Abstract

This paper is about an interpretation of post-war Italian economic growth which gives a great weight to political variables, underlining in particular the negative effects of the political fracture beween an opposition dominated by the communist party and a government which assembled most of the anti-communist forces, despite their different views on economic policy. These substantive issues are only briefly summarised, and reference is made to the books and papers where they are developed. This paper is mainly on methodological issues, which are largely the same as those treated in a recent book edited by J. Mahoney and D. Rueschemeyer, "Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences": the use of analytical models, the importance of comparisons and counterfactuals, the role of path dependence. Here a difference is established between history in proper sense (though rich in comparative references) and attempts to establish theoretical propositions, as it is the case of those sociologists and political scientists belonging to the school of "Historical Institutionalism".