Von der ersten zur zweiten Republik: Italien zwischen Kontinuität und Veränderung

The article examines Italy's transformation process as a profound crisis of social institutions. The conjunction of a large number of crises has finally led to Tangentopoli: the erosion of social consensus, illegal practices in politics and society aswell as the decline of traditional value systems. All this has undermined the legitimacy basis of the society's institutional structure. Italy needs a new 'religio', a social connection without which a community breaks apart. The redefinition of legality and consensus is of crucial importance for the societal renewal in Italy. Cazzola's analysis results in a pessimistic diagnosis that the civil society's new beginning has been cancelled by the privatism of the Berlusconi government and that Italy is in a crisis deeper than ever