Toward a Federal Italy

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Abstract
The following series of short newspaper articles were written between September 1987 and the Summer of 1990. They were all predicated on the assumption that the growth of regional Leagues, the decadence of the traditional system of national parties, the emergence of “two contraposed Italies” and, finally, the consolidation of an openly federalist perspective, i.e., the crisis of Italian national unity and a possible federal solution to it, are all connected with the fact that Italians do not constitute an ethnic and cultural entity sufficiently homogeneous to sustain a centralized unitary State. In terms of the causes of the failures of the so-called Italian “regional State,” i.e., a State organized on the basis of relatively autonomous regions, and the progressive loss of authority of the traditional parties, two scenarios seemed likely: 1) that only a substantial, but unlikely, “privatistic” reform of the political system and of public administration could stop Northern Italy's march toward secession; and 2) that only a change in geopolitical relations and in the European international order could result in the “quasi-federal” order the country needs.

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