This book offers a history of contemporary Italy from the collapse of Mussolini to the present, placing this major Euro-Mediterranean country in a wider geo-political perspective. It examines how Italian history and politics developed in relation to - and were shaped by - the international context, from the Cold War and NATO to the European integration process and the global challenges of 1989. Umberto Gentiloni Silveri highlights all major events, structural limits, contradictions and conflicts influencing Italian democracy and the political system until today. He explores the continuous tension between 'stabilization' and 'conflict', between the promise of an innovative and evolutionary representative democracy on the one hand and the constraints of a political system conditioned by structural limits and old contradictions on the other.
Author(s): Umberto Gentiloni Silveri
Series: Italian and Italian American Studies
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 371
City: Cham
Contents
Note to the English Edition
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: The Postwar Era
Summer 1943: A Theater of War
Democracy, Referendum, Constitution
National and International
“A Center Party Moving towards the Left”
Chapter 3: The Reasons for a Miracle
In the Golden Age
The Control Room
Striped Shirts
Détente, Council, Dialogue
Chapter 4: The 1970s
The Long 1968
The End of the Innocence
In mezzo al guado (At Mid-Stream)
The Historic Compromise and National Solidarity
Chapter 5: The Funeral of the Republic
Generation Against
The Longest Day
The Shadow of Moro
Riflusso (Disengagement)
Chapter 6: The Beginning of the End
From Confrontation to Conflict
A Slow Agony
A Strange Modernity
Duels without Winners
Chapter 7: The Collapse
Unforgettable'89
Tangentopoli
The Mafia and Politics
The Media and Power
Chapter 8: The Failed Transition
An Imperfect Bipolarism
Politics and Anti-politics
Old Vices and New Virtues
Eurozone
Chapter 9: Between Rebirth and Decline
A Difficult Normality
Twilight
The First One Hundred and Fifty Years
Europe and the Mediterranean
Chapter 10: Conclusions
Index
