Bill Emmot - 04/11/2009
We foreign commentators often sit and wonder why it is that we are so fascinated by Silvio Berlusconi. Certainly, he is a rather livelier piece of show business than other political leaders (certainly livelier than Gordon Brown). Certainly too, his blend of sex, machismo, conspicuous wealth and direct and indirect links to criminality play into a traditional stereotype about Italy, one that has some truth to it yet is also misleading. But there is a lot more to it than that.
When the idea first came up at The Economist, of which I was Editor at the time, to make an investigation into Silvio Berlusconi, I of course approved. For a rich democracy like Italy, a founder member of the European Union, to have as a prime ministerial candidate (this was 2000/2001) a man over whom there were so many shadows, raised plenty of questions that were worth answering. Once the work had been done, and once I began to think about it more deeply, the questions became more profound in my mind and more widely relevant than just for Italy.
A fundamental issue for all capitalist democracies is the appropriate relationship between government and business. All elected governments want to encourage prosperity, job creation and rising living standards. Yet to achieve that, we now know, requires them to foster dynamic markets, to enable a wide variety of entrepreneurs to operate, to facilitate innovation and the use of new technologies, all in a framework set by a rule of law that permits individuals and companies to enforce contracts and to believe that all are equal in the face of the law. And for this system to maintain popular support over time, it is necessary that the citizenry believes that inequalities of income or power have not become excessive. It is not, in other words, a case of governments encouraging and helping businesses. It is a case of governments encouraging markets, and creating the environment in which many businesses can flourish.
Not all countries conform to that, essentially liberal, model in all its respects. The influence of big business varies greatly, and of course its financial power as well as its potency in creating jobs and exports give it great reach. But until Silvio Berlusconi came into politics in Italy in 1994, but then will full force and success after 2001, in no western democracy had a major businessman actually run the government—moreover while still owning and controlling his businesses.
It was this merger between business and government that made Berlusconi and Italy so important for me, and for The Economist. In the 1930s, and again with extensive nationalisation in the postwar period, we have become accustomed to corporatism, to a strong role for the state in guiding certain businesses or sometimes forming alliances with business. But to have the country’s most powerful businessman take over the government: this was entirely exceptional, and to us, a deeply disturbing trend.
Since his election in 2001, Silvio Berlusconi has given ample evidence of how a businessman in politics can turn legislation into a tool for his own business interests. The fact that he has a dominant position in two of the communications industries that play a huge part in modern life and in politics—advertising and television—makes the flow of influence a two-way affair. He uses his media control to enhance his political power, while using his political power to enhance his media control.
That is what makes Berlusconi a figure of global interest and importance, rather than just a political freak-show. In a way, the good thing about Silvio Berlusconi is that he appears to have no real personal ideological agenda beyond the preservation and enhancement of his own power. But he provides a dangerous example to other powerful businessmen in other democracies for what they could achieve by copying his techniques. And around his powerful presence are gathered many other individuals and organisations who do have their own agendas, both ideological and selfish, and can use Berlusconi’s power as a tool through which to achieve it.
The sex scandals, or scandals of the abuse of power, which is what they really are, might offer comfort in the sense that they give us a sense that Berlusconi is mortal and may bring about his own downfall eventually. Yet also they serve to distract from the real issue, which is the capture of democratic governmental institutions by a single, powerful business.
Bill Emmott is one of the most influential journalist of the world. He has been editor of The Economist.
http://www.visionblog.eu/blogdivision/blog/articolo.asp?articolo=43
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