ABSTRACT
Citizens deserve the government they get. This famous sentence can be interpreted in many ways. The politics of all political systems is always, more or less decisively, influenced–if not considerably shaped–by civil society. Not all citizens deserve the governments they get, but, especially in a democracy, most of them are responsible in several ways for the ascent to office of the various government coalitions, the quality of their performance and the overall conditions of the political system. The consequences for post-war Italian politics were highly significant. In the Cold War period, to be able to rely on flanking associations was an absolute political necessity for both the Christian Democrats and the Communists. Amoral familism has proved quite unlikely to transform itself and to become a solid ground on which to build a decent, strong society capable of pursuing its own goals without relying on political favours, even less so in those situations when serious socio-economic difficulties make their appearance.
