Keywords

• The essay reconstructs the relations between Northern and Southern Italy
• from Unification to the present
• through the basic lens of unbalanced interdependence. The South made a great contribution to the Northâ€
• ™
• s industrialization
• keeping the balance of payments steady through immigrantsâ€
• ™
• remittances. The partial industrialization of Naples in the liberal age was followed by limited comprehensive land improvement and electrification in the fascist age. In the republican age
• Italy made its most important attempt at modernizing the South by means of extraordinary State intervention
• through the fund for the development of Southern Italy. Productive investments ended in 1973
• coinciding with the end of Fordism and the beginning of globalization. Public expenditure was then to support private incomes and an increased consumption of northern products â€
• “
• a mechanism that was to last for twenty years. But the structural consequences were to be unfavourable
• especially after the 1980s: deindustrialization
• widespread unemployment
• low-quality public services
• and increased organized crime. In the 21st century
• Southern Italy is characterized by uneven modernity
• a low-quality ruling class
• and absolutely no organization of government policy