02/03/2014 12:01Italy has one last chance with Matteo Renzi - or the clowns will be back in charge - Telegraph

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Italy has one last chance with Matteo Renzi - or the clowns will be back incharge

Italy's new Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is being seen as the country's final hope. He musttackle an economy which is the real Achilles' heel of Europe

Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi speaks during a confidence vote at the lower house of the parliament in Rome Photo:REUTERS

By Christopher Duggan

12:58PM GMT 26 Feb 2014

Not for the first time, Italy has looked to a young, charismatic leader, untainted by previous politicalmistakes, for salvation. For some, Matteo Renzi is the country's final hope.

Italy has been there before, of course. Both Mussolini and Berlusconi played on similar images tobolster their popularity. And 'technocratic' experiments, such as that of Mario Monti, have aimedsimilarly to bypass the mudded waters of mainstream politics.

But Renzi's rise owes as much to a failure of all other options as to his personal traits. The Italianelectorate has become increasingly sceptical about the capacity of the state to deliver crucial change.In such circumstances, for many, another media-friendly leader has become the only option.

02/03/2014 12:01Italy has one last chance with Matteo Renzi - or the clowns will be back in charge - Telegraph

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Silvio Berlusconi's appeal to the electorate lay in his claim that Italians should trust themselves andtheir way of doing things. The state, he claimed beguilingly, was the problem; civil society thesolution.

The failure of Berlusconi has left Italians looking for a leader with a new vision. The task is not to rollback the state, but to implement a broad programme of effective state-led reforms. Renzi certainly hascharisma. He is energetic and fast talking, exuding a determination to 'scrap' the political habits of thepast. Heaven knows his country needs something. Never mind Greece or Spain – Italy's economy isemerging as the real Achilles' heel of Europe and desperately needs momentum.

Many Italians recognise that the manner of Renzi's ascent to power invites only cautious optimism. Hehas no mandate from the electorate, and far from looking to cash in on his popular appeal, and callquick elections, he talks of wanting to see out the current parliamentary term. This means agovernment with the same coalition forces that condemned Enrico Letta's premiership to inertia andeventual collapse.

Italy has faced a continual struggle between aspirations and reality in the past. The root cause of manyproblems is the profound disjointedness of civil society, an issue which existed similarly a centuryago. The continuous upheavals of the twentieth century have left Italy short of an embedded liberalculture; and a reluctance to confront squarely past failures has papered over serious vertical andhorizontal fractures running through society. With liberalism weak, the polarising impulses of 'faith-based' ideologies that dominated the country for much of the 20th century persist.

In such an atmosphere, words do not translate easily into results. Plans for reform founder onsubterranean reefs of resistance from those disinclined to sacrifice their beliefs, or their interests, tosome strong sense of the greater good. Unions, small and large businesses, professional bodies,bureaucrats, the Church, the courts, and regional and local administrations find themselves competing,with often scant willingness to compromise, in an increasingly fraught social and economicenvironment.

In much of the South, organised crime dominates the labour markets.

The dangers facing Renzi are accordingly enormous. His credibility in the eyes of the electorate – andespecially the angry and increasingly despairing ranks of the unemployed young – will depend on hisability to deliver real change, and fast. The deals he has struck with Berlusconi and the New CentreRight have set alarm bells ringing as to whether he really can be a new broom. Already, in a sense, heis on borrowed time. He needs to find an alchemical formula to turn charisma into substantive

02/03/2014 12:01Italy has one last chance with Matteo Renzi - or the clowns will be back in charge - Telegraph

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reforms.

If he fails it is hard to see where Italy can turn. Waiting in the wings are only populist clowns – andthe country, and Europe, needs far more than that.

Christopher Duggan is Professor of Modern Italian History, University of Reading

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