It is not very encouraging that on the eve of the regional elections in Sicily and a few months before the national general elections in early March there is discussion of the "Emergency of the ruling class", as the title of a learned conference promoted on Friday in Florence by the Cesifin think tank recited. But the reality is there for all to see. From the election of an elusive president like Donald Trump to the leadership of the United States to Brexit in the United Kingdom, not to mention the Italian events and the populist resurgences of the League and the Five Stars, the leadership crisis is a red thread that binds everything 'West. And the crisis of the ruling class, especially the political one, which is often perceived as self-referential and devoid of authority, is quite evident. But what are the causes and where does the short circuit between the elite and society come from? What is the relationship between populism and the crisis of the political ruling class and how do you get out of it? The political scientist Leonardo Morlino, full professor of Political Science at the Luiss University of Rome, speaks of all this in the interview with FIRSTonline, who gave a report on "Elite and democracy" at the Florence conference.
Professor Morlino, does the ruling class emergency only concern politics or does it go beyond and present itself as an all-Italian problem or is it a typical trait of our era all over the world?
“It's a problem that mainly affects politics, but not only in Italy. In our country the crisis of the ruling class is a crisis of the political and bureaucratic ruling class, while the same thing cannot be said of the managerial and entrepreneurial ruling class which often expresses excellence that can be asserted on markets all over the world. In a certain sense it can be said that the Italian ruling class moves at two speeds: it is in crisis in politics and public administration, but it is not in the economy. Furthermore, in our country, the crisis of the political ruling class is the result of the tumultuous and not yet completed transformation of the parties and of the inconsistency of the majority illusion that the recent electoral law has now eliminated”.
In what sense has the majority illusion weighed on the political class?
“In the sense that for 25 years we have deluded ourselves that we can respond to the question of governance with a majority democracy, that is, based on majority rules regarding government institutions and the electoral system. In fact, a majority democracy can only work in a homogeneous, moderate, cohesive country, but it has never worked in countries, like ours and others, affected by radicalized conflicts. That said, a distinction needs to be made between different types of leadership at the national level and the political establishment at the parliamentary and local levels. Once the national leaders were the direct expression of the parties, but now it is enough to think of the paths of Grillo or Berlusconi to understand that this has not been the case for several decades. At the same time, local political cadres either belong to parties heirs to traditional ones or are often improvised and come from nowhere. In the years of ideological and organized parties, a political leader had usually read and studied and knew the history of his country, now there is little culture and little knowledge. It is therefore not surprising that broad-based visions, even if strongly ideological, are replaced by tactics and the continuous wavering of the political line. It doesn't just happen in Italy. It is enough to see how Syriza has transformed itself in Greece to confirm it”.
But is there a lack of leaders and a real ruling class or are there no parties organized as they once were in Italy?
“Especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the parties have undergone a profound transformation, but they exist, even if they are no longer laboratories of the ruling class as they once were. They are formations which, as happens in the United States, have a mainly electoral purpose and are no longer structures of representation, but only of intermediation".
Never as in these times can we see an abysmal distance and a real short circuit between the elite and society and there are those who argue that at the basis of everything there is not so much or not only a generic inadequacy of the ruling classes, but the inability to promote economic growth that brings tangible benefits in terms of wages and jobs especially for the new generations and a perceptible reduction in social inequalities. What is his opinion?
“It is true that there is a short circuit between society and the elite and that their distance has been growing since the 70s and not only in Italy. The national ruling classes have been overwhelmed and delegitimized by profound socio-economic transformations that they have not known or been able to govern. The shift of the decision-making center of gravity from individual countries to the European Union, globalisation, mass immigration and the development of new technologies have emptied the traditional parties and moved decision-making power outside them and often outside national borders real. The demand for economic growth and greater social justice that the populations and above all the new generations address to parties and governments is a demand that national political forces can no longer meet, because they no longer have the power to manage enormous transformations. This is why sovereign ideologies arise, which however can only fuel new illusions".
Professor, what is the relationship between populism and the emergence of the ruling class: which of the two is the cause and which is the effect or are they both cause and effect together?
"The spread of populism, understood as a revolt against the elite and the prospect of simplistic answers to the very complex problems of contemporary society, is mainly the effect of the cultural, social and political transformations that have invested the West since the end of the 60s, which had a turning point with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 89 and the decline of the old ideologies and which received further acceleration from the economic crisis which unleashed from 2007-8”.
Where does the crisis of the Italian ruling class derive from and what specific characteristics does it have compared to other countries?
“The Italian peculiarity, as well as from the great transformations mentioned above and common to the whole West, arises from the post-Tangentopoli political earthquake of the early 90s and from the end of the three-legged stability regime based on the permanent relationship between the Government, companies and trade unions in the years between 1992 and 1998. Since then the political struggle has become radicalized, new political formations with a strong populist imprint are born and the growing weakness of the political forces in government does not stop the social inequalities which end up delegitimizing the classes more and more leaders and make democracy more fragile. And so the circle closes.
How does it come out? What must be done to overcome the emergency of the ruling class?
“There isn't a simple recipe, but we need to start from training and universities, making them the most effective channels for selecting the new ruling class. The challenge before us requires a great cultural battle that transforms meritocracy from an often hated word into a democratic value on the basis of which to select the ruling class. It's not a change that can happen anytime soon, but it's time to start it."
