Political schools back on the agenda: a toolbox for democracy, security and development
“Empty ballot boxes but full classrooms: boom in political schools,” read the headlines, as well as “Parties resurrect the past and reopen political schools” (Il Sole24Ore, 5 and 7 July). It’s good news at a time of growing populism and widespread disrepute among those who work in politics and public institutions. It supports those who believe in the value of commitment. What is happening?
To try and understand a little better, let’s take a step back in our history.
Bread and politics: my generation consumed them together, from when we were young people to the start of the sixties. For us, the seasons of an extraordinary transformation of Italy were a great stimulus to us, from reconstruction after the wretched World War to the consolidation of the economic boom, amid the strengthening of democratic freedoms and robust social and cultural improvements. And the lesson of the “fathers of the Constituent Assembly” was still alive and present in public debate: De Gasperi, Togliatti, Nenni and La Malfa, the young Aldo Moro and elderly Latinist Concetto Marchesi, Piero Calamandrei and Costantino Mortati, the men and women who wrote shared rules, in good, simple and clear Italian, to establish the conditions and set the direction for a new season of rights and duties.
Bread and politics, as I say. Politique d’abord, politics first, theorised socialist leader Pietro Nenni. Practically everyone insisted on “the primacy of politics”, aware that in the young and still fragile democracy of Italy, born of resistance to fascism and with very extensive popular support, the choices to be made were political first and foremost, to build economic development, well-being, participation: choices of reformative politics.
In the middle of the sixties, the extraordinary educator Don Lorenzo Milani taught that when faced with a problem, “solving it together is politics, solving it for yourselves is greed”. “I care” summarised his ethical thinking, and indeed his politics: I take responsibility, I take care.
For years, the outlook of the best young people, the most brilliant and knowledgeable, was “being in politics”. each in the parties where they felt most at home. And those parties had schools, training courses, courses of study. Being in politics meant commitment. It meant an excellent way of working.
“A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation,” was the phrase attributed to Alcide De Gasperi, leader of the Christian Democrats from the end of the war until 1953, quoting the teaching of US politician James Freeman Clarke. It was a valuable aid, for a person with a long-term perspective. Sceptical and biting, Indro Montanelli observed on the pages of the Corriere della Sera that. “De Gasperi and Andreotti went to mass together and everyone thought they were doing the same thing, but that’s not true. In church, De Gasperi spoke with God, Andreotti with the priest”. The quick-witted Andreotti retorted: “Because the priest voted; God, no”. Thanks to this attitude, tireless and patient application, Andreotti would go on to occupy the country’s political scene for half a century, from 1946 to the start of the 1990s.
By then, the concept of the “primacy of politics” was looking the worse for wear, due to a widespread incapacity of the members of parties and governments, each in their own way, to seize on and lead in radical political and social transformation with appropriate reforms, to resolve the conflicts and contradictions of a rampant modernity. It came to discredit politics and led to the devastating successes of the anti-political.
Are we trying to overcome this problem now? The proliferation of “political schools”, despite increasing abstention in elections and widespread scepticism also among the younger generation, is an interesting sign.
“From Turin to Milan, and from Rome to Palermo, politics courses are to be found throughout the peninsula,” state Riccardo Ferrazza and Andrea Gagliardi in Il Sole24Ore, with evidence. To give just a few of the names examining the question: the Casa della Cultura in Milan, the Fondazione Magna Carta founded by former senator Gaetano Quagliariello, “Vivere nella Comunità” promoted by Pellegrino Capaldo, former banker and active professor, and Comunità di Connessioni directed by Jesuit Father Francesco Occhetta. Many universities too engage in courses and seminars: LUISS in Rome, Statale in Milan, Federico II in Naples and the university in Padua, as well as the SPES (School of Economic and Social Policy) named after former President of the Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
Giovanni Orsina, Director of the LUISS School of Government, comments: “In a democracy, politicians have to represent the citizens. It means that they have to be able to identify with citizens, not be perceived as distant from them, and that when citizens get tired or change their mind, the politicians have to change as well”. It’s a culture of complexity, but also a capacity for vision and inclination to interpret and seek to govern changes.
As a matter of fact, insists Orsina, ”Politicians also have to govern, and that requires professional capacities you can’t rustle up, can’t acquire in the space of a morning: for leadership, organisation, comprehension and handling political dossiers”. Democracy has always fought “the contradiction between representation and competence”, and a toolbox is required made up of knowledge of the humanities, technical and administrative knowledge, public ethics and an inclination to understanding how to plan and build the future – for the “new generations” of which De Gasperi spoke as the outlook in which a politician-statesman can find meaning and to which Europe too is calling us this very day with the new commitments of the Recovery Fund and other instruments for security, energy and the environment.
They’re all political questions, in point of fact.
Good teachers are required, basically, as well as a capacity for listening, promoting participation, incentive to design new and better democratic, political and social balance. This shouldn’t involve giving in to a cynical vision of conventional politics, to propaganda, to the sovereignist rhetoric of “walls”, to seeking consent by stoking up distrust and fear.
Political forces have of course organised training courses as well, from the League to Brothers of Italy and from the Democratic Party to Action and the Five Star movement. Years ago, in 2008, Silvio Berlusconi had planned a “Liberal University” in the Villa Gernetto, near Arcore in Lombardy, but the initiative never seriously took off and now, after the death of the Cavaliere, its future seems uncertain.
But one thing is certain: not only political groups but the whole country needs to commit to the high-quality development of its ruling classes.
Indeed, the future of democracy is strictly connected to the ability to join participation and culture, personal and collective commitment and the promotion of knowledge. It is also connected to a commitment to build up-to-date expertise for facing the challenges of modernity (neo-globalisation, environmental and social sustainability, responses to inequality, the questions of security in multipolar balance, the efficiency and transparency of public institutions and autonomy of social bodies, etc.).
It is therefore essential to be able to trust in good politics, revisit the historic, proud slogan of socialist Pietro Nenni, politique d’abord, in the light of new times, and with a sense of responsibility start consuming bread and politics once more.
(image Getty Images)
“Empty ballot boxes but full classrooms: boom in political schools,” read the headlines, as well as “Parties resurrect the past and reopen political schools” (Il Sole24Ore, 5 and 7 July). It’s good news at a time of growing populism and widespread disrepute among those who work in politics and public institutions. It supports those who believe in the value of commitment. What is happening?
To try and understand a little better, let’s take a step back in our history.
Bread and politics: my generation consumed them together, from when we were young people to the start of the sixties. For us, the seasons of an extraordinary transformation of Italy were a great stimulus to us, from reconstruction after the wretched World War to the consolidation of the economic boom, amid the strengthening of democratic freedoms and robust social and cultural improvements. And the lesson of the “fathers of the Constituent Assembly” was still alive and present in public debate: De Gasperi, Togliatti, Nenni and La Malfa, the young Aldo Moro and elderly Latinist Concetto Marchesi, Piero Calamandrei and Costantino Mortati, the men and women who wrote shared rules, in good, simple and clear Italian, to establish the conditions and set the direction for a new season of rights and duties.
Bread and politics, as I say. Politique d’abord, politics first, theorised socialist leader Pietro Nenni. Practically everyone insisted on “the primacy of politics”, aware that in the young and still fragile democracy of Italy, born of resistance to fascism and with very extensive popular support, the choices to be made were political first and foremost, to build economic development, well-being, participation: choices of reformative politics.
In the middle of the sixties, the extraordinary educator Don Lorenzo Milani taught that when faced with a problem, “solving it together is politics, solving it for yourselves is greed”. “I care” summarised his ethical thinking, and indeed his politics: I take responsibility, I take care.
For years, the outlook of the best young people, the most brilliant and knowledgeable, was “being in politics”. each in the parties where they felt most at home. And those parties had schools, training courses, courses of study. Being in politics meant commitment. It meant an excellent way of working.
“A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation,” was the phrase attributed to Alcide De Gasperi, leader of the Christian Democrats from the end of the war until 1953, quoting the teaching of US politician James Freeman Clarke. It was a valuable aid, for a person with a long-term perspective. Sceptical and biting, Indro Montanelli observed on the pages of the Corriere della Sera that. “De Gasperi and Andreotti went to mass together and everyone thought they were doing the same thing, but that’s not true. In church, De Gasperi spoke with God, Andreotti with the priest”. The quick-witted Andreotti retorted: “Because the priest voted; God, no”. Thanks to this attitude, tireless and patient application, Andreotti would go on to occupy the country’s political scene for half a century, from 1946 to the start of the 1990s.
By then, the concept of the “primacy of politics” was looking the worse for wear, due to a widespread incapacity of the members of parties and governments, each in their own way, to seize on and lead in radical political and social transformation with appropriate reforms, to resolve the conflicts and contradictions of a rampant modernity. It came to discredit politics and led to the devastating successes of the anti-political.
Are we trying to overcome this problem now? The proliferation of “political schools”, despite increasing abstention in elections and widespread scepticism also among the younger generation, is an interesting sign.
“From Turin to Milan, and from Rome to Palermo, politics courses are to be found throughout the peninsula,” state Riccardo Ferrazza and Andrea Gagliardi in Il Sole24Ore, with evidence. To give just a few of the names examining the question: the Casa della Cultura in Milan, the Fondazione Magna Carta founded by former senator Gaetano Quagliariello, “Vivere nella Comunità” promoted by Pellegrino Capaldo, former banker and active professor, and Comunità di Connessioni directed by Jesuit Father Francesco Occhetta. Many universities too engage in courses and seminars: LUISS in Rome, Statale in Milan, Federico II in Naples and the university in Padua, as well as the SPES (School of Economic and Social Policy) named after former President of the Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
Giovanni Orsina, Director of the LUISS School of Government, comments: “In a democracy, politicians have to represent the citizens. It means that they have to be able to identify with citizens, not be perceived as distant from them, and that when citizens get tired or change their mind, the politicians have to change as well”. It’s a culture of complexity, but also a capacity for vision and inclination to interpret and seek to govern changes.
As a matter of fact, insists Orsina, ”Politicians also have to govern, and that requires professional capacities you can’t rustle up, can’t acquire in the space of a morning: for leadership, organisation, comprehension and handling political dossiers”. Democracy has always fought “the contradiction between representation and competence”, and a toolbox is required made up of knowledge of the humanities, technical and administrative knowledge, public ethics and an inclination to understanding how to plan and build the future – for the “new generations” of which De Gasperi spoke as the outlook in which a politician-statesman can find meaning and to which Europe too is calling us this very day with the new commitments of the Recovery Fund and other instruments for security, energy and the environment.
They’re all political questions, in point of fact.
Good teachers are required, basically, as well as a capacity for listening, promoting participation, incentive to design new and better democratic, political and social balance. This shouldn’t involve giving in to a cynical vision of conventional politics, to propaganda, to the sovereignist rhetoric of “walls”, to seeking consent by stoking up distrust and fear.
Political forces have of course organised training courses as well, from the League to Brothers of Italy and from the Democratic Party to Action and the Five Star movement. Years ago, in 2008, Silvio Berlusconi had planned a “Liberal University” in the Villa Gernetto, near Arcore in Lombardy, but the initiative never seriously took off and now, after the death of the Cavaliere, its future seems uncertain.
But one thing is certain: not only political groups but the whole country needs to commit to the high-quality development of its ruling classes.
Indeed, the future of democracy is strictly connected to the ability to join participation and culture, personal and collective commitment and the promotion of knowledge. It is also connected to a commitment to build up-to-date expertise for facing the challenges of modernity (neo-globalisation, environmental and social sustainability, responses to inequality, the questions of security in multipolar balance, the efficiency and transparency of public institutions and autonomy of social bodies, etc.).
It is therefore essential to be able to trust in good politics, revisit the historic, proud slogan of socialist Pietro Nenni, politique d’abord, in the light of new times, and with a sense of responsibility start consuming bread and politics once more.
(image Getty Images)