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| GUGLIELMO DE' MICHELI for TIME |
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IN DECLINE Francesco Billari, a professor, and his wife can’t fix Italy’s falling birthrate all by themselves |
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Posted Sunday, April 2, 2005; 09.48BST
What voters fear is that whichever coalition wins, it will, as always in Italy's fractured political system, have to spend much of its energy on keeping the alliance from disintegrating. That's not exactly a recipe for bold renewal in a country facing an urgent need to revitalize the economy, reform the pension system, and add flexibility to the labor market without tossing away basic job security for the coming generation of workers. Meanwhile, both coalitions talk up their solution to the demographic emergency: competing onetime cash bonuses for families with newborns, instead of the subsidized child care that would do far more to encourage working mothers to have more babies.
Mariangela Potenza, 24, who left her home in the southern town of Bernalda in Basilicata, on the heel of the peninsular boot, to pursue a degree in high-tech art restoration at the University of Florence, is uninspired by any of the entrenched political élite. "It's the same faces saying the same things," she says. "There's nothing that transmits innovation or novelty to the voters, nothing that stimulates me as a young person." Viviana Beccalossi, 34, Vice President of the northern region of Lombardy, agrees. "I respect my white-haired colleagues, but you have to find a mechanism for mixing in the new generation," she says. "It's fine if there's a minimum age for the Senate (40), but there should be a maximum age too." It's not just the age of the two candidates for Prime Minister that under-40s find dismaying: now both coalitions are talking about nominating the popular President of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, as the first Italian head of state to serve a second seven-year term. And he's 85.
A few comparatively youthful politicians have managed to penetrate the system. Enrico Letta was the youngest Cabinet member in Italian history when a center-left coalition made him Minister for Community Policies at 32. But at 39, Letta bemoans how few of his peers have entered the ruling classes: "At 40 you're still considered a kid." Letta says the current élite practices what he calls "co-optation" to keep challengers at bay. When talented youngsters emerge, the old leaders "co-opt" them into the fold with the perks of power, but no real influence to upset the status quo. "Co-optation assures that there is no competition," he says. Letta looks back with envy at the 1968 generation, which had demographics on its side. "Then the country was young, so the political orientation and interests were focused on the young," he says. "But today, the '68 generation is still in complete control."
Guia Soncini, 33, a columnist for the women's magazine supplement of Corriere della Sera and for Il Foglio, is less forgiving than Letta. She says an unspoken complicity across the generations is the key to understanding Italy. "By definition, power is not something I can give to you," she says. "The 30-year-olds must seize power — and why don't they? Because they're comfortable with how things are. In America, you move out of the house even if you don't have a full-time job. In Italy, you say you won't leave until you're earning thousands a month." Soncini pauses over her pasta all'amatriciana, recalling compliments on her success from veteran colleagues: "'Look at you. You're so young,' they tell me. Oh please! The people who've really made a mark on history were already dead at my age!"
Developing the potential of a Giotto requires masters with the wisdom and magnanimity of Cimabue. Even if Italy's under-40s were to push harder for responsible roles, Italy's old guard — in virtually every field, from academia to entertainment — shows few signs of ceding space to them. Some tactics for hoarding power are part of unwritten custom, such as the infamous raccomandazione, a system of recommending candidates that in other cultures could be a good-faith job reference, but in Italy often reflects political patronage and outright nepotism. And other structures that block renewal are fixed by law: closed professional societies for everyone from notaries and architects to journalists and taxi drivers help ensure that co-optation and complicity are the only way to get in. Last year Soncini, one of Italy's sharpest popular-culture writers, failed her required exam to enter a journalists' guild. That means a reporter who jets off to interview the likes of Madonna and Jack Nicholson is not officially a journalist in Italy, and has no right to basic union benefits. Soncini waves away campaign promises by the center-left to abolish the closed shops. "They'll never do it," she says. "They're the privileges of the caste, and those who have managed to get inside will do whatever it takes to defend their privileges."
Restrictive social and professional structures manifest the Italian tendency toward a weak state, says Giuliano Milani, a medieval historian at Rome's La Sapienza University. Notaries established such societies in 12th century city-states, and attorneys followed suit two centuries later, as a way to guarantee people services that the government could not provide. But what had a logic in the past is an anachronism today. "Everyone has as their point of reference their own boss, not the client," says Milani. "It is a system based on admission, which prizes obedience over individualism. So you end up being paid for what you are, not for what you do."
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