La crisi dei partiti in Italia

A widespread accepted view about the Italian political crisis, which goes back to the end of the Cold War, is that the presence of the largest Western communist party halted any possible change in government and encouraged corruption. The article proposes an alternative interpretation and locates the origin of the current crisis to the 1980s, when Italian politics lost its reforming drive and the most entrepreneurial sector of civil society chose to abandon it in order to develop the so-called "Third Italy" composed of small enterprises and, self-employment.