In the Labyrinth. State, Governments, and the growth of the public debt in Italy in the middle of 1980s

Italian State has always lived above its means, with a constant imbalance between income and expenditure and at the same time expanding its distance with respect to society (but the debt was paid by social groups that took advantage of it), a process that triggered off a perennial crisis of representation and strengthened the instability of relations between political institutions and society The article investigates the impact of the ‘political use’ of public debt by italian governments on the relationship between the State and society.