The Lock Pick of Neoliberalism? The Instrumental Use of Corruption Debates and the Economic Reconfiguration of Democracy in Italy in the Early 1990s

Abstract

At the beginning of the 1990s, Italy’s landmark reforms to privatise public holding companies were not only adopted during the peak of neoliberal economic thinking in Europe, but also within the national context of a far-reaching debate on political corruption. Using Italy’s long-standing controversy as a case study, this article shows that, in the early 1990s, the specific reception of neoliberal ideas both contributed to the sanctioning of moral misconduct of public officials and to a pathologisation of state institutions. Building on scholarship which has identified the 1990s as a heyday of a market-liberal activism against global corruption, I argue that distinct national actors sought to legitimise neoliberal reform initiatives by strategically leveraging the corruption debate. From the 1970s onwards, Italian discourse on corruption had already begun to reflect a growing disenchantment with party politics and a mistrust of public involvement in economic activities. However, by analysing how national actors justified privatisation and liberalisation policies in the leading national media after the unfolding of the country’s most far-reaching investigation into corruption, I reveal the discursive strategies that helped reframe corruption as primarily a problem of distorted economic incentives. Methodologically, the paper combines discourse analysis, history of concepts and critical media analysis; it examines Italy’s most relevant print media formats. Overall, the article not only confirms the idea that neoliberalism develops nationally in response to context-specific factors, but also seeks to contextualise Italian debates on politics and society beyond national narratives.