ABSTRACT
The set of investigations and criminal proceedings that go by the name Mani pulite without a doubt represents an event of utmost importance in Italian judicial, governmental, and political life. It is not that these investigations revealed and combated the diffuse phenomena of political and administrative corruption for the first time. This chapter views the investigations as a genuine judicial event, at the level of judicial procedure and the ability of the magistrates to restrain corruption working within their traditional, established role, in which successes previously had been much more limited. In this light, Mani pulite represents the struggle against political-administrative corruption. Corruption in public structures—understood here in the widest sense, that is, as the mixture and interlacing of private accords and flows of money for private ends to influence the procedures and decisions of the public administration. The indubitable success of the Mani pulite operation has certainly reinforced the overall position of the magistrature in the government organizational structure.
