Modelli di sviluppo e questioni meridionali

Southern Italy’s Problems and Development Models - The paper proposes some reflections on the different ways of addressing the problem of Southern Italy. It briefly surveys the main classical currents dealing with the problem, classifying them on the basis of the answers they give to three fundamental questions: what is the problem, how is it to be solved, and last but not least, who is going to do it? The main thesis is that perception of the problem has always been influenced by the role that the different authors have ascribed to this region in the destiny of the Nation; it has always been perceived as a problem for the correct working of Italy, and never as an obstacle to the growth of welfare for the southern populations. Thus even the first serious public intervention after the Second World War was principally shaped by the task of transforming the financial transfers towards the southern regions into an optimal kind of Keynesian public expenditure, to improve capital accumulation throughout the country. The principal conclusion of this paper is that the end of the public intervention in the ’90s was the consequence of a change in the regime of capital accumulation and, consequently, of the public way of regulating it. But this change in the "public interest" leaves still unsolved the problems of the economic development of the Italian southern regions and the living standards of their populations.

Giovanni Scarano, Guido Fabiani, Modelli di sviluppo e questioni meridionali in "QA Rivista dell’Associazione Rossi-Doria" 4/2000, pp , DOI: