"The country of half reforms", a book written by Linda Lanzillotta and published by Passigli Editori, is out today in the bookstore. FIRSTonline had already talked about this book, together with other forthcoming books by important members of the Democratic Party, announcing the rain of news coming.
Here is the PRESENTATION taken from the flap of the cover:
When in September 1970 a young student walks through the door of the imposing Treasury Ministry building for an internship, she certainly cannot imagine that that step will change her life and start a long journey through the institutions and politics of the Republic. Linda Lanzillotta with this book, which is both a memoir and an essay, reflects on many unresolved issues of our country, animated by a passionate spirit of civil servant and by the constant desire to understand how to modernize our institutions, in the knowledge that the disillusionment of citizens every time an announced reform has not been implemented, it has deepened the gap that today separates the people and the ruling classes.
Through a hard apprenticeship – which for a woman in masculine and chauvinist environments such as public administration and politics were and remain is even more difficult – Linda Lanzillotta makes a long journey within the fundamental apparatuses of the state, discovering their concrete functioning and assuming ever greater responsibilities up to those of the Government and Vice-President of the Senate.
Each chapter of the book is crossed by a recurring question: is a path of radical reformism possible in Italy which the country badly needs and without which attempts at growth and civil development will be frustrated whatever the majorities who guide it ? The response has so far been disappointing: the administrative and constitutional reforms have been opposed by a diabolical convergence of political, bureaucratic and corporate forces, aimed above all at their own preservation. The reformists, however, are not spared criticism, that of not taking enough into account the reality of the bureaucratic-administrative structures, and the absence of pragmatism and organizational culture, limitations that have often frustrated the right principles and values to which the reforms were inspired. On her journey, Linda Lanzillotta meets excellent administrations at important moments in our recent history, collaborating with political figures such as Andreotti and Amato, Ciampi and Prodi, Rutelli and Renzi, and with state grand commis, each observed with the lens of the scholar and of civil commitment. And yet, despite the defeats or half victories, Lanzillotta never gives up throwing his heart over the obstacle and looking positively at the new challenges to which Italy and Europe are now called, treasuring the mistakes of the past.
