This Aspen Junior Fellow Breakfast event saw the participants make a concerted effort to examine the individual challenges facing Italy through a broader frame of reference. It was noted that the long-term inertial forecast is one of a country that is aging and characterized by increasing levels of immigration, a widening North-South divide, the persistence of a detrimental public deficit, and insufficient productivity to maintain the level of prosperity hitherto achieved. This outlook, it was observed, feeds into a longstanding rhetoric of decline and defeat that is rife in Italy. The participants felt that a clear reading of the situation in Italy is often lacking due also to the limitations of the metrics used, giving rise to a need for an improved capacity for measurement and analysis. The end result of this is a long litany of major national issues, far more extensive than might be encountered in other countries such as Germany. Dealing with too many issues at once, whilst perhaps a commendable undertaking, was judged as overambitious and as undermining any strategy of reform. Moreover, it was seen as unrealistic to expect that Italy could find a solution to its problems by means of some sudden change of tack – some shock bringing about radical change – given that the system is complex, corporatist and fairly hamstrung by privileges which no one has any intention of relinquishing, albeit accompanied by a framework of solid governance at EU, national and local levels.
Those attending the Breakfast identified the key resources for a “forward-looking Italy” as residing in the three characteristics that the American sociologist Daniel Bell advocated for Western society, namely: being a liberal in politics, a social-democrat in economics and a conservative in culture.
It was suggested that a society that is liberal in politics is committed to re-examining the ways in which the country’s elites are co-opted: this with a view not only to supporting the fundamental recognition of merit, but also to setting a maximum age limit for certain leadership roles or for access to senior positions.
Moreover, a society that is social-democratic in its economic approach must strive to achieve a fair – rather than uneven, as appears to be the case in Italy – distribution of wealth, in order to enhance the general welfare of the populace. In the labor market, flexibility should be rewarded with an adequate level of security, not just in a financial sense, but particularly in terms of ensuring a level of dignity that enables those of working age to participate on an ongoing basis in society. It was stressed that whilst there might be young people who “are not at all bothered by a sense that they are no longer in control of their own destiny”, there are others who have ambitions for their future. It was argued that these young people need to assume collective responsibility, though their actions should be guided by an ethical approach.
Finally, it was observed that a society which is conservative in culture should nurture this vital resource for the sake of its own identity, cohesion, development and competitiveness. The view was posited that a society is nothing if it lacks an understanding of how it came to be and the keys to understanding the world. It was felt that, today, Italy is at risk of being deprived of such keys and of not knowing itself because of the superficiality of its informational and cultural discourse. A liberal elite was seen as needing to have a deeply-rooted and homogeneous culture. The participants pointed to the pivotal role that could be played in this regard by Italy’s secondary school system, and the crucial need both to support efforts to have a number of Italy’s universities ranked amongst the best in the world and to create a stronger relationship between universities and the country at large.