Difference and the Italian
Parliamentary Coup

Stella Tang is a philosopher and political activist spending her time between Rome and Beijing

During his stay in Genoa, Nietzsche heartily expressed his admiration for the spirit of individualism that characterised the architecture of the city: houses of all colours and shapes fighting one with the other, trying to prevail by escaping urban monotony like the pest, boasting a balcony somewhat more extended than the neighbour's, a higher floor, a small turret, and any other expression of difference.

He contrasted this with the homogeneous spirit he distilled in the German residential neighbourhoods, with their identical houses duly lined up in endless rows of the same.

Ambition has famously been given a most concise definition by Julius Caesar - better be the first in the provinces than the second in Rome. And it is in Rome that we discover today the multifaceted nature of words such as difference and differentiation, such as multiplicity and pluralism, that always oscillate between the expression of the greatest freedom for the individual and the most direct political representation for the inhabitants of the polis, and the risk of factionalism, inimical division, persecution of private interest.

Political fragmentation in the Italian Parliament - a Parliament that, we should remember, with two chambers with identical powers exercises an enormous role in the life of the Italian parliamentary democracy - is a well-known phenomenon. More then twenty parties are actively represented in Parliament, and the governing coalition - depending on how it is looked at - oscillates between nine and eleven parties.

To the extent that his fragmentation points to a wealth of political offers, it bestows a peculiar pleasure on going to the ballot box in Italy. With a television system that is forced to give ample space even to the most minute of political groups, it often happens that the voter is able to associate himself with a particular group to an important degree. This is probably one of the reasons behind the greater political engagement of Italians as evidenced by both a reading of the official media and conversations robbed in cafes.

The actual political situation, however, offers a marked contrast to such hopes. Many Italian commentators, reflecting on the current state of affairs, repeatedly speak of a "spirit of 1992", referring to the period when, torn between corruption scandals and an economy gone out of control, a whole political system and the class it created were reduced to ashes. It was the end of the First Republic, with the disappearance of the Democrazia Cristiana (DC) - the party that effectively ruled since the instauration of the Republic in 1948, - the break-up of the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI), and the exile of important political figures such as former prime minister Bettino Craxi.

The sense of a "new 1992" is given its main thrust from the perceived weakness of the current government. With endless negotiation between coalition partners - further complicated by the feeble majority at the Senate (where the governing coalition can only count on two votes above the opposition led by Silvio Berlusconi) - the government is often deemed unable to govern. Faced with fundamental issues demanding immediate attention - such as a thorough reform of the Welfare State (which should include greater support for young "temporary" workers, as well as a stabilisation of the pension system), a new electoral system (the current system was voted in by the Berlusconi government alone and is deemed to be at the root of the current political uncertainty in the Senate), and a revision of the tax system - the government seem unable to reach an agreement between its many components and steer a viable way.

The perceived weakness seems to have given rise to an "assault" on the part of so-called "poteri forti" ("strong powers", such as Confindustria, the association of industrialists, the Trade Unions, the Catholic Church, etc.). Just recently Luca Cordero di Montezemolo - president of the industrialists and the man behind Fiat and Ferrari - publicly voiced a full-fledged political program, going well beyond his duties as president of Confindustria; the Catholic Church has never been so active as in the recent months, to the point of organising a nation-wide rally in Rome with the organised participation of over half a million people; Trade Unions are unusually assertive in their demands prior to political confrontation with the government.

A new offensive of the judiciary can also be noted. In recent months enormous amounts of phone "intercettazioni" of leading politicians were made public, causing repeated rows over what were, effectively, penally irrelevant statements made. This is coupled by confidential information being repeatedly "leaked" to (certain) newspapers going to fuel a largely groundless (groundless because based on partial proceedings of whole investigations) debate in the national media. As this article goes to press, we are in the midst of a new wave of accusations surrounding the major party of the left, the Democratici di Sinistra (DS), due to merge soon with the moderate centre-left party La Margherita to form the new Partico Democratico (PD). The character of these declarations is generally legally irrelevant, especially as they consist of "evidence" gathered for investigations now dismissed. We could probably call this a coup d'etat of Big Brother, with its accompanying mentality as new potere forte. As such, this has led to a significant feeling of political uncertainty in the national spirit, evidenced by current debates in the press.

It is then not surprising that trust towards the institutions of the State seems to be at an all-time low, with the apparent public rejection of the current political class (whose privileges and abuses have recently been documented by Gian Antonio Stella and Sergio Rizzo in their La Casta). Renato Mannheimer, writing on the pages of Il Corriere, directly links this political disaffection with the impossibility on the part of successive governments to carry through their proposed program of reforms because of extreme internal fragmentation, and their consequent failure to truly mark a difference in people's lives. Again, governments are seen not to govern.

Chinese thought has a millenarian aversion to political and social fragmentation; from the classics of Confucius to the writings of "liberal" Zhongxi. Words such as partiality and partisanship, and the thought of separate groups representing a particular "interest", have been vehemently condemned as a descension from the interest for the whole to that for the private. A party has always been understood as a clique, the representation of an interest as a demand for private gain. That this is a possible negative outcome of plurality is a thought that the current Italian situation insinuates. But it is in good company: the disappearance of the Polish nation over the 18th century has frequently been linked to the suicidal system of liberum veto, whereby any parliamentarian had the right to block legislation, effectively leading the nation to a stand-still. This illness may also turn out to affect the European creation, where the exploration of its full potentialities is blocked by a system not too dissimilar in ethos to that of 18th century Poland.

But history has also shown that the party can be not only a clique but the watchdog of disaster, the representation of a particular interest not the search for private gain but the act of giving-voice to a repressed subjectivity. What the Italian example paradoxically shows is that what is needed is not less but more plurality, if perhaps of a different kind. Systems must make decisions, must act and not merely react, legislate with a solid vision of the future, have impact. If, on one side, this can only be achieved by a greater cohesion of the governing forces (such as is the case in many European countries), this is not enough. The political forces (and one may rightly wish they be not reduced to merely two) must compete on the terrain of the future, offering truly alternative proposals that incite the necessary political interest on the part of its citizens. The prospect of a future competition between a Rudolph Giuliani and a Hilary Clinton, as well as the lack of any real left-of-centre alternatives for a Briton during the recent attack on Iraq, are worrying signs. If true democratic pluralism dies when exacerbated factionalism gains predominance, neither does it boost a healthy constitution when the ballot box is turned into a procedural reproduction of the same.

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