ABSTRACT
Italy has always been viewed as a country rich in paradoxes and contradictions (Negri and Sciolla 1996) Since the beginning of the 1960s, Italy has undergone a series of ‘economic miracles’, so called because they were periods in which economic growth exceeded 8 per cent of GDP. Amongst the leading industrial countries only Japan managed growth rates of a similar nature. In 1950 the per capita income of the Italians was 33 per cent of that of the USA, in 1993 the figure had risen to 73 per cent. Despite this picture of economic success, Italy has never been taken seriously as a major economic power by the other advanced industrialised countries. The primary reason why Italy has always ‘punched below its weight’ is that the ‘miracles’ which have taken place in the economic system have not been matched by similar miracles in the politicoadministrative system. Political scientists use the term ‘political lag’ to denote the persistence of anachronistic political practices in a modern economy and political lag in Italy has given rise to many of the paradoxes alluded to here.
