Italy Today. A Book about the Sick Man of Europe

The overview of critical issues affecting Italy and its socio-economic fabric is wide: from the new emerging mafias to the predicaments of the political system, from the ongoing presence of Fascism to the failed reconciliation of the years of terrorism, from the missed opportunity of the EU funding to the increasing regional economic gap, this work covers it all.

A natural question would be: Do they analyze Berlusconi? Not denying the importance of an analysis of Berlusconi and of 'Berlusconismo', Italy Today focuses on other considerations to avoid the strong, recurrent and easy temptation to place all of Italy’s faults on Berlusconi’s shoulders.

 

For the editors of Italy Today, Berlusconi’s figure, with all its contradictions and oligarchic tendencies, often diverts the attention from deeper and older issues affecting Italy, a country that has never been an outstanding example of  directly tackling national problems. We welcome this stand of focusing on Italy rather than on Berlusconi.

 

To conclude, this volume generally represents an example of different methodological frameworks–often cross-disciplinary–applied to the study of social phenomena, organizations, political parties, governments, economic systems, cultures and sub-cultures, and collective memory which are among the key topics in many of the social sciences and the humanities. Therefore the specific rationale behind Italy Today is that the Italian decline can be understood only through a systematic analysis of some concrete problems. Italy Today tries to give some diagnoses to Italy the 'sick patient.' After all, a sick patient usually gets better when given the right diagnoses.