ABSTRACT
Southern Italy – the so-called Mezzogiorno – is historically the lagging region of the country, covering about 40 per cent of the national territory and hosting about 35 per cent of the national population (see Figure 11.1). The roots of this lag reach far back in history, but the two parts of the country grew farther apart in the nineteenth century, when the North underwent a partial industrial revolution while the South remained substantially feudal. With the unification of the country in 1861, the ‘Southern Question’ became a national issue (Cafiero 1996; Bevilacqua 1997), but it was after the Second World War that the Mezzogiorno was made the target of an exceptional public investment effort by the national government, turning into a paradigmatic case of regional policy. National policy for the Mezzogiorno was eventually terminated in 1992, and from then on was only partially substituted by European programmes and local development measures.
