From: luigi@paris.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Luigi Semenzato)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.italian,alt.politics.italy
Subject: Re: alt.politics.italy
Date: 7 Jan 1993 21:02:18 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: paris.cs.berkeley.edu

In article <C0GIps.582@news.cso.uiuc.edu>, furio@uiuc.edu (furio ercolessi)
writes:

|> |>>3.  Even a small representation gets you some share of power in
|> |>>the `lottizzazione' mechanism---the favor system that permeates
|> |>
|> |>Could you please explain this mechanism further.  I am not familiar
|> |>with this term.
|> 
|> Oh, let's try.  Let us take a stupid, insignificant political party with no
|> purpose whatsoever such as PSDI.  Let us suppose that, as an  [...]

Very well phrased.

`Lottization' is not a good translation however.  `Lottizzazione'
is the process of subdividing a tract of land in lots that are
sold and developed separately.  There must be a similar word in
English but I can't remember it (subdividing? allotting?).  I don't
see anything wrong with using the Italian word.

The other question was, why is it so difficult to establish who
is responsible for wrong policies.  Because:

1. the voting system gives too much power to parties.  Congressmen
who stray too much from the party line are torpedoed (to use an
Italian term)---so you never know how much of an individual's 
decision is a compromise between the person's will and the party's
will.

2. the multi-party executive confuses things even further, because
now you cannot even know which party is responsible for which policy;

3. the governments (i.e., the choice of cabinet) last so little
(about one year on average) that it is impossible to evaluate the
effect of policies, especially when they are changed by the next
government.

It's a truly sad state of affairs!  And it's not even true, as
someone says, that `you get the government you deserve.'  A
government system has a large inertia, it's not an easy thing
to change.  The modern Italian government was NEVER particularly
good, since its inception.  The structure it has imposed on the 
Italian society (the favor system, etc.) reflects perhaps the 
mentality of a century ago: it now perpetuates this mentality.

For instance, Italians don't have too many qualms about cheating
their government (i.e., income tax).  Why?  Because everybody
else does it too!  Therefore, when one behaves honestly, he is in 
all effects letting other people steal from him.  That's a bit
much to ask, no?

So why does not the government try to get rid of income tax evasion, 
instead of imposing totally inefficient, regressive, and undemocratic 
measures such as the recent `minimum tax?'  I suspect because of the 
favor system.

One factor that has favored the low quality of government we have
had so far was the fear of change---of change for the worse, that
is.  The fear of returning to a totalitarian regime, of which we
had a recent example not too long ago, has always been a strong
force in maintaining the status quo.  But the voters who remember
fascism are fewer and fewer, and the danger of communism seems
past.  So there is some hope for change.

--Luigi

Newsgroups: soc.culture.italian