Abstract
Drawing on his field research in Naples, Pardo discusses the trade of legitimacy for power. He examines ordinary Neapolitans’ mistreatment by their distrusting rulers, who, in turn, enjoy no trust or legitimacy in the broader society. Specifically, Pardo analyses how rulers’ manipulations of the law and governing by double standards raise the feeling among local people that they are treated as second-class citizens and, among other things, turn their traditional tolerance and welcoming approach to an intolerance of non-citizens. He shows how these dynamics coalesce in the de-legitimation of local institutions at grassroots level, leading to a discussion of this conundrum of democracy in the context of what threatens to become an unbridgeable chasm between the rulers and the ruled locally, as elsewhere in the West.
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Notes
- 1.
For reasons of space, I give only the essential ethnographic details on the processes that I discuss. In each case, the interested reader will find in-depth discussions in my previous publications, to which I refer at the appropriate places.
- 2.
Of course, much has changed since Weber’s day but his work remains fundamental to understand critical aspects of today’s politics.
- 3.
These informants thus describe themselves, explicitly rejecting the word’s derogative meaning and the associated stereotype (see next section and Pardo 1996: Chap. 1).
- 4.
- 5.
For a recent account, see Pardo and Prato (2017).
- 6.
In each case, prior to fieldwork, I took stock of relevant quantitative material (demographic and other statistical data, census returns, surveys and so on) and studied relevant speeches, historical material, briefs, media archives, judicial inquiries and rulings. Good sources of information were also documents, often unpublished, such as research reports and private correspondence and archives. For more detailed information on these fieldworks and the methods and methodology, see Pardo (2017).
- 7.
Official 2017 statistics make heartrending reading. In Italy, a G8 country, 5.580 million people live in ‘absolute poverty’ (10.1% more in the South), while 9.368 million live in ‘relative poverty’ (ISTAT 2018). The U.K., also a G8 country follows suit (McGuinness 2018: 9–15). Spyridakis (2018, this volume) spells out the Greek case. And so on.
- 8.
The Italian text reads: ‘La sovranità appartiene al popolo, che la esercita nelle forme e nei limiti della Costituzione’ (Costituzione della Repubblica Italiana1948: Art. 1).
- 9.
I analyse this situation in a separate essay on corruption that does not break the law (Pardo 2018b).
- 10.
At the last general election (March 2018), the turnout was 73%. Italians voted overwhelmingly (50% nationally, up to 75% in the South) for protest parties of the left and the right that are not associated with ‘the establishment’ and whose rhetoric addresses key popular instances.
- 11.
- 12.
See Pardo (1996: Chap. 1 and 2017) and Pardo and Prato (2011). Gramsci’s (1971) interpretation of Fichte’s theory (1847) has been largely used to legitimate this kind of intellectuals and their theorems. Benign critics see them as know-all useful idiots (Demarco 2009), while most others refuse to ignore that they have made their careers and financial fortunes (often moonlighting as stars of cheap television shows) by damaging the image and reputation of Naples and Southern Italy.
- 13.
- 14.
In Italy, unemployment is 11%. In the South, it is 21%. In Naples, the unemployed are 23.7% of the active population. It is, however, generally agreed that only a small proportion of the officially unemployed are actually out of work.
- 15.
For what may be worth in this field, in 2010 six million southerners in working age were believed to be working informally (SVIMEZ 2010: 8; see also SVIMEZ 2015 and 2016). This was reiterated by a 2011 Parliamentary Inquiry (available at: http://it.finance.yahoo.com/notizie/riciclaggio-bankitalia-sommerso-criminale-vale-095243438.html), which also claimed that the informal ‘sector’ is larger in the Centre-North.
- 16.
- 17.
In Italy, fiscal pressure on business is notoriously very heavy (Il Denaro 28/09/2013: 6), and it keeps increasing.
- 18.
- 19.
In many cases, in order secure a bank loan, entrepreneurs must prove ownership of private property, the value of which is set against the loan.
- 20.
Some bank officials refer unsuccessful applicants to private credit agencies that grant credit easily and at high interest (Pardo 2018a). Entrepreneurs describe the various schemes aimed at addressing this situation as weakly drafted and badly implemented.
- 21.
In the 1990s, judicial enquiries into tangentopoli brought down much of the Italian political system. To be precise, seen as politically motivated, they brought down all the political parties that stood between the small and inconsequential neo-fascist party on the Right and the large and powerful Communist party on the Left. These two were the only survivors of the tangentopoli scandal. For more on these events and their impact on Italian life, see Pardo 2018b (also Prato 2018b, this volume).
- 22.
This is the Comitato dei creditori degli enti locali territoriali in dissesto finanziario; literally, Committee of Creditors of Bankrupt Local Administrations (Montefusco 1997).
- 23.
Sarfati (2018, this volume) discusses a specular case, where popular protest has influenced legislation that meets citizens’ instances while sanctioning the culpable inadequacy of rulers.
- 24.
Before becoming a full-time politician, this man was a controversial public prosecutor (Chiocci and Di Meo 2013). In 2014 he was convicted for abuse of office as a judge and disqualified from public office (La Stampa, http://www.lastampa.it/2014/09/24/italia/why-not-de-magistris-condannato-h1fUqhOhG3IAahKF0pnLQJ/pagina.html). He later managed to be reinstated on a technicality (Huffington Post, https://www.huffingtonpost.it/2015/06/25/de-magistris-accolto-rico_n_7661168.html?utm_hp_ref=it-de-magistris-condannato). Then, as the appeal sentence was dismissed by the high court, a new trial under civil law was ordered (Il Tempo, http://www.iltempo.it/politica/2016/09/24/news/genchi-e-de-magistris-assoluzione-annullata-1021507/)
- 25.
- 26.
For more ethnographic details on this aspect of the local economy, see Pardo (2018). Here I note briefly that, widespread across the world, street vending is certainly not a marginal economic activity. Its significance and, in some cases, international reach, is recognized in the literature (Pardo 1996, 2009; Da Silva 2013; Graaff and Ha eds 2015).
- 27.
Officially (Comune di Napoli 2014 and 2015), in 2015 there were 48,565 foreign residents in Naples, accounting for 5% of the population (Sri Lankans, 25.4%; Ukrainians, 16.9%; Africans, 11.4%; Chinese, 10.2%). Based on their experience of the on-the-ground situation, local people describe this figure as ‘unrepresentative of the reality’, as ‘incredibly low’.
- 28.
- 29.
Il Mattino, 12 June 2018: http://ilmattino.it/napoli/citta/napoli_corso_garibaldi_petizione_duecento_commercianti-3793003.html. On neighbourhood dynamics, see Pardo (1996) and, in this volume, Abraham (2018), Boucher (2018) and Krase and Krase (2018).
- 30.
See NapoliTime, 28/11/2014, http://www.napolitime.it/59631-mercato-abusivo-dei-rifiuti-napoli-il-sindaco-ferma-questa-pratica.html
- 31.
Prato (2009) has developed a fine comparative discussion of the critical distinction between tolerance and toleration, of the dynamics that make the former turn into the latter and of the attendant conceptual, social and political implications and responsibilities.
- 32.
These illegal actions contrast sharply with the kind of lawful protests that widely enjoy legitimacy at the grassroots described in this volume by Boucher, Krase and Krase, Prato and Sarfati and with the legal collective action that I have described earlier (see, e.g. n. 22).
- 33.
See Grassi (2015) and current reports in the local press. As a leading Leftist politician recently remarked, ‘in 1997 there were 800 buses, now there are 300, they are 17 years old, are often out of action or break down while in service’.
- 34.
For example, the cost of consultancies on urban waste (Pardo 2011) amount to almost 9 million euro.
- 35.
- 36.
Of course, they read newspapers and magazines, watch television, listen to the radio and go to the movies.
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Pardo, I. (2019). Governance Without Legitimacy: An Italian Conundrum of Democracy. In: Pardo, I., Prato, G.B. (eds) Legitimacy. Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96238-2_3
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