or Campania. Therefore I say: why not replace the fixed frontiers and the centralism typical of unitary States with a more articulated system, characterised by a plurality of institutional centres each with specific and limited responsibilities? Why not eliminate, in other words, the rigid frontiers between very similar realities, as for example Lombardy and Baviera, while introducing separate decision-making centres, each with real autonomy, in different realities which were arbitrarily unified, such as the North and South of Italy?' (Bossi, 1992, pp. 161-62).
The advocation of a return of northern Italy to its 'natural' Mitteleuropean cradle could not have been more openly and clearly stated. As with the League's other political proposals, such ideals reflect the complete failure, in their eyes, of the Italian nation-state. European integration is viewed in this context as little more than an opportunity to achieve the party's secessionist goal. As the Northern League becomes less extreme in its political views, we can expect their appreciation of European integration to change accordingly.
However, the need to abolish political, as well as trade barriers between regions which are homogeneous from a socio-economic point of view and which have already established close economic ties, is widely understood by other political actors, not least the regions themselves. The internationalisation of economic markets and the creation, in particular, of the Single European Market have had the effect of encouraging transnational inter-firm (and in many cases inter-regional) collaborative agreements. France, particularly the Rhône-Alpes Region, has become a favourite place for Italian firms to invest in, partly because of its perceived cultural and political affinity. Many Piedmontese and Lombard firms have established subsidiaries in France, often making use of the French Government's incentives for attracting foreign investment to underdeveloped areas, such as Haute Savoie.
With economic ties across Europe becoming stronger, the idea of a federal Europe may acquire a new legitimacy. Indeed, the Maastricht Treaty contains clauses which hint at the possible establishment of a Federal Europe of the Regions. Yet a federal solution is at present not at all popular with most European peoples, as poll after poll have shown. Italy in this respect may well represent the odd man out, although one suspects that the pro-Europeanism of most Italians has little to do with perceived inter-regional and trans-national social and economic homogeneity and a lot to do with a distrust of central Government, i.e., the same distrust which has turned Italians into supporters of a radical new form of regionalism. As The Economist recently pointed out: 'Italy was an enthusiastic signatory of the Maastricht Treaty in December 1991, not just because it has always been Europhilic but because the Maastricht requirements of economic and monetary convergence would impose the discipline that Italy's governments normally fail to find on their own [...] What will happen now, if the Maastricht process becomes more fuzzy? The answer is that Italians will have to rely on their own politicians, not anyone else's' (The Economist, 26 June 1993, p. 21).
A radical and effective reform of the country's political system and the establishment of a strong and authoritative executive may yet re-establish the credibility of the Italian nation-state in the eyes of its citizens. This is no doubt one of the aspirations of Berlusconi's Forza Italia and it is not a coincidence that this party is more tepid towards Europe than either the traditional parties or the Northern League. Just as the mood of Italians appears to be oscillating between an extreme form of regionalism and revived nationalism, so the country's attitude towards Europe and its assessment of the merits of a federal, as opposed to a confederal, Europe seem to suffer from a general state of fickleness.