If a pollster were to ask us which country we thought had produced Europe’s greatest artists, which had built its most beautiful cities and which had provided the world with it finest singers and composers, most of us would put Italy in first or second place. And if we were asked which country had developed the best cuisine, which one contained the loveliest man-made landscapes and which had produced the most stylish designs in clothes and motor cars and many other things, we would also rate Italy highly, perhaps in the first four or five, certainly near the top of the premier league.
Yet if we were asked which country was the best governed, which one was the least corrupt, which has been the most successful in dealing with the problems of organised crime, we would be unlikely to place Italy even in the second or third division. And our judgement would be endorsed almost universally. Take corruption as one example: according to the NGO Transparency International, Italy ranks in 69th place in the world corruptibility league, behind such countries as Georgia, Rwanda and Saudi Arabia; its score is closer to that of the bottom two, Somalia and North Korea, than to that of its neighbours, Austria and Switzerland.
The concept of ‘Good Italy’ and ‘Bad Italy’ is thus well-known to us all. In this engaging and stimulating book, Bill Emmott defines the difference between the two as:
A divide between selfish, closed, unmeritocratic and often criminal ways of doing things, and more open, community-minded and progressive ways.
In his early chapters he analyses the familiar bad — l’inferno politico and il purgatorio economico — before setting out in search of the Good, the real or potential paradiso.
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