ABSTRACT
Given the confusion and divisions that have distinguished southern Italian society and politics for much of the modern period, one might wonder how such a situation could ever have come about in one of the leading nations of Europe. Arguably the least dispassionate subject of all popular debate in Italy is the questione meridionale or ‘southern question’. The broader discussion areas which underpin this, such as the economy, political reform, social justice and so on would be on the agenda in most other modern European countries. But in the context of southern Italy, these questions are coloured by perceptions of a deep north-south divide, criminality, corruption, regional autonomy, bureaucratic confusion, political extremism and judicial chaos. Related as many of these points may be, the complex arguments that surround them are often articulated from an accusatory perspective and rely on negatively stereotypical views, not all of which are uninformative. Indeed, even debates about the advantages and disadvantages of car licence plates which reveal the area from where it was registered, or which region has the best food and football team, or the pride taken in the incomprehensibility of one’s own dialect can almost be considered as interrelated issues and reveal layer upon layer of fragmented allegiances, indeterminable local boundary lines and ancient prejudices that lend a parochial touch to many such issues, including those of provincial, national and even international importance.1 On occasions, opposing views do find common ground, but where the ability to block is almost as important as the mandate to govern, genuine change – to date – has been rare. Among potential remedies, time and again the idea that desperate situations require desperate measures resurfaces. Otherwise, the option to put one’s trust in a more ‘remote’ control has been a perennial favourite, both for those who see the opportunities this affords local powers and for those who have little faith in them. But while much of the society appears to yearn for change of some sort, in other respects it remains profoundly conservative, resistant
to reform and tied to its variously perceived traditional values. Of the peculiar difficulties of reform in Sicily, the aristocrat Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa claimed that it is
like firing into cotton wool; the little hole made at that moment is covered after a few seconds by thousands of tiny fibres and all remain as before, the only additions being the cost of the powder, ridicule at useless effort and deterioration of material.2
