Abstract

The complex relationship between Northern and Southern Italy is a long-lasting matter of power. Northern and Southern elites have exploited each other for more than 150 years. The deal between "moderates" of both sides was that the Northern ones exploited the large political and electoral consensus obtained by their Southern counterpart to stay in power and that the last obtained not only financial resources, but also that the North would not care about what happened within Southern society, including the perverse links between politics and organized crime. The deal was denounced twenty years ago, when the Northern moderates discovered that the Southern political support had become superfluous. Since then the "Mezzogiorno" is politically irrelevant and was abandoned to itself.