It is Still ‘Mezzogiorno’. The Topicality of Augusto Graziani's Thought

The Mezzogiorno remains a major unresolved Italian issue. Significant changes in the production structure, policies aimed at supporting international trade, and European economic integration have indeed resulted in the growth of the Italian economic-social system while preserving an uneven and still dualistic conformation. In Graziani’s vision, seriously addressing the issue of the Mezzogiorno requires an ambitious and coherent industrial policy design, an action aimed at pushing enterprises toward a technological and dimensional leap. Foresightedly, he also argued that the issue should be analysed in a unified national context, given that the two economic realities of the North and the South are no longer separate (as they could still be in the early twentieth century) but are integrated and bound to a common destiny. The reasons for a persistent dualistic system must, therefore, be sought not in terms of how the development of the Southern regions has been achieved but by looking at the changes that have taken place nationally and in the northern areas. This lesson from Graziani is increasingly relevant today when considering recent events in Italian economic policy from a separatist and autonomist perspective. A topic, to use Graziani’s words, is still «burning in its relevance and topicality».