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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
130945
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2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the early autumn of 2013 large minorities in Italy and the United States fermented crises that badly disrupted the government of the two countries. These cases were widely understood as instances of dysfunction in established democracies that would rarely be replicated elsewhere. However, while all the conditions that generated the crises are unlikely to be evident in other established democracies three important factors that caused the disruptions in the American and Italian political processes are also sources of political conflict in Britain. They are the powers of the second legislative chamber, the weakening links between parties and social groups, and the redrawing of electoral boundaries. All of them present problems for political reform in Britain, and understanding the role they played in the two political crises of 2013 is important for future reform in Britain.
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| 2 |
ID:
104310
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What's with these Italians? Every day Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi sinks deeper into a mire of sex scandal that portrays him, at seventy-five, as a partying old man fighting a rear-guard action on behalf of his libido. He has been on television, not to tell the nation how his government plans to deal with Italy's precarious public finances and anemic growth rate, but to denounce as defamatory charges against him of sex with an underage prostitute, and to insist that he has never paid for sex in his life.The episode involving Moroccan night club dancer Karima el-Mahroug-better known as Ruby the Heartstealer (in Italian, it's Ruby Ruba-cuori)-is only the latest in a string of racy stories about Berlusconi's private life, involving parties with young women at his various homes. In short, like the Italian male stereotype (as in, for example, Dino Risi's 1962 cult movie Il sorpasso), Berlusconi loves the ladies. But Ruby was seventeen when he is supposed to have paid her for sex; so in May (postponed from April because of commitments of state, like the Libya situation), he goes on trial in a Milan court. The age of consent in Italy is fourteen, but paying a prostitute who is under eighteen is a criminal offense.
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| 3 |
ID:
115090
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
October 15, 2011, was the day when recent Italian history changed course. After twenty years of Berlusconian torpor, Italians staged a large demonstration in Rome to voice their woes. It was not so much the "bunga bunga" sex scandals as the tangible perception of financial distress that drove citizens into the streets. Of course, there had been similar events previously in the Eternal City, most notably a recurring "No Berlusconi Day," but none had had such broad participation. There were families, youngsters, pensioners, blue and white collars, union representatives and entrepreneurs, all chanting and yelling. There were also some who wore black helmets and marched in columns, and some parading with a different uniform of hood and a scarf covering the face. It was just a minority, yet it was motivated enough to turn the half-million-people march into a long afternoon of urban warfare. A Carabinieri (military police) van burst to flames, as paving stones rained on police units. Seventy people had to be treated in the hospital. Television viewers were shocked at the Felliniesque image of a boy carrying a woman in his arms, then throwing her to the ground and kicking her head. It was a statue of the Holy Mary, stolen from a nearby church, and it broke into pieces under his assault.
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| 4 |
ID:
129418
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| 5 |
ID:
125030
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
ON FEBRUARY 24-25, Italy held an early parliamentary election, which saw the center-left coalition headed by Democratic Party leader Pier Luigi Bersani win the race and gain 55% of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies. But their slight lead in the Senate, with just five seats more than the center-right bloc's, has called into question the political survivability of the legislature, as well as the government to be formed by Bersani. For Italy, political instability is a familiar and ordinary phenomenon. During the past sixty-five years, 50 governments have succeeded one another there due to political crises. But for all that, the current early election may well prove to be a turning point in the country's political process, which in the last 18 years proceeded, according to Italian experts, under the banner of "Berlusconi-ism."
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| 6 |
ID:
112092
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The word'democracy' to be distinguished from the thing'democracy.' Removal by the Italian parliament of a corrupt and scandalous Premier for a respected, honest technician and a form of civil service government does not infringe the second category. Referendums give strength to a handful of already overmighty rich men controlling media outlets. Witness Fox Radio and TV and the poison of Glen Beck, also the virulent nationalism of the Murdoch and Desmond papers. Note the fifty plus year lag in enfranchising women in Switzerland, a self-evident democratic advance held back by 'the voice of the people' in successive referendums. Government should be free from populism and be run by educated, intelligent people both in parliament and the Civil Service. 'Yes Minister,' however amusing, has done us a disservice. I would trust a senior civil servant above a press lord any day of the week. Witness the good sense of the Upper House in its current informed and experienced composition. The Lords blocked Tony Blair's plans to by-pass Habeas Gorpus, refusing authoritarian government to an elected Premier with no sense of the rule of law or constitutional principle.
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