In discussions about the fundamental political structures and customs of Italy, I have often been constrained to hint at a dirty little secret that most of the world doesn’t seem to know all that much about, or, when and to the extent that it does, has no idea of how this strange process works in an allegedly democratic advanced modern and highly industrialized society. It’s the system that Italians call “partitocrazia”.

What is partitocrazia? It can be very simply defined as any socio-cultural and/or economic system in which the fundamental decisions of day-to-day public and  private life are made not by individuals or corporations (as in market capitalist and mixed economies) nor by the government (as in communism and fascism) nor by religious leaders (as in theocracies), but by multiple and competitive political parties. This is not simple patronage, corruption and nepotism. These parties quite literally own the major industries, government ministries, television stations, unions
and anything else you can imagine.

Partitocrazia is the most appropriate label for a society when, in that society, it is necessary, before getting a job, switching careers, passing a state examination, obtaining citizenship, getting accepted into a university (public or private), getting a bank account, or almost any other activity you can think of, to belong to or otherwise contribute financially to the particular party which owns the factory, university or ministry that runs that aspect of public (or private) life.
This was the way things worked in Italy for more than forty years from the founding of the First Republic in 1948 until it’s collapse in 1994 with the Tangentopoli (Bribegate) scandal, the Clean Hands investigation and the mini-revolution which partially eliminated proportional representation and replaced it with a largely first-past-the-post majoritarian electoral system.

My grandfather, for example, was one of the most brilliant, cultivated (he spent his spare time teaching ancient Greek and Latin poetry and wrote many short stories and poems of his own) and highly respected lawyers in his town. Other lawyers would visit him on a daily basis to ask about the interpretation or application of certain parts of the Civil Code to their specific cases and he would respond by immediately citing the article, section and page numbers of the relevant acts or codicils, along with their generally-accepted interpretation, that these other, less knowledgeable, advocates would later try to explain to their clients.

But my grandfather had one huge and deadly “defect” which ended up bringing his family (wife and 8 children) quite literally to the point of starvation: he was an honest man of integrity who stuck by his beliefs regardless of the consequences. He was profoundly anti-fascist in his political outlook and it was this which originally motivated his decision to join the Party of Action. The Party of Action was a very unique hybrid party of liberals (in the sense of free-market liberalism) and socialist intellectuals of the highest caliber. There raison d’etre was to oppose all forms of totalitarianism, whether fascist or communist, left or right.

After the war and the final defeat of the fascists, the Action party continued to exist as one of the many electorally insignificant parties in opposition to the rapidly emerging hegemony of the Christian Democrats and the Socialists (eventually split into dyed-in-the-wool socialists and social democrats). Unfortunately for my grandfather, one of the first things that the ruling parties did was to institute the infamous system which I referred to above as “partitocrazia”.

My grandfather was absolutely unwilling to compromise his beliefs and become a member of the Christian Democrats. He refuse their offers (bribes and promises) and rejected their extortionist threats (“your children will not find jobs and your wife will die”) to get him to join. As a consequence, he lost all respect in the community, could not get any cases, and when he did find cases he was forced to take the poorest and most marginalized who could only pay him back with fruit, vegetables, and other forms of barter. This is what “partitocrazia” meant in practice for anyone who refused to cooperate in financing, campaigning, recruiting for and engaging in other activities (licit and illicit) which tended toward the benefit of primarily Christian Democratic party officials (from 1948 to 1984) or Socialists (from 1984 to 1994).

So why am I bringing this up now? Haven’t things changed since those days in Italy? Well, apparently not nearly enough….

According to an article published a few weeks ago in the newsmagazine “L’Espresso”, the right-wing party Alleanza Nazionale has been accused of engaging in what can only be called the resuscitation of partitocrazia.

A man named Antonio Xerry de Carro, high level manager for the Region of Lazio, has denounced the party and some of its top leaders (ex-Minister for Post and Telecom Maurizio Gasparri and his counselor, Franco Volpi) for engaging in “moral and economic extortion.”

His story begins in September 2003:

“[Filipp Zenobio] asked me to join National Alliance with the group of Minister Gasparri. In exchange for joining the party, I would have found work at the Post office for my wife,” he writes.

“Several days later, Zenobio introduced me to the councelor of the eighth municipal district Nicola Franco, who introduced himself as an intimate friend, if not a kind of stepson, of Minister Gaspari, and offered to give my wife a job at the Postal service. When I asked if it was necessary to present an application, he told me that it would be useless and that all hiring took place on his orders.”

“On the following 14 October, my wife was invited by the temporary jobs company Inwork to sign a contract for the job of receptionist at the local Post office.” The contract was “valid for three months”. “I was then ordered, under threat of the non-renewal of my wife’s contract, to make a cash contribution to the group of Minister Gasparri. Also, I was required to construct a circle of members of National Alliance which would consist of at least 21 members. I followed the orders becuae my wife seemed content with her new job. So I was constrained to pay for all 21 of the party membership cards on the 29th of December 2003.”

After the payment had been made, the situation was supposed to have been cleared up. Instead it got even more tangled. On the 15 of June 2004, “my wife’s contract was renewed for another four months” but in the meantime, “the demands for cash payments and for deeper commitment to the cause of National Alliance increased, with the ever-present threat of terminating my wife’s contract hanging over my head. At this point I was introduced to Franco Volpi, secretary of Minister Gasparri, and the regional councelor Fabio Rampelli, who informed me that it was they, along with Nicola Franco, who decided, every time that a contract is to be renewed, whether or not it would actually be approved. These decisions take place the day before the date of termination of the contract and are communicated to the company Inwork via fax from the ministry of a certain Carmine Scoglio, who they inform me is not only a manager, but the factotum of Inwork.”

“This is when I realized that the choices are not based on meritocracy or dedication to work, but exclusively on political loyalty and to contributions made under various pretexts to National Alliance. I was constrained to make cash payments directly into the hands of Fillipo Zenobio and Nicola Franco. I was also ordered to bring “public” to the conventions wherever Minister Gasparri, Ignazio La Russa and other members of the party made speeches.”

Finally, in September 2004, Mister de Carro switched parties, joining the party Italy of Values and abandoning that of AN. His wife was fired from her job two months later.

Partitocrazia apparently lives on in the “reformed” Second Republic of Italy…