A walk along the streets of Pompei is an eye-opener: there are bars, laundries, bakeries and hotels. The bigger houses have extensive gardens, central heating and a large number of rooms, some adapted for summer living and some for winter. There is an air of civilized prosperity about the place that shook my belief in the linear advance of civilization from the Stone Age to today. A look at a reconstruction of a medieval town shows how far things can slide in a thousand years.
I can remember being taught that the tiny suits of armour in the Tower of London show clearly man’s inexorable rise from the puny specimens of the Middle Ages to today’s strutting six-footers. Imagine my surprise, then to find that the Roman army’s great reformer, Caius Marius, dropped the height qualification for legionaries to 5 foot 10 inches; up to the second century BC they had been taller. A surprise, too, to read that the Romans were apprehensive when they first encountered the Celts living in the Po Valley. The Romans were alarmed at the size of the Celtic warriors – 6 foot plus, presumably, and, since the Celts went to war with their hair white-washed to stand upright like a horse’s mane, adding to their height, and often fought stark naked but for a little woad, Roman consternation is understandable.
I’m sure that Cicero, that champion of the Roman Republic, would have been appalled to learn that the lessons of history were lost on his successors. Rome, which abolished its monarchy in favour of a republic, had learnt early that stability comes with franchise, not through dictatorship, yet this didn’t stop Octavian from establishing himself as emperor and abolishing the republic.
Later the emperor Caracalla, who inherited an empire where only Roman citizens paid tax, had the great idea of making everyone in the empire a citizen. Now he could, and did, tax everyone. Money flowed in and Rome, which he found in brick, was rebuilt with marble. The great baths that bear his name were a product of this new cash inflow. Of course things happened slightly slower then, but within fifty years the complaints began: ‘How odd it is to see a Roman face these days in the Forum; nowadays one sees only Numidians, Dacians, Celts, Germans and Mauretanians.’ Ah, the cycles of history. Two millennia later the British Empire had the same bright idea – make them all British citizens. And then, before long, those same citizens were seeking residence at the heart of the empire.
Looking back through history, it is clear that the argument between the advocates of empire and the advocates of local, ethnic independence has never been resolved. Before the rise of Rome Italy was divided into areas which were clearly defined, but for minor border skirmishes. In the north-east there were the Ligurians, in the Po Valley the Celts, to the south the Etruscans, south of them the Latins, then the Samnites, with the Greeks occupying the far south and Sicily. Between these major blocs, there were minor states such as the Osci, the Volsci and the Sabines. From 1500 BC to 500 BC there was some stability. However, the later dominion of Rome over most of the Mediterranean basin brought much greater prosperity, not least because piracy on the sea was virtually ended, there were no borders, and a common currency made trade easier and more profitable. Empire seemed the way forward.
From the break-up of the Roman Empire until the Middle Ages individual states traded and fought. And then, in the sixteenth century, the imperialist drive began again. The British Empire was in the ascendant. Since its demise we have seen the rise of the American Empire, and the disintegration of the Russian. The former Soviet states are currently debating among themselves what the Italians argued about at the time of Dante: empire or loose confederation.
By the Middle Ages Italy had evolved into a patchwork of city-states, each with its own history of trade and war, of rights won and liberty defended. Some of these states were rich and powerful: Milan, Venice, Genoa and Florence. Others were less strong, but maintained their integrity by the politics of The Prince and the arm of a powerful friend. A look at a map will show that these mighty states, whose trade routes stretched from the Hanseatic Baltic states to the Orient, all lie to the north of Rome. These city-states, although headed by a prince or a duke, had governments that shared power between the head of state and other citizens such as nobles and merchants. They were by no means universally enfranchised democracies, but the citizenry had a voice in the running of the state and the pursuit of their common weal.
The great debate among these states in medieval Italy was between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. To simplify the complexities of this period, the Guelphs supported the rights of the city-states to a separate existence, while the Ghibellines were supporters of empire – that is, of a super-state combining all the city-states, with the supposed benefits of greater stability and trade. Drawing on the history of the Hellenistic city-states 2,000 years before, the Ghibellines pointed out that had Athens, Sparta, Macedon and the smaller states become one pan-Hellenic state, undoubtedly their history of subsequent subjugation would have been different. The parallels with the Italic states were irresistible – there was a common language, a common history and culture. It made sense to unite for the greater good. In the end the city-states retained their individual identities and flourished. It is no accident that the great names of the Italian rinascimento were from the north. There the fire that drives a man to fulfil his personal destiny was not repressed and dampened by feudal authority. A citizen could consider himself an equal amongst equals – in theory at least – and not subject to the whims and caprices of a king.
These are, of course, gross generalizations, but not misleading ones; Dante, Mantegna, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Galileo and Bernini, to pick a few at random, were all from city-states. It cannot be unfair to suggest that it is the way of ordering society that produces these results rather than random chance. The suffocating repression that allowed the trial and conviction of Galileo Galilei had far-reaching effects upon Italian cultural life. The fire of science and learning that had burned with such intellectual brilliance ran from the dousing. When inquiring minds could no longer speak in universities for fear of censure, they took the only course open and fled to the Low Countries. Italy’s pre-eminence in art and science waned. Anything of importance was now conceived far from Italy; the Protestant countries became the blast furnace for the displaced fire.
From such generalizations I would conclude that man functions at his best when unchained. His fulfilment becomes the wealth of the state. The south of Italy was ever chronically poor and yet was, on the whole, more ordered. Observation of this paradox prompted Adam Smith to remark that individual wealth, despite itself and without intending to be so, is of benefit to society as a whole. The history of the north juxtaposed with that of the south would seem to confirm this.
It would be obtuse not to recognize that to work a flat alluvial plain is easier and more profitable than to terrace a mountainside. Clearly, geography was on the side of the Po Valley farmers, whose produce was the basis of the later wealth of the northern states. Curiously, to this day the mainstay of southern Italy’s economy is agriculture, even though the land is mountainous, top-soil is sparse and water scarce. Surely it is here that manufacturing industry should be sited. So obvious a point as this was spotted even by the government, who set up the Cassa del Mezzogiorno, a kind of industrial development authority, whose function was to place industry in the south. It has for the most part been an expensive failure. The southern workers took days off to tend their land, livestock or harvest, disrupting assembly lines without a thought. Creation of wealth does not form part of the cultural values of the south; centuries of feudalism are deeply engrained. It is still the north that makes most of the money that runs the Italian state – its people still have the drive that history has bequeathed.
The perceived disparity of wealth generated by the north and the south, despite government attempts to play it down, has caused a new political force to emerge – the northern Lombard League. It aims to divide Italy into two, although the exact point of demarcation is not quite clear. Historically, the divide would be to the north of Rome, creating the northern super
-state beloved of the Ghibellines, while the feudal south would be left to its own devices. The League has ample ammunition: the Cassa del Mezzogiorno itself has been cynically exploited, enriching a few, but leaving a legacy of empty factories, job-promises never fulfilled and industrial machinery paid for but never materializing. Southern financial scandals are legion, adding grist to the Lombard League’s mill.
Garibaldi’s greatest triumph, persuading the self-determining states to believe in the power of unity, creating a unified country that could hold its head high among the nations of Europe, resulted in the state we now call Italy. It is a young country; at the age of eight I met an old man who had lived in the Papal States as a boy. The links to the past are far from remote. Unification was a creature of its time: the Germans were united as a nation, a new world order was looming with the coming century’s end. It’s tempting to draw parallels with this fin de siècle.
The difference appears to be that we have now reached the other end of the pendulum’s swing. Separatism is on the march again, people are wondering if a centralized monolith of a government is the best arrangement for protecting the rights of individual citizens. The debate continues apace in the Balkans.
Vestiges of the culture of the northern city-states have been incorporated into modern Italy with its four levels of government – national, regional, provincial and local. What is not often recognized outside of Italy is the amount of power wielded by the comuni. It is possible to live one’s life having recourse only to the town hall for matters concerning the state. Here one applies for planning permission, licences to trade, birth and death certificates, residency, nationality and for the plethora of forms that a citizen is obliged by the state to fill in. As a result of this devolution of power, local preoccupations, prejudices and interests survive and co-exist with those of the central authority, and for most Italians what matters is government in the town hall, not Rome.
Throughout the debate leading up to the 1992 general election in the United Kingdom there were endless references in the press to proportional representation and to how badly it worked in Italy. It was pointed out that the Italian system produced governments of multi-party alliances – coalitions cobbled together that were the antithesis of stable government. This misses the point of the Italian system entirely. Where government really matters, in the town hall, the largest party gets twelve council seats, the opposition three, ensuring stable, single-party government. To the vast majority of Italians going about their daily business, the government in Rome is an irrelevance. This is why more energy is expended on local politics than on national, and why no one in Italy cares very much about the merry-go-round of alliances and coalitions in Rome.
Unlike the British system of local government, where what powers remain are being constantly eroded by the centralized state, Italian comuni are well funded and largely autonomous. Whereas in Britain no one bothers to vote at local elections, in Italy they are the most fiercely contended, with a turnout of above 80 per cent most of the time. More machiavellian plots are hatched to elect a town mayor in Italy than a prime minister in another European country.
It is possible that so diverse a country as Italy would not have survived as an entity without this devolution of power to the comuni.
8
Bribesville
Politics in small villages is, as I have said before, serious business. It affects the pocket. I have little knowledge of regional or national politicking, but close to home, at local level, I have seen it at work.
To put it into some kind of perspective, in Italy every town that has the designation of comune has an elected council. Whether a town is a comune or not has more to do with history than its size. It’s a little like the 1855 classification of Bordeaux grands crus: in theory there is re-classification, but in practice precious little. I have been told that there are comuni of less than 200 people near the French border, each with their elected town council, whereas many new towns with many thousands of inhabitants are administered by another town which traditionally governed the area. Once upon a time these tiny comuni were large enough to merit their classification. Today, even though their population has dropped, they retain their title and rights.
Being a comune gives a town advantages: it becomes responsible for its own administration. Large sums of money come from central government for local services, such as roads, schools, sewerage, water supply, rubbish disposal and local policing. These funds, which are considerable, are managed by the elected representatives. In some cases, such as after the 1984 earthquake which hit the Comino Valley at 7.4 on the Richter scale, the funds allocated for rebuilding are enormous – Gallinaro alone received over £7 million. Being in a position to affect how this money is spent is clearly important.
Let us take a typical, but fictional, town in the valley, which we will call the comune of Comino, and look at the mathematics of an election there. The fictional Comino has an official population of 1,000, of which some 700 are voters. A large number of these voters will not actually live in the village; they will live elsewhere, but are kept on the register because funds are allocated from Rome on a per capita basis. I have no figures for individual towns, but officially the Comino Valley has 26,300 inhabitants, whereas the USL, the local health authority, has 18,666 individuals on its books. Since this is the number of people entitled to free medical assistance, you can be sure it represents all living souls in the valley. Bearing this in mind, let’s be generous and say there are 650 voters. Of these, past experience tells us, only some 500 will bother to vote. Now we can see at once that what we need for an absolute majority in an election is 251 votes, although if more than two parties present themselves, we could manage with less.
The system at local level works on lists – the Socialists will present a list of councillors to the electorate, as will the Christian Democrats, the Republicans and the ex-Communists. The list of candidates of a given persuasion can be voted for en masse, or individually in order of preference using a system of proportional representation.
Suppose I am a Socialist, and I head the Socialist list for election. I need 251 votes, and I have eleven others on my list. If each candidate can bring twenty-one votes, I’m a winner. It is important therefore that I pick as candidates for my list people who are either popular, or have large families. What I don’t need is two people from the same family, unless I really can’t help it. They would only be bringing the same votes. Ideally my list will include candidates from the different parts of the town, again ensuring votes are not duplicated. Administrative ability is obviously not as important as the ability to bring a block of family votes. Therefore I pick my list from all the major families in the village. This suits my purposes and also that of the families, since they will now have a representative on the town council should my list be elected.
After the election, the winning party gets all twelve candidates on its list elected to the council; the mayor, the vice-mayor and three assessori, or administrative officers, are then selected from these councillors. The party with the second largest vote becomes the official opposition, with the three members of their list who topped their poll elected as councillors. This puts the winning party in a strong position, since their four-to-one majority is built into the system.
You might think that this sort of majority would be plenty for anyone to govern effectively, but some valley politicians don’t see it that way. In the fictional Comino it has been known for the ruling party to set up its own opposing list at the election – a few trusted friends pretending to be an opposing party when in reality they are not. If they succeed in getting elected, as they did twice, then the mayor controls not only his own list of councillors, but also the three on the fake opposition. In this way there can be no tales out of school, since all the councillors are equally implicated. Even if the fake opposition does not get elected, it still serves the very useful purpose of splitting the real opposition’s vote. What makes this all such fun is that the huge number
s of political parties that Italy is famous for are probably just manifestations of the same few.
On the face of it, this electoral system seems straightforward enough, but the fact that a proportional system is used means that a fair amount of horse-trading during the elections can be undertaken. Suppose it suited my purposes better to have the ex-Communists as official opposition to my own Socialists; I could instruct some of my most trusted supporters to allocate some of their voting preferences to selected ex-Communists. This takes no votes away from my party, but gives perhaps crucial transfer votes to the individuals that I want to help on to the town council. The cost of this help can be agreed beforehand – perhaps support for a municipal project that would benefit from no opposition. This sort of bartering is not unique to Italy; any country can boast of similar dealings. Where Italy begins to differ from the rest is in the immediacy of the relationship between the electors and the elected.
Because the Italian system of self-help through family networks is so well established, a town councillor who is elected by a block family vote will owe his primary allegiance to those who elected him. The idea that a councillor is elected for the communal good – for all the citizens, irrespective of whether or not they voted for him – is not a prevalent one. Sometimes to the untrained eye the administration appears to be unbiased and generous to its opponents. It is unlikely to be quite as it appears; either the opposition is one only in name and is in fact one of us, or it is a genuine opposition whom we wish to court. A careful administration can go on increasing its votes after each election by doing overt favours for members of opposing parties. This works in part by incurring gratitude, but also by leaving in the minds of opponents’ supporters a suggestion of collusion, thus weakening their position.
North of Naples, South of Rome Page 11
