History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes? According to The Economist, history does repeat itself, particularly concerning the farce of Silvio Berlusconi. Our prime minister was unfit to lead Italy, then he had to resign, now – guess what! – he has to resign. Time to say addio. Reading Walter Bagehot’s journal quoting Beppe Grillo is priceless. So, what can we do? We can follow the purple tide of the No Berlusconi Day and say “well, you won with the landslide last year, now, unfortunately, you are on the wrong side of history, and you have to resign”, we can sign endless petitions, or we can grow up. As always, the choice is ours.

During the last months, there has been a remarkable interest in Italy among global media. Just consider a few distinguished magazines with a limited expertise in sex. In The London Review of Books, Perry Anderson exposed what he calls our “invertebrate left“. In The New York Review of Books, Stephen Greenblatt called for a “reversal of direction“. Newsweek’s Christopher Dickey anticipated The Economist by two months. On September 11, we have published an article called Italy after Berlusconi. Let’s make it clear: instead of No Berlusconi, we advocate Italy after Berlusconi. Our basic argument in September was that the typical narrative of Italian and foreign press on the Berlusconi affair is biased.

This is not about sexual scandals or about one person. This is about a country, called Italy. As young patriots, we feel there is no need to Berlusconize everything. In order to move forward, the famous ten questions raised by the newspaper La Repubblica are simply useless, as are all the campaigns of La Repubblica that led his director Ezio Mauro to an important recognition by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard (of course, I am jealous!). Come on, Ezio Mauro is no Hu Shuli. The last call to arms has come from Roberto Saviano, who is a man worth of a great deal of admiration, but this strategy of “Dear Prime Minister” is getting Italy nowhere. If you really need an answer, I would rather suggest writing to Santa or God. Arguably, there is not much freedom from stupidity in Carlo Cipolla‘s home country, but we do enjoy freedom of speech. You can publish anything you want in a blog, you can criticize Mr Berlusconi, you can take unconvenient photos of him and his guests in his private house. Of course, Freedom House and a giant conflict of interest, but stating repeatedly that Italy lacks freedom of speech is an unrespectful act toward other countries, so let’s stop this farce, please. Luckily, The Economist endorses this argument:

We have been cautious over joining the extensive and prurient commentary on a lurid array of sex scandals that have engulfed the 73-year-old prime minister this year. We prefer to judge him on two more substantive matters: the conflicts of interest between his business and political jobs, and his government’s performance.

That’s exactly the point. Nowadays, the real issue is: what has been done during Berlusconi’s third term in office? This is the right question that should be asked, in order to start a fair analysis. Two basic points, already emphasized here and here.

First of all, we have experienced the same old advertising. There is no clearer indication of this than the path of Renato Brunetta, the Minister of Public Administration and Innovation. He started promoting a “revolution” badly needed in public administration, he ended fighting the Communists and proposing that the some leftist elitists should “go away and die”, and he is not paying a decent attention to the IT issues. An an Italian Richard Hofstadter would have noticed, this is a good example of the paranoid style in Italian political mainstream. As every new government takes office, apart from the weak Prodi 2006, there are always plenty of talks on reforms. We are all reformists in the immediate electoral aftermath, but after a few months the reality is always different. It’s not my fault, it’s the Communists, it’s the Euro, it’s 9/11, it’s uncooperative allies. It’s not simply about Mr Berlusconi, but he has a great deal of responsibility on this, particularly during this term. Our prime minister is a striking example of the phenomenon of group polarization, recently studied by the prolific law scholar Cass Sunstein, director of OIRA and prominent target of Glenn Beck. When people find themselves in groups of like-minded types, they are especially likely to move to extremes. The Italian public life is enslaved to extremist superpartisanship, and that’s why we are facing a surprising nostalgia of the late Christian Democracy party. Once upon a time in America, Antonio Negri washed his clothes in the Michael Hardt river, went to Harvard University Press and concluded a book with the “irrepressible lightness and joy of being communist”. Thanks to the paranoid style in Italian politics and to our group polarization, we’ll probably end up with teens longing for the “irrepressible lightness and joy of being christian democrats”.

Second, Berlusconi’s third term would be remembered for the “Bertolasocracy”. The head of the Civil Protection is the most important figure in Italian political and social life. Two cheers for him. He is an civil servant able to establish a well-functioning arm of the government. This is a remarkable achievement in Italy. And he even speaks English. This is another remarkable achievement in our country. However, Mr Bertolaso’s rise has a few political consequences. For example, the Parliament is often bypassed by the so-called vote of confidence (“voto di fiducia”), typically connected to some special decrees which establish the rule of the Civil Protection on many issues. To be fair, even the government of Mr Prodi adopted many times the tactics of “voto di fiducia”, but this was due to its weakness. Berlusconi’s government enjoys a strong majority in the Parliament, but it doesn’t care about the Parliament’s own role and Mr Bertolaso easily becomes Special Commissioner for everything, from rubbish in Naples to the Vuitton Cup in La Maddalena. The Civil Protection is fast: Speedy Bertolaso in Slow Food Nation. However, human beings have limits. After Lehman Brothers, probably we have learned that a limitless world is not going to work. Consider Dubai’s Limitless. There is another important sign of Bertolaso’s relevance. Robert Putnam once reminded us of “Italy’s civic tradition”, recently reclaimed by Marc Lazar in his interview with Lo Spazio della Politica (soon to be published in French, thanks to Chiara Mazzone). However, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, there is no such thing as civil society in Italy anymore. What we have now is civil protection, under the new religion of security that in Bertolaso finds a national symbol. But the political genius of the Northern League, Umberto Bossi (Berlusconi’s major stakeholder), has already adapted very effectively the religion of security to his parochial goals often in contrast with European values. By the way, our prime minister is not going to resign because of Roberto Saviano, because of The Economist, or because of the law. Only Mr Bossi can dismiss him, and probably he’s thinking about it. He’s planning to put his men in charge of some of the Northern Italy regions in the next 2010 local elections, betting on an Italian future of extreme regionalism as a soft secession (still a goal for his party). Mr Bossi is still the kingmaker of Italian political geography. However, the games after Berlusconi could be open even in Mr Bossi’s home region, Lombardia, thanks to the remarkable leverage of CL (Communion and Liberation), a powerful and educated Catholic movement whose behavior after Berlusconi is hard to predict. Nowadays, Mr Bossi is as strong and confident as ever. He recently told Pierluigi Bersani, now secretary of the Democratic Party: “Beware, because above the Po River, whoever is against the League is dead”.

This is relevant for Europe, too. Italy is more a laboratory than an anomaly for contemporary Europe and contemporary democracy. Books like Christopher Caldwell’s “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe” are a warning that Europe should notice. Even if we disagree with Caldwell’s solutions, a Burkean approach to the circumstances is necessary. It is time to reflect on Europe. In 2008, Kishore Mahbubani argued that Europe is a geopolitical dwarf, unable to come to terms with a changing and more insecure world. What if he was right? Certainly, Europe is a demographic dwarf. Marc Lazar reminded us of the political relevance of demography. Unfortunately, Mr Caldwell,  Europe has no Plan B for its decreasing population. Unfortunately, procreation rates are not related with the sales of Pope Benedict’s “Caritas in Veritate” and the balance between tackling illegal immigration and living in permanent fear is hard to find. On the other hand, Tony Judt is right: this no time for the same old reassuring progressive story. Mr Mahbubani aptly emphasized how, in the coming global environment, Europe cannot simply act as a giant Switzerland. Now, this is exactly the wrong time to end up like Switzerland. The future is elsewhere. For example, it is in young Turks requesting Ryanair flights from Europe to Istanbul on Facebook. Or in Fouad Makhzoumi‘s remarks on the necessity to figure out the relationship between Europe and the Mediterranean countries as a real partnership.

Our generation was born in the 1980s and has grown up with the European dream. This dream is fading, for several reasons: because it needs to be filled with new expectations, because Western Europeans should take more responsibility for the recent democratization of Eastern Europe in order to avoid damaging nationalisms such as the current Polish one, because this model of integration is not working properly, because we should be more aware of our role on climate change and foreign aid, because a European consistent strategy against illegal immigration is as needed as ever, because Barroso is Barroso, and because the war of words between the Anglo-American model of capitalism and the so-called social market economy is useless. In fact, amid the current financial crisis, the former emerges as a loser, but the latter is unlikely to be considered a winner. Let’s look at the world as it is. China is promoting a Marshall Plan (or, to put it best, a Justin Yifu Lin Plan) for Africa and is about to bring home from Washington the superb giant panda Tai Shan. Mr Medvedev talks boldly about the modernization of Russia (From Russia with – more – realism?). Brazil, from the Olympics to the abundant resources and with the World Cup coming, is a rising star. India is hopeful and challenging, and is able to produce a lively debate on how to deal with climate change. Our answer is Sarkozy against the City and the City against Sarkozy.

If Europe’s current destiny is becoming a museum, keen on dreaming the roaring past centuries, Italy is a laboratory. Just consider Venice. Italy is a laboratory, because it is getting smaller and irrelevant, even in European political games. Take for example the recent failure to get the former prime minister Massimo D’Alema appointed as EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. We are now ambitiously betting on Mr Draghi, current governor of Bankitalia, as next President of the European Central Bank, and we have no alternatives. Berlusconi’s Italy is not respected in Europe. That’s a fact: his record on EU appointments is pitiful. Do you remember Rocco Buttiglione? Do you remember Mario Mauro? A lobbying Berlusconi means failure. Europe never buys used cars from Italy’s top seller. We are certainly an underachiever nation. Of course, if we send many soldiers to Afghanistan Barack Obama is going to thank us. But this is not enough. We should work consistently within the rules of Brussels to improve our stake in them. In order to do that, we need to know who we are and what we are looking for. Unfortunately, the basic principles of Italian foreign policy under Berlusconi are laughable. The Economist makes this point quite clear. On the one hand, you have Berlusconi’s democratist speeches, for which he seems proudly part of the “league of demagoguery”. Consider also his remarks on the American Creed. On the other hand, our prime minister is very keen on making business with autocrats and dictators. Moreover, it is true than Tarak Ben Ammar can help Italy in the Mediterranean, but there is life after Mediaset and foreign policy is not made up of hugs and kisses. It needs leadership, not a childish attitude. Berlusconi provides the latter. Leslie Gelb has criticized his Pacific President’s trip to Asia as the “amateur hour at the White House”. We have been through amateur decades.

Of course, one can say that Italy’s national interest is the interest of Enel, Eni and Finmeccanica. People like Eni’s Paolo Scaroni (almost a Roman emperor, according to The Economist) and Finmeccanica’s Pierfrancesco Guarguaglini are the official representatives of Italy for many countries and companies. So – the argument goes on – we need to support proactively the core businesses of these companies: namely, oil, gas, defense, helicopters, combat aircrafts. That’s geopolitics, baby. Business is business, and business is our policy. One leader can say this, but he has to take responsibility for it in the face of the voters and, arguably, he also needs to know something about oil, gas, electrity, weapons (we have proposed ten elementary questions on energy for prospective leaders instead of La Repubblica’s ten questions for the current prime minister) or he can propose his replacement with Mr Scaroni or Mr Guarguaglini.

Concerning the economy, Italy has suffered a lost more-than-a-decade. The current argument of our minister of the Economy, Giulio Tremonti, is that Italy’s record during the financial crisis has been comparatively good. Another key argument is that Italy would take the lead of the coming Reindustrialization. They are both superficial.  First, family savings cannot deny the seriousness of our debt, and we need to start dealing with our enduring weaknesses. Second, the fact that the production of real stuff will still matter in the world is not a simple guarantee of the effectivness of Italian firms in a changing environment or in a coming green economy, and least of all a guarantee of the ability of the state to support them with a consistent strategy. In a recent trip to Beijing, Mr Tremonti also arranged a trip of CIC (China Investment Corporation) to Italy, scheduled for January 2010. He is probably interested in convincing the Chinese sovereign wealth fund to invest in a project backed by the ministry, namely the Bank of South, designed to help solving the enduring problems of the Italian Mezzogiorno. This is not going to happen. As it seems, Italian bankers Made in McKinsey are not much interested in the Bank of the South. Given than the Chinese are definitely smarter than them, as Mr Tremonti himself knows, imagining Gao Xiqing bargaining in Calabria after having lost a bit of his outstanding reputation with the Blackstone deal is utterly ridiculous. No serious person can buy this story. If they are really coming to Italy, it’s for Eni, Enel or Finmeccanica, trying to do away with the Roman Empire. Mr Tremonti is an interesting politician-intellectual, a curious kind of communitarian strongly backed by Mr Bossi and his strongly-imagined community, and also an active president of the Aspen Institute Italy. Because of this, he is one of the players of Italy after Berlusconi. He certainly deservers some attention. However, there is a gap between words and deeds: in 1995 he wrote a book called “The Ghost of Poverty” with Edward Luttwak and Carlo Pelanda, but he hasn’t been able so far to contain the resurgence of poverty in Italy with his social card Made in Eni. There is not much evidence, nowadays, of his old strategy of the three Is (Internet, Impresa, Inglese) for the future of Italy. Moreover, Mr Tremonti talks a lot about the relevance of the family and the scolarship of Pope Benedict, but, as the Catholic journal Famiglia Cristiana has shown, there is not much evidence of this in the government’s last economic measures.

So, what is to be done, instead of complaining and asking for a resignation which, as I said, depends on Umberto Bossi? Concerning Italy, it is always easy to notice what is wrong, but it is harder to imagine the way forward. I’ll try to propose three aggressive strategies for Italy after Berlusconi.

1. Let one hundred Gianfranco Fini bloom. This centre-right politician and long-time ally of Mr Berlusconi, current President of the Chamber of Deputies, has been able so far to define Italy’s political agenda through the articles of a webmagazine, called FFwebmagazine, managed by his think tank, Fare Futuro. Of course, he has done that from a position of power to get rid of Berlusconi and to achieve more personal power in Italy after Berlusconi. But this has been remarkable nevertheless. Ingrid Rowland, in her wonderful account of recent Italian episodes, considers him “far and away the most capable politician in circulation”. Well, he has reminded us of the power of ideas. He has advocated bravely the necessity of a new Italian decent right, able to play a consistent role in Europe. He endorses a new Italian patriotism, respectful of the Constitution and able to include second generation immigrants. According to his critics, he is superficial or incoherent. Well, if we are living in a Keynesian age, he’s coherent with “When the facts change, I change my mind”. Even if he has probably committed political suicide by going against the mainstream of his own party, in terms of courage Mr Fini is a mentor to the Democratic Party, particularly because he tries to speak directly to the youth.

In mid 2009, it seemed that the only feasible strategy for the Democrats was wandering through the desert. Some of the problems of the opposition are still there, even after the hopeful election of Pierluigi Bersani, who has a reformist record as a minister. The Democratic Party is still facing the political equivalent of the worst side of what Richard Bellamy once called our path “from philosophers to pundits“. This has been evident in the last general elections, whose story, from the standpoint of the Democratic Party, can be called “From Gramsci to Obama”. Forget about the US President as a Grand Educator, cut down Axelrod, Plouffe, mass mobilization, delete the narrative of the more perfect union, and imagine former communists shouting “Yes we can” to audiences of trade unions members. This was the DP in 2008. It attracted the 33,1% of voters in the general elections, but this not-so-bad outcome was based mostly on the approval of his crucial role in the simplification of our party system. On the other hand, the cultural, electoral and political strategy of the Democrats was badly flawed. Talking about “campuses” or “green jobs” or “a new deal between employers and employees” is fine, but it remains empty rhetoric if you aren’t able to show how you want to realize these things in Planet Italy with a basic adherence to reality. If you are praising green jobs with a man from Naples, and his city is full of rubbish also because of your own government’s own quarrels, that’s not going to work. You should explain to the average voter what a Mediterranean partnership means for the sake of his family, why solar panels in his own house can pay dividends, and at the same time you need to work very hard on a consistent – and, of course, respectful of human rights – strategy on security and to figure out how to solve the tragedy of our higher education system. Both realism and courage can be helpful: that’s why Mr Fini matters.

2. If we should borrow anything from Sweden, let’s try Lisbeth Salander, the bisexual and tattooed heroine of Stieg Larsson’s novels, which is now conquering the Anglosphere. Why Lisbeth Salander? Italy needs to put out of office people Made in 1968: frankly, we’ve had enough of their shift from revolution to the representation of vested interests. The next Italian revolution needs hackers and pirates. This means that women should fight, just like non-sociopathic Lisbeths, without becoming prone to easy compromises with a nation that has humiliated them. That’s a necessary polarization because a strategy of complaining will never work. Talking about “meritocracy” and “innovation” is not enough. Now, it is easy to notice that every local politician puts a little piece of “meritocracy” in his speeches, at the same time practicing the Italian business as usual. That’s meritocracy with Italian characteristics. Try to be a woman who wants to make a career in the health system, whatever the position, based strictly on meritocracy. It’s strikingly hard, as it is proposing bold reforms on these and other issues, even when you have the evidence of many regions blessed with debt. The only way forward is to abandon individualistic strategies (such as “I am talented, the state should promote talent”) and create a network through which women and youth can be connected and active politically, with a great deal of ambition: to Palazzo Chigi with realism. On one issue, Mr Berlusconi is absolutely right: an excessive pessimism can poison everything in Italy. Arguments like “Berlusconi will never go away, because through his TVs he has brainwashed everyone, and by the way that’s what the average Italian deserves” are bullshit. Silvio Berlusconi has offered a nation a dream, the New Italian Miracle in his own words, and the nation bought it. There are a lot of shortcomings in Berlusconi’s Italian Dream. It claims to promote entrepreneurship, but it is extremely individualistic, unable to provide a pluralistic narrative and an environment that entrepreneurship itself needs to prosper. Moreover, it decreases substantially Italy’s standing and reputation. It is unable to work in a networked world. It doesn’t know much about the future of Italian jobs. It fosters paranoid politics. This New Italian Miracle has been a success story for him so far, but not for Italy. We don’t need his resignation. We just need to move on, realistically, knowing that the Italian entrepreneurship emotionally pleased by Berlusconi’s New Italian Miracle is not going away, luckily. We can start from many things that are already happening in Italy and can make the case for the future. Think about the impact of the Internet in a nation paranoidly attached to TV, with Rupert Murdoch now hailed by some circles as the harbringer of democracy against Satan Berlusconi: why can’t we just jump  from rock bottom to Google Nation? Probably we are, and we only need to notice it. Think about the many small green start-ups blooming throughout our country. Think about Sergio Marchionne, who has turned a dying FIAT upside down. Think about Stefano Boeri’s visionary ideas for the Milan EXPO in 2015. Think about the prospective role of the Euroregions in terms of infrastructure, flows of money, goods, and people. Think about Raffaele Mauro, an associate of Lo Spazio della Politica who recently won a competition of the association Italia Futura with his project for the renaissance of Abruzzo (the region damaged by the recent earthquake), based on a model of microloans for enterprises monitored through the web, just like a distance adoption. Of course, we’ll let you know more about it, as the project proceeds in 2010. These are only a few examples of the opportunities for Italian Lisbeth Salanders, and other kind of piratepatriots.

3. Let’s say it openly: we are all democrats now, but democracy is not enough. By the way, is there such a thing as democracy in the Belpaese? Arrivederci, Democracy again? Frankly, this a puzzling question because nowadays the tide of democracy itself seems to be puzzling. Concerning Italy, the best answer so far has come from the distinguished security analyst Alessandro Politi in his blog. He argues that Italy is a democrablanda. The meaning of his democrablanda deserves full credit and a long quote, for which I apologize:

What is it? A democracy, a normal democracy, with ballots, parliament, government, judiciary, market economy, fashion, entertainment and scandals.

The fine print makes it so special:

• Justice? Oh yes, in overdue time and possibly paying the right people and having the right connections;
• Rules? You have plenty of rules and laws, but … but they are applied in a pseudo-random way, selectively. You are in the elite, well rules are not bent, they just are inclusively expanded. You have fallen in disgrace, you are a rascal, to be media-judged and possibly condemned, but a trial, a trial? See point one;
• Ideas? There are no ideas, please, let’s be pragmatic and please do not start a polemical argument, because even if you talk about things as certain as the Earth rotating around the Sun, it is just an opinion. We do not need a Big Brother to have a neo-speak, thousand little brothers do this in a more thorough, pluralistic and amusing way;
• Taxes? We have them, a jungle, but they are for non-smart people, like accidents at work. Bullet one might be useful and also bullet two;
• Political representation? Again you have it in any size, shape, colour, but if there is “no taxation without representation”, why bothering about a real representation if taxation is rather virtual?
• Free press. Yes our press is free, so wonderfully free, free to talk show entertain gossip quarrel, but too many journalists are very free, free to offer their pen for the best cause celebre of the moment. Watergate? Waterfake, don’t ask for more.
• Independence. We are a proud independent G8 country, taking bold decisions after due consultation with Tel Aviv, Washington and the Vatican. Indeed in God we trust.

Mr Politi’s argument reminds me of a conversation I and Raffaele Mauro have had with David Singh Grewal this June. He remarked that the transition from Berlusconi’s Italy to Italy after Berlusconi could be a laboratory for contemporary democracy. In democrablanda under the People of Freedom, there is freedom to vote (extremely important, but not included in FDR’s Four Freedoms) without much space for freedom from stupidity (not theorized at the time of FDR’s Four Freedoms). The laws of stupidity are really important, long live Carlo Cipolla. I am persuaded by Slavoj Zizek: Berlusconi is our own Kung Fu Panda. Unfortunately, democracy means nothing without a basic notion of responsibility. Mammia mia, here we go again: from Gramsci to Obama. Please, Italians and commentators on Italy, stop hunting for the Italian Obama – “it can’t happen here”! – and start working for a “new age of Italian responsibility”. In democrablanda, this is quite difficult. First, in democrablanda, politicians pay lip service to moral principles without taking a proper responsibility in the face of their voters. This fosters a dangerous populism. This has already happened. For example, for the average center-left voter, the chief moral principle is: representatives and senators are basically idlers, they are useless millionaires, I’m struggling to make ends meet and they are doing nothing for me and the real people. How to tackle this? Well, that’s simple: through an effort of disclosure. Tell your voters about your earnings, tell them what you are doing with your benefits, and why and when you are in the Chamber of Deputies or in the Senate. Keep them involved: this seems banal, but it is absolutely needed, to make Italian democracy actually work. The example of Francesco Sanna, a DP Senator who is doing exactly this since 2004, can be useful.

Second, in democrablanda, even mandarins – who are called to make a country work – are unable to see a future for their children. Pierluigi Celli, general director of the university of Confindustria (the Italian association of entrepreneurs) and a distinguished mandarin, has recently promoted an interesting debate (and promoted his last book) by publishing a letter in which he advised his son on leaving Italy. This is Responsibility with Italian characteristics: my dear son, go away. Maybe you happen to love this strange country, but, unfortunately, because of us, it is failing. We failed you. No country for young men like you, and women, oh, God forbid, girls, they should leave in primary school, high school is too late for them. So, my dear son, listen to your old man, please, this is not your fault, but fly away.

At almost the same timing of Mr Celli’s letter, the last CENSIS Report has noticed that Italy has emerged from the financial crisis through a strategy of resistance. The aftermath of the crisis has seriously harmed innovation so far, and we need to remember this in our path to greatness in a reindustrializing world, but it has not destroyed Italian families. Good news, but the problem lies in this word: resistance. Resistance is not resilience. There isn’t a war happening. There is no civil war in Italy nowadays. We don’t need any resistance.

Exile and resistance are not strategies. Shouting “a long farewell to our presumed greatness” or struggling to become the bricks of a weak fortress leave many questions unanswered. These questions arise from our history and from our present needs, and not from the silly hope to end up like Sweden or Norway because of principles or graphs. We know the figures, we know the advantages, but this has zero chances of happening, as I said, without piratepatriots. But the real issues matter as much as ever. For example, who are we? Why does Italy exist? What is our role in the beautiful and sad Mediterranean sea? Are we here to make pizzas? Are we here to welcome Ghadafi and pay him cash in order to close the frontiers? Are we living to praise the economic possibilities for our grandfathers in the 1950s and 1960s?

Italians are going to make it (our superb and stereotypical “cavarcela”) only if they stop complaining. And only if they admit that democracy is not enough, without nation-building. It is time to make our democracy creative through new paths. For example, Pierluigi Celli urges his son “Go to Brazil, go to India, go to China, where the future happens”. Our idea is different. We call it BRICsItaly. If you have already left for these destinations, or, say, Angola, we want you to write to segreteria@lospaziodellapolitica.com. Please, write. Or just contact us on Facebook. We don’t necessarily want you to come back. It’s your life. We have no money for you. We can’t afford teleport. But we need Italians abroad, or Italians who have had an experience of the world outside Italy, to get up and start a networked fight against old and new stereotypes. We want you to share your experiences and your ideas with us. People of BRICsItaly, you are not the bricks of a new wall. We don’t need walls. We live in an age of transition. So, to paraphrase Deng Xiaoping, you are rather the stones through which we can cross the river of the transition from a undeveloping country to a new Italian reality. This is our point: Italy is going to survive only through a new, comprehensive connection with other realities: this is why BRICsItaly, as a collective narrative, needs to move beyond the too-conforting image of a disconnected Made in Italy. Apart from “Should I stay or should I go?”, there are the benefits of being connected with home and at the same time reconstructing home through the knowledge of other countries. The key of success is the ability to exist (not resist) and compete in uncertainty.

Italy after Berlusconi, as we imagine it, is both a FlashForward (without victims, of course) and a declaration of independence. Our imagination of the future needs to be brave. Our declaration of independence needs to include a basic notion of collective political courage. It is only through “courages” that we can really change things. The critics of our beautiful Constitution often state that our “democratic republic based on labor” is uninspiring compared to the right to the pursuit of happiness. It is true that this people of emigrants to America can learn from Thomas Jefferson: in the course of human events, sometimes becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with stupidity and declinism. Let’s stop selling us short. That’s why we need Italy after Berlusconi.

* (I thank my colleagues of Lo Spazio della Politica for our many conversations on our work in progress Italy after Berlusconi)