Italy's Misruling Class

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Yet Italy's political class seems more concerned with self-preservation. "The word accountability doesn't exist in the Italian language," says Ivan Scalfarotto, 41, who left Italy in 2002 for a banking career in London. Before the 2006 general election he tried to break into Italian politics by running against Prodi in what was billed as an open primary for leadership of the center-left Union coalition. But despite his rapidly spreading support among young people, the center-left establishment shut him out of any future role for having tried to spoil what was intended as a coronation for Prodi. Scalfarotto sees the immobility of the Italian workforce mirrored to especially ill effect in politics. "Whether you win or lose an election makes no difference," he says. "None of the ruling class ever goes away."

That inertia has a history. Venice Mayor Massimo Cacciari says Italy has still not recovered from the implosion of the major political parties in the early 1990s in the wake of a nationwide bribery investigation. "It was a moment of crisis, like at the end of a war when you need a brave response. That didn't happen," says Cacciari, who is also a noted philosopher. "Since then, we've had an infinite transition, a continuous passage into the next phase."

During Berlusconi's high-drama reign, the billionaire's oversized personality and the much-debated conflicts of interest between his political career and his business concerns used up a lot of oxygen. But as center-left leaders and foreign observers obsessed over what they called the Berlusconi anomaly, they lost sight of the more fundamental anomaly that divvying up power seems to be both the means and ends of Italian politics. Berlusconi, who came to office promising to liberalize the economy in his own image, was reduced to cutting backroom legislative deals to keep his allies from jumping ship. His five-year hold on power reflected his masterly survival skills rather than a compelling vision for change. From Day 1, Prodi showed a similar focus on survival — for example, by including a record number of ministers and undersecretaries in his government in a blatantly wasteful attempt to keep all nine parties of his coalition content.

With the public's sense of disillusionment deepening, the ruling coalition's approval rating plummeted 12 points to 34% in June. Since then, multiple threats of government crisis have come and gone, the former chief spy has threatened to spill 30 years of state secrets, and the government's bumbling attempt to privatize failing state carrier Alitalia has disintegrated. The government points to its attempt to open the market for taxi drivers and other autonomous workers as a great achievement in the face of wildcat strikes and street protests. But the purported reform has been so watered down that it has yielded almost no additional working licenses in the targeted sectors.