The different legacies of France and Italy
The different legacies of France and Italy
Spain did not actively participate in World War 2, but France and Italy, albeit on opposite sides at first, did. Why did their postwar destinies diverged so much?
“O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”
Just last week, while Italy was on the verge of yet another electoral turn, out of the blue I developed an interest in learning more about Charles de Gaulle. Many helpful friends and acquaintances pointed in various directions, at recent works by Biographers or at books that they deemed useful to provide a context to this man.
But after having followed their indications and delved into the chosen biography I started to wonder: what strange pale Moon had suggested that name in the first place, and at this time? After all, I am an history junkie and biographies are one of my drugs, yet apart of garden variety history I never had that itch before.
Then a possible intricate train of thought dawned on me. In the previous days, I had followed Italian political debates on general media and Internet, and I wondered: “Why are Italian politicians so drab?”
Make no mistake, in Italy we have our fair share of lunatics, bombastic people serving in government, and big personalities but none as far as I am aware of has had a radically different approach than his or her predecessors. Even the most famous and recent of them, Mr. Salvini, paid the piper by excising any geographical reference from the national party he built and admittedly grew to prominence: any geographical reference hinting at a change in the way the State operates has disappeared: good bye “Lega Nord” (north), hello “Lega per Salvini”. Moreover, even his most ardent supporters would not go so far to say he'd be able to produce his “certain idea of Italy”, in the way De Gaulle unevenly promoted his “certain idea of France”.
But what if I had been mistaking cause and effect? De Gaulle is very much a presence during the war in rebuilding not France, but the IDEA of France, and therefore not only he left behind a legacy exemplified by the word “Grandeur”, but a shared sentiment where a strong executive is not per se a bad thing. To abuse ancient history and Epic, as the (almost) eponymous hero founding the citizenship he popularized the Presidency as no one had done during the republican experiments.
Contrast that with Italy, which had almost the same experience at the end of the war: a mostly occupied country without an army of its own and a government in exile builds on the liberation and resistance movement a new “history” of the country, but while France has De Gaulle, we have a compromised King and an hodgepodge of local resistance and political heads, who come together after the Mussolini era to forge a new Italy out of the remains of the old one. Quickly both France and Italy set up a Republic.... and then we progressively part ways.
Our constitution, institutions and also religious bent encourage “drabness”, a spite towards “èlan”, that increases with the passage of time since under this parameters less and less persons in the available pool have had to pass muster as individuals. Conformity wins, in Italy, and while Berlusconi might be popular and meet some measure of success, no objective observer would deny that the “system” put up one hell of a fight against him.
With drabness comes another great classic, a philosophy of “indirection” or “Ch'i” , as Sun Tsu and John Boyd would point out. If the rapport of Italians with the rule of law is tormented is mostly due to the fact that the State, as the origin and enforcer of law, has an even more tormented rapport with rules itself. To name an example out of many, Italian regulation on “abuse of the law”1 practically says that the state can retroactively interpret rules in his favour whenever he wants and there's leeway. That, of course, is the polar opposite of the concept in common law where the party writing the contract has to see any intricate point interpreted against it as a general rule.
That I am afraid explains a couple of recent evolutions in Italy: why are we so close to China, if we are “Europeans”? Even the most ardent pro – China pundit should admit that the political systems are quite different on the face of it, and yet..... they are not, hence some of Italy's “liaison dangereuses” with cultures and countries that are quite similar in the way they function, like China (single party is the same as having many parties that are actually incapable or unwilling to change tack) or Iran (where the presence of “Velâyat-e Faqih”, the supervision on the Legal system by religious authorities, is quite similar to the relations between Italian State and the Vatican).
In that way, the secret agreement between the Vatican and China can in jest be defined as “a treaty made in Heaven”, and the lustful longing evident in Italy's stance towards China won't be remedied by a visit by any US secretary of State. Who knows, maybe the powers that be would want to be China's representatives in Europe, since the chances of recovering economically to the extent of rejoining the handful of states with an advanced private sector is increasingly unlikely.
Meanwhile, let's hope that our rate of descent into second tier countries is gentle enough to provide me with a comfortable old age.
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