What do the results of Italy’s constitutional reform referendum mean?
Marian Tupy writes:
On Sunday evening, I watched as Matteo Renzi acknowledged the negative outcome of the constitutional referendum and resigned, as promised, as Italy’s prime minister. Renzi called the plebiscite in order to streamline Italy’s baroque governing bureaucracy—a necessary prerequisite, he claimed, for much-needed economic reform. By a margin of close to 20 percentage points, the Italians said “No” and Renzi threw in the towel.
As he spoke, I emailed an Italian friend of mine to gauge her reaction. As a professor of economics and a free marketer, I expected her to be horrified by the events. Instead, she responded on Monday morning by saying that she too voted “No.” “Nothing ever changes in Italy, anyway,” she continued. I guess that I should not have been surprised. It is 2016, after all, and, in the political arena, anything seems possible.
Thinking about my friend’s response more carefully, however, I have come to see some parallels between what happened in Italy, and the British decision to withdraw from the European Union and Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election. Tying all these events together is a profound sense of alienation of the electorate from their respective governing elites. Vast chunks of the populace in these three countries see their governments as, at best, inept, and, at worst, venal.
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