democracy - Vision the Italian Think Tank

of a much celebrated choice of being a “global citizen” were the issues that the twofriends were discussing few weeks ago together with the authors of this book.And it has been a very interesting discussion not only as far as this research, but alsothe strange story of an entire generation.What did, for a start, make so different the two individual professional paths?The only factor that seems to have really made the difference seemed to us the choicemade at the time of deciding where to go for undergraduate studies.The newly elected MP decided, in fact, to study as doctor in the nearby Universityand to continue his father’s activity. The second person, advised by his professors,chose to study at Bocconi University in Milan, to further his education with a Masterin the United States and to look for a job in London.The two had, in fact, attended the same schools and they were both good students,with the only minor difference of the latter being consistently the best of the class andthe former more regularly a good student.In reality, that small choice – to stay home, and consolidate the work of a parentrather than attending an excellent university, entering a mobile, flexible and vanguardclass – marks not only the drastic separation between two individuals.This small event is, in fact, to be multiplied many folds for many other individuallives of Italian and European young people.It breaks into two parts an entire generation. And it is probably the beginning of anumber of problems that Vision is analyzing.It is an episode, a small one but it says a lot about a system which is not able,technically able to recognize and to reward innovation and mobility, and which hasinstead – more or less deliberately – chosen to prefer continuity and experience.As far as this book is concerned, we are here interested to recognize the technicalfactors that make the institutional selection processes of the political managerial classto exclude the most mobile “part” of a generation, to paradoxically keep out thesegment of the population that should be, at least in theory, equipped with the largerexperience as far as understanding and governing modernity.A lot has been written on the issue of the (auto) “exclusion” of the youngergenerations from the processes of formation of political elites.And yet almost always we have heard a never ending discussion using obscuresociological categories and being about youth in an undifferentiated way. We areinstead concentrating on the institutional reasons that prevent one segment of thisgeneration to take political responsibility and, therefore, the renovation of rulingclasses to function in a proper way 24 .24 Much discussion keep presuming – and it is a dangerous assumption – that, after all, democracy is a romantic (andimpossible) “citizens’ government”, whereas, in the best of cases, in its best traditions, in the conditions that we have toknow how to recreate, democracy is instead a loyal competition between elites, between groups (professional, cultural…) that contend the possibility to govern.24