In this anniversary edition of ‘il Mulino’, the journal and its content receive a makeover, with crises in democracy taking centre stage. Including the search for: honest liberal politics; sanity in party politics; and a post-austerity, green and mutual European Union.
On its 70th anniversary, il Mulino reflects on democracy’s vulnerability in the post-Cold War period due to the disintegration of economic and political certainties. Faced with this profound crisis, the journal’s editors have called on intellectuals to ‘unearth the cracks that have not yet widened, in order to prepare remedies.’
The storming of the Capitol last January was an important test. While few would want to legitimize the violence of insurgents, dismissing Trumpism as a pathology and labelling its followers as a ‘basket of deplorables’ would be too simplistic. The mainstream explanation for the rise of authoritarian populism ‘relies almost exclusively on psychological and moral flaws rather than on social and economic phenomena that erode democracy’s foundations,’ writes Mario Ricciardi. Liberalism must relinquish its neo-tendency to exercise power if it is to rediscover a normative dimension and principles of justice that support emancipation.
Party politics
The decline of parties as the core of political life is a phenomenon common to all mature democracies since the 1980s. In Italy, before the mani pulite (clean hands) corruption scandal in the 1990s, ‘parties were untouchable totems, because they embodied democracy, daughter of the Resistance movement,’ writes Piero Ignazi. However, both a returning Silvio Berlusconi and the Five Star Movement have since built their consensus on contempt for party politics.
Nevertheless, parties are still the ‘masters of play’ despite their long-lasting crisis. Mario Draghi’s technocratic government has been appointed to solve a political deadlock and enjoys temporary cross-party consensus. ‘But party politics never sleeps for very long,’ writes Ignazi, ‘it can be put on hold for a few months but then, fortunately, re-emerges.’
Recovery EU
Austerity and national reforms have long been the EU’s main engine of convergence. It therefore came as some surprise when the union’s coordinated COVID-19 response tabled the foundation of both a green transition and debt mutualization. The risk that we will return to the previous status quo once the emergency is over is real, yet ‘never before have the conditions been so favourable for correcting the distortions of European governance,’ writes economist Francesco Saraceno.
Published 5 May 2021
Original in English
First published by Eurozine
© Eurozine
PDF/PRINTPublished in
Invest in insight!
After over 20 years of publishing for free, Eurozine needs your support to get through an exceptionally lean year.
Become a Patron and get exciting perks for your help!
Want to hear a human voice?
Listen and subscribe wherever
you get your podcasts.
Newsletter
Subscribe to know what’s worth thinking about.
Related Articles
Trump returns to the White House at a time when the global stakes are higher than ever. What can be expected from his unpredictable foreign policy, and what does this mean for international solidarity, geopolitical stability and democratic values?
Balkan realities
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU’s rhetoric on enlargement in the Western Balkans has taken an optimistic turn. Whether that continues depends on the European vote. But whatever the result, it is the political realities that count. And in the Balkans, these are far from consistently pro-European.