The Sunday Essay: The state of Italy

Many thanks – and congratulations – to Tim Hedges for providing the first Sunday Essay.  Thanks also to every other CoffeeHouser who sent in a submission.  If the various authors don’t mind, we’ll consider some of those submissions for future Sundays.  If any other CoffeeHousers would like to submit an essay, please click here for further information – Pete Hoskin 

Italy has had more written about it in the European and American press this year than at any time since 1994 (the year of the ‘mani pulite’ clear out of the old political order and emergence of Berlusconi as a political figure). The reason is Berlusconi’s third government, elected in April with a working majority: the foreign media cannot believe that a modern democracy would elect such a person. The reason they have is that the Italians, dangerously late and with great reluctance have come to realise that there must be change. There was not a wide choice of reformers on offer; in fact the choice was the possibility of reform (no more than that) from Berlusconi or more of the same from the Left, and looked at in these terms the choice was encouraging.