Le politiche di austerità nella narrazione della stampa italiana

Abstract

Policies of deficit and inflation rate reduction, commonly known as austerity policies, have been dominating the European economic debate for several years. The European Union’s constraints play an important role in determining the content of the economic policies implemented by member countries. Since 1979, Italy has made use of the EU institutions as a vincolo esterno (external constraint) in order to facilitate the liberalization of its economy: a goal that Italy, alone, had not the ability to pursue for many reasons. The aim of the research is to investigate the relationship between the austerity policies and the European constraints. This relationship has been observed through the views expressed by a number of individuals (politicians, journalists, academics, interest groups and others) and reported by the Italian press. The aim is to check whether the support for austerity policies is motivated by the necessity to fulfill the demands of the European institutions. The considered events are the financial crises of 1992 and 2011. The methodology is based on a content analysis of three newspaper articles: “Corriere della Sera”, “la Repubblica”, “l’Unità”. The hypothesis has a match in the empirical analysis: those who express favorable opinions to the European constraints are more oriented than those who do not show such views to support the austerity policies. Another element that determines austerity support positions is the interpretation of the economic situation in terms of emergency, but in this case the relationship is usually less intense. Data also show that there is a widespread consensus about austerity among the parties, the newspapers and the professional categories, but a strong split/gap resists regarding more specific aspects such as single economic measures and the distribution of rebalancing costs within society. [edited by Author]