June 24, 2006
THERE IS NO ITALY:
Italians Get Ready to Vote on Referendum (Sabina Castelfranco, 23 June 2006, VOA News)
Italians will hold a two-day referendum June 25 and June 26 to decide whether to confirm constitutional reforms giving more power to regional governments. The reforms, which boost powers in areas of health, education and local policing, were passed by the Italian parliament in November. [...]While the center-left agrees on the need for some changes to the constitution, the prime minister and the other leaders of his coalition have branded the planned constitutional reform as fatal...for the country.
That's the point. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 24, 2006 10:53 AM
Let's see: devolution in Spain, according to the leftist government in power, is .. good.
Devolution in Italy,according to the leftist government in power, is .. bad.
Nope, nope, sorry, I just can't keep track of all this, my head is spinning too much. I think I'd best go lie down.
Posted by: Steve White at June 24, 2006 11:37 AMThey're all Darwinists so devolution into the most discrete ethnicity is inevitable.
Posted by: oj at June 24, 2006 11:40 AMWhile I'm no expert on the structure of the Italian government and can understand that such changes can be seen as fundamentally changing the concept of what it is to be Italian, I don't see why devolving governmental responsibilities, "going local" so to say, is a bad thing.
Maybe I have missed discussions of the undercurrent of desire for autonomous nation states such as seems to be the worry in Spain with the Catalonians and Basques, or the Scots in GB. I suppose the current European thinking that they will always be safe has eliminated the type of worries we had in the late 1700's and, as such, the desire to address the problem of unresponsive national government by making it more federal is causing a headiness with the venture and causing it to shoot past this mark to autonomy. If so, I would attribute this overshooting to the history of these initial unions, i.e. they never freely chose union in the first place.
Those national governments that have this simmering problem might be better off if they offered radical restructuring along republican union lines and then slowly work back to one all-encompassing federal government again as democratically decided.
Posted by: Dusty at June 24, 2006 1:45 PMSteve, cold compresses help.
Posted by: erp at June 24, 2006 1:50 PMIf Scotland every totally "devolves" from Great Britain, the place will collapse. More, I mean.
Posted by: Twn at June 25, 2006 2:12 PM