Washington Post
November 11, 2011
Right now, the great hope in Europe is that a team of bloodless wonks can parachute in to save Italy and Greece. Italy may get a former top-ranking E.U. commissioner — Mario Monti — to replace the scandal-ridden Silvio Berlusconi. Greece is getting a former vice president of the European Central Bank, Lucas Papademos, to head up a unity government until the next elections. The theory is that Italy’s and Greece’s problems are largely leadership-driven. Toss out the stubborn rulers who were unwilling to make tough decisions. Bring in the nerdy technocrats. What could go wrong?
Political scientist Joshua Tucker explains the rationale behind “technocratic” governments: “The theory here is that no major party is going to want to pay the costs of instituting painful policies alone. If this is the case, then one way around this predicament is to appoint a technocratic government that is not ‘of’ any party but is supported by all the parties. In this way, blame can essentially be shared, and government can do the right thing, whatever that may be.” The solutions to Italy and Greece’s problems, the logic goes, are obvious but politically difficult. All that’s needed are leaders with the courage to implement the proper reforms.
But what if fixing Italy and Greece isn’t just a simple matter of political will? As Paul Betts writes in the Financial Times today, “There is a naive tendency among foreigners to dismiss Italians as incompetents who are simply in need of a little outside discipline. Nothing could be further from the truth.” Italy’s economy, Betts notes, is a dense, complicated web of relationships that won’t be at all easy to adjust, let alone blow up. Betts recounts the tale of the country’s sixth-largest bank, Banca Popolare di Milano, which called on labor allies and friends in high places to fight off widely agreed-upon governance and financial reforms.
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