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The pension systems of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece are organized according to the Bismarckian blueprint: ‘corporatist’ schemes of compulsory insurance covering different occupational groups, with different regulations. Historically, Italy pioneered developments by introducing compulsory pension insurance in 1919. Portugal and Greece followed suit in the mid-1930s, while in Spain fully fledged compulsory pension insurance arrived in 1947. Between the 1950s and 1980s, the pension systems in Southern Europe were significantly expanded in terms of coverage and improved in terms of benefits. This chapter discusses the trajectory of pension reform in Italy, the largest country in Southern Europe. It describes the main pension reforms of the first pillar; the efforts for promoting the development of a second, funded pillar; and recent developments under the administration of Silvio Berlusconi. The chapter also examines the gradual transformation of the ‘end-of-contract-payment’ (TFR) scheme.

This chapter establishes television and print media as foundational to Silvio Berlusconi's antiestablishment politics to its many aftermaths. It explains that the immediate aftermath is about how science became seen as worth saving and a rallying cry to mobilize to the streets. It also recounts the rise of Beppe Grillo and the Five Star Movement as a consequential outcome that forms a new kind of digital populism through the Internet and algorithmic processes. The chapter examines why Italy was one of the first countries to attempt to hold disinformation and “fake news” legally accountable, and how social actors hyperinvest in scientific thinking. It refers to how the current hegemonic form of knowledge and customized Internet influence forms of governance and politics.

This chapter revolves around “media demagogues”: politicians who rely on their mastery of the media, and on recurrent lies, as they exploit the electorate’s worst fears and prejudices to gain and retain power. The rise of media demagogues produces integrity complexity for the political actors who surround them, including both political operatives who are considering whether to serve the demagogue, and fellow politicians, who are considering whether to ally with him. From the perspective of both of these kinds of political actors, it may appear as if integrity’s dictates are indeterminate. Should one wash one’s hands clean of the demagogue in the name of personal integrity, or collaborate with him to limit the threats he poses to the polity’s collective integrity? Taking up the cases of Donald Trump, Silvio Berlusconi, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the chapter shows how the integrity framework can offer a systematic solution to this problem.

This chapter concentrates on a mystery of late-twentieth-century Italy, which recounts how Silvio Berlusconi enchanted citizens and dominated Italian politics for nearly twenty years despite widely shared agreement on his corruption and ineptitude. It analyses how a dazzling political culture changes how Italians discerned what counted as accurate and reliable information, and which actors might be trusted to offer the facts. It also focuses on Striscia la Notizia, one of the world's first fake news programs, and its plush mascot Gabibbo, a human-sized red puppet who is praised as a civil defender. The chapter uses Gabibbo to unravel why Italy became a site in which puppets talking politics were more reliable than puppet-like politicians. It suggests that postwar political spectacle gave way to a widespread popular cynicism capable of simultaneously propelling former prime minister Berlusconi's peculiar popularity and puppets seen as truth-tellers.

This chapter scrutinizes the political career of comedian-cum-politician Beppe Grillo, who founded the Five Star Movement, an algorithm party that currently co-rules Italy. It explores how Italy shifted from the glossy prepackaged world of Silvio Berlusconi toward a grassroots, Internet-driven, and algorithmic political movement. It also describes the Five Star Movement as a protest movement on populism, antipolitics, and anarchism. The chapter discusses Grillo's deployment of supernatural humor and political suspicion, as well as his otherworldly humor and cynical hypotheses that speak to brewing cultural and economic anxieties. It refers to Grillo's theories that offer citizens a scapegoat or an alternative explanation for Italy's socioeconomic crises and the labor of the supernatural.

Patrimony capital finds its maximal expression in public-private cultural heritage partnerships. Bringing the account to the twenty-first century, the chapter is structured around four events that tested, reinforced, and expanded Italian cultural power. The return of the Euphronios krater from the Metropolitan Museum of Art stands as a towering symbol of the effectiveness of the Italian model. But the handover of the Venus of Cyrene from Italy to Libya conferred equal legitimacy and prestige, because Italian officials parlayed the exchange into novel diplomatic opportunities. Turning to domestic matters, the refurbishment of the Colosseum, funded by a luxury goods company, illustrates a paradox of patrimony capital, wherein patrimony is a priceless treasure that can be priced to suit private sector needs.