ABSTRACT
A recent cartoon shows an Italian looking at himself in a mirror and saying, “Italians are extraordinary people…. I wish they would just be ordinary.” Once the center of the Roman empire and today one of the world’s seven most industrialized countries, Italy presents a puzzle: so many aspects of its social life contrast with its advanced economic status. For example, Italy ranks thirty-fifth among 133 countries in the 2003 Corruption Perceptions Index. It is also home to the mafia. Italian governments are among the world’s least stable, having changed fifty-seven times in the last fifty-seven years. The world’s five hundred largest corporations include only twelve Italian firms.
