Justice, television and delegitimation: on the cultural codification of the Italian political crisis

Modern Italy ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (01) ◽  
pp. 108-115
Author(s):  
Roberta Sassatelli

Pier Paolo Giglioli, Sandra Cavicchioli and Giolo Fele,Rituali di degradazione. Anatomia del processo Cusani, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1997, 243 pp., ISBN 88–15–05713–7 pbk, 28,000 Lire.Recent developments in Italian politics, such as the emergence ofForza Italia, became possible only after a much deeper process had taken place, the delegitimation of Italian politicians. In the early 1990s, much of the political class which had dominated Italian politics since the Second World War was publicly exposed and removed from politics. The old parties of government, the Christian Democrats (DC) and the Socialists (PSI), were swept aside. What appeared to be a civilized evolution had its visible peak in the difficult struggle conducted by a few magistrates, the Milan-basedMani pulite(Clean hands) team, against political corruption. The so-calledTangentopoli(Kickback city) investigations have been indicated as the turning point of contemporary Italian politics. They certainly represent the moment when a rhetoric of ‘old’ and ‘new’ was divulged, when the Italian Republic began to be felt as a collapsing venture, giving an opportunity for change and reform which has not yet been grasped.

Res Publica ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-20
Author(s):  
Domenico Rossetti Di Valdalbero

In the last five years, the Italian political system registered its most important crisis. All parties, existing since the second world war, disappeared or were greatly transformed.  The main purpose of this article is to analyse the deepest causes of the first Italian republic's collapse, following some specific interpretations of ltalian political observers.L. Ricolfi bases his theory on the emergence of "Lega" and the return of laïque culture in Italy. The old christian democratic and communist parties will suffer the most from these changes.A. Sofri emphasizes the identity of northern regionalism between the "Lega" and the "Pool of Milan" ('Clean hands operation"). A real opposition emerges between the judges of Milan and the politicians of Rome.S. Romano and M.L. Salvadori prefer the historical approach: for them, the events of1990-1994 are very similar to what happened in 1922-1926and in 1943-1945. The absence of a pacific alternative and the "ideological war" among political forces produce the effect that every change in Italian politics implies an end of regime.L. Ornaghi and V.B. Parsi deal with the "values" of citizens which, very often, do not correspond to the values of old politicians. For them, a democracy for the political parties -as structured in the last 45 years- must give priority to a democracy for the citizens.


2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Sierra

This article examines the political formula of Romanestan as conceived by Ionel Rotaru (1918–1982), a Romanian refugee in France after the Second World War. Romanestan is the most visible aspect of an ambitious plan demanding rights for those labelled Gypsies throughout the world. This study is of interest because it sheds new light on the problems of social and political readjustment after the Second World War from the standpoint of racial exclusion. Rotaru’s project was both the response to longstanding historical racist aggression and also a crucial turning point in the formation of Romani ethnic identity. What makes its study interesting is that the formula of the Romanestan wove the right to exist of those regarded as Gypsies into a creative transnational political project. Based on classified documents, this article highlights the political nature of processes of ethnicization and assesses the performative power of symbols.


2000 ◽  
pp. 297-338
Author(s):  
Peter N. Davies

This chapter explores the underlying and long-term effects of the Second World War on the future of Elder Dempster and its relationship with West Africa. It focuses on the political and economic independence of West African colonies, and the resulting major changes in the structure and organisation of its trading areas, including the formation of independently owned shipping lines. The chapter describes the greater momentum of the establishment and extension of new ports at the end of the war, and reports the corresponding dramatic increase in West African trade. It concludes with an analysis of the decline in Elder Dempster’s share of West African trade, and provides a calculation of its profitability and success in the post-war era.


1990 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 653-684 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Jenson

AbstractThis article utilizes the “regulation approach” in order to rethink the origins and resolution of crisis. It provides an account of the political conflicts of the 1930s and 1940s which gave rise to a model of development in Canada which can be labelled “permeable fordism.” Rapid economic growth after the Second World War had specific national traits but these were based on wage relations and macro-economic policies similar to other countries which have been labelled fordist. The political compromise of Canada's “fordism” was, in contrast, quite different. The compromise was based on a new national discourse more than on one stressing the capital-labour relationship and organized by class-based parties. The article demonstrates how these differences were rooted in the political conflict of the 1930s and 1940s, the moment when the earlier model of development came apart around the challenges posed to Canadian federalism by the Depression and the Second World War.


Werkwinkel ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 93-122
Author(s):  
Willem Bant

AbstractIn 1949, the Dutch publishing house A.J.G. Strengholt’s Uitgeversmaatschappij N.V. published the novel Dorstig paradijs. Through the eyes of Evelien van Eerdhuysen, the young, Dutch, female protagonist, author Adriaan Hulshoff presented an image of postwar Curaçao. In general, Dutch reviews of Hulshoff’s novel were quite positive and mentioned, for instance, the realistic representation of the island. Reviews published on Curaçao were very negative. At the moment the novel was published, Curaçao was fully in the news, because of the deliberations about the political status of the Dutch islands in the Caribbean. The question can be raised whether the image of Curaçao presented by Hulshoff was widespread in the Netherlands and representative of the way the Dutch looked at their Caribbean colonial possessions. One of the reasons why the book got much attention had to do with the name of the author who was hiding behind the pseudonym Adriaan Hulshoff. Most probably it was the well-known female writer Jo van Ammers-Küller, who after the Second World War, was banned from publishing because of collaborating with the Germans.


Author(s):  
Mark Pittaway

Historical interpretation of Hungarian fascism has been shaped by the political divisions that followed its fall in 1945. Almost from the moment of the war's end, Hungary's left-wing political parties used their anti-fascist credentials to legitimize their political project for Hungary's future. From the end of the Second World War, through most of the socialist era, ‘Horthy fascism’ was described as the pursuit of territorial revision, and institutionalized anti-Semitism was held responsible for the tragedies of Hungary's painful entanglement in the Second World War and the murder of the majority of the country's Jewish population. The roots of both Hungarian fascism and the dominant neo-conservative ideology of the inter-war years lay in a polarization of politics that began in the 1890s, when conservative intellectuals responded to the growing mobilization of the left in the country's industrial centres and a greater assertiveness from non-Magyar speakers, who composed half of pre-war Hungary's population.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Vincent K.L. Chang

Abstract The recent surge in public remembrance of the Second World War in China has been substantially undergirded by a centrally planned and systematically implemented discursive shift which has remained overlooked in the literature. This study examines the revised official narrative by drawing on three cases from China's school curriculum, museums and formal diplomacy. It finds that the once dominant trope of “national victimization” no longer represents the main thrust in the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) rhetoric on the Second World War. Under Xi Jinping, this has been replaced by a self-assertive and aspirational narrative of “national victory” and “national greatness,” designed to enhance Beijing's legitimacy and advance its domestic and foreign policy objectives. By emphasizing national unity and CCP–KMT cooperation, the new narrative offers an inclusive and unifying interpretation of China's war effort in which the victory in 1945 has come to rival the 1949 revolution as the critical turning point towards “national rejuvenation.” The increasingly Sino-centric and centrally controlled narrative holds implicit warnings to those challenging Beijing's claim to greatness.


1963 ◽  
Vol 67 (634) ◽  
pp. 651-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. R. Heppe

For many years, studies of various light aircraft designs have been carried on by the Lockheed-California Company in search of a vehicle that had the potential of truly generating the “air age”—a vehicle which would perform a useful service to many people, in many jobs. Shortly after the Second World War, these studies were directed along the lines of present-day light aeroplanes, but were eventually discarded upon recognition of the limited utility of these vehicles when related to general public acceptance. However, in 1959, spurred by recent developments in VTOL craft, the Lockheed research team again raised the question, “Is it possible today to develop a vehicle of low cost and with sufficient utility to reach the mass market?”


Südosteuropa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-281
Author(s):  
Dubravka Stojanović

AbstractThe author comments on the political and economic options in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that started at the beginning of 2020. She revisits responses to the crises of the First World War, the Great Crash of 1929, and the Second World War, sorting them into ‘pessimistic’ and ‘optimistic’ responses, and outlining their respective consequences.


Africa ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Cinnamon

ABSTRACTThrough narratives of an anti-‘fetish’ movement that swept through north-eastern Gabon in the mid-1950s, the present article traces the contours of converging political and religious imaginations in that country in the years preceding independence. Fang speakers in the region make explicit connections between the arrival of post-Second World War electoral politics, the anti-fetish movements, and perceptions of political weakening and marginalization of their region on the eve of independence. Rival politicians and the colonial administration played key roles in the movement, which brought in a Congolese ritual expert, Emane Boncoeur, and his two powerful spirits, Mademoiselle and Mimbare. These spirits, later recuperated in a wide range of healing practices, continue to operate today throughout northern Gabon and Rio Muni. In local imaginaries, these spirits played central roles in the birth of both regional and national politics, paradoxically strengthening the colonial administration and Gabonese auxiliaries in an era of pre-independence liberalization. Thus, regional political events in the 1950s rehearsed later configurations of power, including presidential politics, on the national stage.


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