A spectre is haunting Berlusconi’s Italy – the spectre of elitism. Of course, there are always people talking about spectres, and there are always spectres out there, more often imagined than real. However, according to Mr Brunetta, the Italian Minister of Public Administration and Innovation, the spectre of elitism is alive and conspiring. And Italians need a proper warning.

Italy has an important relationship with the study of elites. Once there was the so-called Italian School of Elitists, whose members were Gaetano Mosca, Robert Michels and Vilfredo Pareto. Among today’s Italian liberal and conservative parties, unfortunately, those thinkers are almost forgotten. That’s a pity.  A contemporary Pareto would certainly be able to assess the current transformation and dilemmas of democracy in an unconventional and very helpful way. However, instead of Pareto, we have Renato Brunetta. According to Mr Brunetta, the danger is real. We are facing the return of Evil, right from Mordor. Italy’s enemies are those irresponsible parasites who conspire to turn down a legitimate government, in a backlash against democracy. But who are our enemies? How can we possibly recognize them? Mr Brunetta provides a good guidance:  “they are always the same parasitic publishers, financiers, bureaucrats and film-makers. There is a good Left and an evil Left and the evil Left is made up of bad bankers, bad financiers and bad newspapers”. The Evil Lord of Mordor likes infiltrating, and the Italian Saruman happens to be the Left, the Evil Left of banksters. According to the Minister’s elegant vocabulary, this left should ultimately “go away and die”.

Is it possible to look more deeply in Mr Brunetta’s sophisticated words, in order to understand something about Berlusconi’s Italy and Italy after Berlusconi? The answer is yes. On the one hand, Mr Brunetta is speaking truth to power for a part of voters of his party, the People of Freedom. Mr Brunetta usually gets more recognition among them than leaders-in-the making such as Gianfranco Fini and Giulio Tremonti. Now he is playing the card “We the People against Them the elitists”. A populist voter likes this populist backlash against progressive elites, and wants to know everything about the conspiracy plans of Carlo De Benedetti, the evil engineer living in Switzerland (Mordor, I suppose).

On the other hand, Mr Brunetta”s analysis of Italian democracy is simply useless. Not only because he was unable to provide real examples of those conspiring elites, apart from Andrea Romano, a professor of history, a columnist for Il Sole 24 Ore (the daily newspaper of Confindustria, the Italian association of entrepreneurs), and – disclosure – a friend of Lo Spazio della Politica. Mr Brunetta’s analysis is useless for two main reasons.

First, to quote Zbigniew Brzezinski, it is stunningly superficial. Elites are a part of democracy, particularly in Italy, given the fragmentation and polyarchy of our country’s groups of interest. Elites organize themselves politically, and they can fill the space of politics if politics (and parties, in particular) allows them to do that. That’s how the world goes. Given Italy’s peculiar polyarchy, there are a lot of independent or nearly independent powers at work, in a constant bargaining which needs to be analyzed properly. But bargaining is not conspiring. Moreover, a contemporary Pareto would should rather assess the problem of a biased circulation of elites in Italy.

Second, in politics the best way to handle interest and “powers” is compromise. On this, the best mentor is still the Vatican, which can offer an example of diplomatic survival strategy unmatched in history. Berlusconi’s cabinets are not only unable to give Italy the reforms our country desperately need (and it is interesting to notice that Mr Brunetta last year got “communist” recognition for his reformist attitude). Unfortunately for Berlusconi’s cabinets, they are also unable to understand the basic political rule of compromise, which marks the difference between Berlusconi the politician able to win an election (even with a landslide) and Berlusconi the statesman. Berlusconi’s rhetoric has been powerful in exposing the left as a party of vested interests and useless snobism, with the consequence of an enduring gap between the narrative of the left and the reality of Italian workers. But Berlusconi and Brunetta are not going to smash the Italian elites, real or imagined, particularly if those elites claim to defend the national interest and the government is openly suggesting that they should die.