CRESC Working Paper Series - Working Paper No. 137 - The neo-liberal experiment in Italy

Four fundamental aspects of Italian neoliberal transformation are summarized, and described as ‘broken promises’ of neo-liberalism: the promise of efficiency, wich has been the main explicit justification of the privatization of state-owned companies; the promise of autonomy of work, which has legitimated the deregulation of the labour market; the promise of democratization of the financial market. [...] The most common perception is that the country is suffering the consequences of its chronic problems, its historical deficiencies: the inefficiency of public administration, the corruption and the unreliability of the political class, the diffusion of organized crime, the historical gap between the economy of the North and South of the country. [...] In the government in office, in addition to the already named Federica Guidi, the Ministry of Labour has been entrusted to the President of the League of Italian cooperatives, which represents some of the largest companies operating in the fields of food distribution and housing. [...] The political climate favoured the restoration of the power of capital (I have already mentioned the success of the referendum for the abolition of the legal adjustment of wages to inflation in 1984, which marked the political and cultural hegemony of neo-reformism). [...] The transparency promise and the liberalisation of finance The era of privatisation of state-owned companies and of the liberalisation of the labor market has also been the one of liberalisation of financial markets and of the integration of Italy in the international financial market.