CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

98 Syndromes of Corruption
kickbacks were also linked to P2. In the end almost a thousand people,
including politicians, security officials, and top business figures were
linked to secret networks practicing corruption and violence (Hine,
1995: 186–187; Della Porta and Vannucci, 1999: 168–170).
Larger and more systematic tangenti became common during the
1980s. Italy’s economy included major state-owned enterprises, as well
as a range of public–private joint ventures, that often competed with
private businesses; many enterprises had been colonized by political
parties. Moreover, partizzazione of the bureaucracy among the governing
parties continued apace. The results were often complex financial dealings,
legal and otherwise, among convoluted networks of bureaucrats,
party officials, and ‘‘business politicians.’’ ENI, the state hydrocarbon
enterprise, had become a kind of subsidiary of the Socialist Party (PSI) by
the end of the 1970s; yet it helped bankroll all major parties (at times in
conjunction with ENEL) through kickbacks exceeding 1 billion Lire
annually. In the chemicals sector the Montedison and Enimont combines,
along with ENI, shuffled major assets between state and private
hands, aided by payments as large as 75 billion Lire to Socialist leader
Bettino Craxi and 35 billion to DC Secretary Arnaldo Forlani. The result
was a lucrative nationalization of chemical production while most competing
countries were pursuing privatization. In Milan, contractors building
a new Metro line were assessed at 4 percent of the value of their
contracts, payments shared among political parties in proportions agreed
in advance (Rhodes, 1997: 68–70; Colazingari and Rose-Ackerman,
1998; Della Porta and Vannucci, 1999: 97–99).
Tangentopoli, mani pulite, and the fall of the First Republic
The scandal that ultimately brought down the First Republic began with
a single arrest in Milan, but ultimately reflected the rise of a new generation
of judges in the late 1980s, political fissures revealed by the 1992
general election, and Italy’s changing place in the European and world
economies (this discussion draws upon Hine, 1995, 1996; Buffachi and
Burgess, 1998; Burnett and Mantovani, 1998; Della Porta and Vannucci,
1999, 2002; Della Porta, 2004). The young jurists combined a new
commitment to fighting corruption with the considerable powers and
independence of the Italian judiciary, and used such tactics as extended
detention without trial to extract information from suspects. The 1992
elections – the country’s first since the fall of communism (Pasquino and
McCarthy, 1993; Buffachi and Burgess, 1998: chs. 2, 3) – revealed the
weakness of partitocrazia. The old PCI had become the Democratic Party
of the Left (PDS), depriving the DC-led coalition of the symbolic threat