ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationship between punishment and the political economy in contemporary Italy. It contributes to the debate on contemporary Western ‘punitiveness’ and its preconditions. Alessandro De Giorgi builds on Rusche and Kirchheimer’s sociological account of punishment, in Punishment and Social Structure, and their key claim that punishment varies with varying modes of production. Each mode of production possesses corresponding methods of punishment, and in order to understand the distribution of punishment need to look to the availability of labour. Nicola Lacey’s builds upon Peter Hall and David Soskice’s ‘varieties of capitalism’ (VoC) literature and the distinction it draws between liberal market economies (LMEs) and co-ordinated market economies (CMEs). In Europe these two models are represented by the UK as the paradigmatic LME, and Germany as the paradigmatic CME. LMEs and CMEs differ in terms of their ‘comparative institutional advantage’ and their ‘capacity for co-ordination’.
