The Italian Transition 1989-1994: A View from Abroad

How did the international economic circles look at the multiple crises that Italy faced between 1989 and 1994? This paper provides a tentative answer to this question by reconstructing the comments published in The Economist during that period concerning the most relevant Italian events: the mafia and Camorra massacres, the referendum and electoral changes, the crisis of the development model based on corporate and familistic capitalism, privatizations (promised and never fully implemented, at least not as the international markets would have hoped). Through the analysis of those years, we shall highlight the critical issues of a country that, seen from the outside, missed the opportunity for its modernization.