It also portrays a man who, as he enters office, puts tremendous energy into trying a — perhaps quixotic — attempt to straighten out Italian bureaucracy. In particular, Mussolini tries to balance the budget, not so much because he is enamored with a 19th century, liberal approach to public finance, but because he wants to establish his country as self-sufficient. He’s determined to make Italy great again, and he knows that beggars can’t be choosers.
Scurati’s novel can be read as a timely warning in a country where the conventions of parliamentary democracy are assaulted, day after day, by the two populist parties in government — the far-right League and the anti-establishment 5Star Movement. Talk of an incoming, new “fascism” is a certainly a blatant exaggeration. But there’s no denying that Italian politics is assuming a nationalist posture — something it has rarely done since it became a republic in 1946. [...]
Unlike in the past Rome has made no attempt to justify its higher spending as an extraordinary measure, to be offset by fiscal restraint in a future budget. Lax public finance is considered the new normal, not because of investments but because of new government giveaways. It’s this embrace of a reckless path toward insolvency that triggered the tensions with the Commission. [...]
This reasoning is echoed in Italy’s views on migration. Here, the complaint is that the country was left alone in managing its migration crisis, regardless of the fact it was supposed to be taking care of an external, European border. This may be an understandable grievance, but it’s worth noting that a large part of Italy’s problems with migrants is the result of its lax policies. After Italy put in place a tougher approach to migration, a sharp decline in the landings of migrants soon followed.
No comments:
Post a Comment