Italy

A DISREGARD for the law is one of the challenges facing Italy today. Evidence suggests that a weak civic sense is one of the causes of this phenomenon. Often, and in many differing contexts and situations, Italians seem to place their own immediate advantage above the common interest. The state is viewed as an antagonist, or even as an enemy, rather than the expression of the common good. This attitude is presumably based in part upon the conviction that the state itself is far from being a law-abiding counterpart. The fact that what belongs to the public sphere is looked upon with skepticism, if not with open contempt, can be attributed to a number of factors.

One is the existence of an incompetent or corrupted central administration (metaphorically expressed by the relatively widespread practice of calling Rome, the capital city where the Italian bureaucratic apparatus reigns, a “whore”). A second factor is the deeply rooted patronage system (the exchange of favors between politicians and the electorate), and a third is the interpenetration between elements of the state apparatus and the world of organized crime. The lack of a strong civic sense and the consequent distance between the individual and the state, are particularly evident in the southern-most areas, traditionally a territory largely neglected by the state. Here, the rhetoric may reach its extreme formulation: nothing and nobody exist outside one's (extended) family.

Another concept, that may help to explain the existence of many areas where the border between legal and illegal activities is blurred, is the perception that the law in Italy has, more often than not, a value which is merely symbolic. In contrast to the[Page 451] common-law practice typical of the Anglo-Saxon countries, in Italy laws never lose their status as symbolic simply because they are not enforced. Therefore, it may not be entirely surprising that even law-abiding citizens may look skeptically upon legal rules or may treat them as an object for negotiation and compromise rather than as principles to be respected. This anti-state attitude has certainly not been weakened by the fact that the prime minister in the early 2000s, Silvio Berlusconi, was very much involved in finding all possible strategies (including the passing of personalized laws) to avoid the risk of being convicted of breaking a number of his country's laws. This deeply ingrained Italian cultural attitude must be borne in mind when seeking to describe Italian business organizations, organized crime. and the ties between them.