THE NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE. TERRITORIAL ASYMMETRY AS A DEMOCRATIC ISSUE

The analytical scheme of the fractures elaborated by Stein Rokkan and Seymour M. Lipset can be usefully applied to the "southern question", since it concerns the double dimension of the political process, characterized by cultural-territorial and economic-functional conflicts, it considers the high permanence of "cleavages"; it considers party systems to be central: all elements that can lead to a clear understanding of the main aspects of the North-South asymmetry in Italy. Moving from these methodological options, as far as the "Mezzogiorno" is concerned, it is important to notice that the constituent premises envisaged the overcoming of the fracture within the processes of democratization of the legal order guided by political parties and based, to a large extent, on regionalization.The delay in the implementation of the Regions, however, led immediately to the centralized and technocratic nature of the major reforms aimed at affecting the southern condition: the land reform and the extraordinary intervention through the "Cassa per il Mezzogiorno". And, when the Regions are established, they are no longer those desired by the constituent assembly: from legislation and planning bodies, they become minute administrative bodies crowded with employees, in hypertrophic systems. They therefore become the vehicle for the infiltration of political parties - far from the constitutional idea - which pervade the agencies that should have dealt with the North-South fracture. The policies - after an initial success - degrade and fail. But the territorial asymmetry remains the main question. Without resolving this, Italy will be less and less adequate to face competition in the European and international dimension: the "delay" of the "Mezzogiorno" is now added to the delay of the entire country. For this reason, the new impulses for a "separation of the North", in the illusion of creating small economic homelands on a regional scale, are particularly risky.