Crisis and Transition in Italian Politics

The period since 1989 has witnessed dramatic changes in Italian politics. These have placed Italy under an intense international spotlight for the first time since the crisis of the 1970s when the country was popularly portrayed as the 'sick man of Europe'. This book analyses the last decade and a half of Italian political development through the prism of the changes of the early 1990s and identifies the deep trends of political change in Italy's transition beneath the ephemera of day-to-day political life - the focus of much current analysis. A political system emerges that is both dynamic and sclerotic, adaptable and blocked, and with a surprising degree of flexibility alongside institutional inertia.

Martin Bull is Professor of Politics, University of Salford, United Kingdom and, in 1996-97, visiting Fellow in Political Science at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. Martin Rhodes is Senior Research Fellow in the Robert Schuman Centre, European University Institute, Florence, Italy.