The Italian economy remains divided between a developed industrial north, dominated by private companies and enterprise, and the less developed, welfare dependent, agricultural south. The disparity at one time was so pronounced “millions immigrated to the Americas, northern Italy and in more recent times, to other parts of Western Europe. Economic conditions have now improved to the point that Italy now receives immigrants rather than sending immigrants outwards.” Even so, while nationally Italy’s unemployment rate hovers around 11 percent, the South has closer to a 20 percent unemployment rate. Some of this “disparity” can be explained by a thriving underground market, thanks in part to the mafia, and in part to the Italian mentality against government interference. For example, during the cold war, the mafia was notoriously anti-communist. Free enterprise is part of the basis of their organization and the black market in southern Italy is booming even if legitimate business, with its governmental controls, taxes and restrictions, is not. Some of this can be attributed to the immigration factor.
The Immigration Factor
Southern Italy has become a gateway for immigrants from a variety of countries to enter Western Europe. It is a big problem, similar to what we face in the United States, but its effect is quite a bit more overt in Italy.
Because the mafia is so integrally involved in politics and government, including the legal system, Italy has become the center of the “new” slave trade. ''If your choice is to die of starvation in your home country, being a slave in Italy could sound like paradise.'' In fact, “Italy, with its unpatrollable borders and rich underground economy, is the central receiving and distribution center of illegal immigrants for the entire European Union.”
It’s not just the Italian mafia, whose brutal tactics have a minimum of constraint to them in terms of honor and rules, but the “mafiosos” of immigrant groups as well which are involved in this. Chinese gangs reportedly traffic some 35,000 illegal immigrants through Italy every year.
The new gang on the block, said to be more feared than the Italian mafia due to the degree of ruthlessness, brutality and violence employed, is the Albanian mafia, which grew out of the country’s ten-year collapse. Albania has become the main conduit for illegal immigrants to get into Western Europe, being only 80 kilometers from the Italian border town of Puglia. In fact, Albanian Italians make up a small but significant proportion of the southern population, adding to the dichotomous atmosphere in Italy.
With all this immigrant traffic through its country, Italy has many diverse influences continuously “weathering” the Italian cultural fabric. This is often a chief contention of the northern Italians, who notoriously support an independent northern Italian state in the hopes of shaking the shackle of southern dependence along with its crime, poverty, immigrants, drugs, and “backward” thinking.
Though many immigrants use Italy only as a gateway to Western Europe, many others stay, adding to the poverty and unemployment levels, and serving to increase tensions between the north and south.
The Political Factor
Because of Italy’s rich tapestry of diversity, it is not always easy to find a form of government which is acceptable to the different regions. Though we may understand this when looking at our own vast country with so many diverse cultures it’s hard to remember them all, we don’t seem to have the instability which is ever prevalent in Italian politics. This is probably as much due to the fact that Italy’s 20 different regions, to some extent or another, have regional autonomy as to Italy’s rich history. Though they are relatively young as a country, various ideas and governmental constructs have been influencing the Italian culture for over 3000 years. Mix it with differing degrees of isolation, and you have the country of Italy, with forty different political parties vying for power at any given time.
As recently as post World War II, there was a time when not a single political regime lasted more than twelve months. Even as Italy became an integral member of NATO and the European Economic Community (later the EU) and successfully rebuilt its postwar economy (in the north, and to a lesser degree in the south), terrorist activities in the 1970s along with “revolving door” governments, political instability, scandal, and corruption throughout the 1980s and 1990s and into the present have continued to threaten the fragile stability of the country.
The current political framework is a parliamentary representative democratic republic with a pluriform multi-party system. In lay terms, there are no clear-cut separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches (parliamentary); the representatives are supposed to act in their constituents best interests, however they do not necessarily have to act according to the voter’s wishes (representative democracy); and all the different political ideologies are represented by multiple parties who are then each represented within the government (pluriform multi-party system). Here in the states we have bi-partisan representation, the green party and the independent party having little effect. In Italy, the socialist party will be represented by a small majority (maybe 3 percent), and the popular party will have maybe 1 percent, and the democrats will have maybe a larger percentage; but all the parties have a voice and a minimum representation. However, alliances must be made between parties for any effectual governance. This is what makes Italy’s system so unstable.
The small town you refer to is actually Palermo. The incident took place at the main cathedral downtown Palermo in 1282 during what has come to be known as the Sicilian Vespers. The French occupiers were Angevines soldiers and colons residing in Sicily, the Baleares islands and in Morea/Creta as the Angevine Duchy was trying to create a French-Norman regional power into the Mediterranean after the Fourth Crusade.
