The Year before the Elections
in Italian PoliticsThe Jubilee of the Catholic Church is the most frequently mentioned
event in the chronology that precedes this introduction to
the sixteenth edition of Politics in Italy. It could not have been otherwise,
in light of its impact on Italian public life and visibility in
the mass media throughout the year 2000. The “first planetary and
media jubilee,” as Gianfranco Brunelli terms it in his contribution
to this volume, stands at the center of this book’s section on Italian
society. Consider only some of the salient events that marked
this celebration: May Day, which the trade unions left nearly
entirely for the Pope to celebrate; the Gay Pride demonstration and
the attendant protests from the Vatican; Haider’s visit; the arrival of
tens of millions of pilgrims to the Eternal City, the impressive
amount of public works brought to completion in Rome, and the
added visibility of Rome’s mayor Francesco Rutelli. In the imagination
of most Italians, the year 2000 will remain the Jubilee year.