Abstract

How Italy Is Governed

This article presents information on the administrative machinery of the government of Italy. Italy is governed constitutionally because it has popular representation and a Parliament, but in point of fact there is not a stage of government in which the decisive agency in the conduct of affairs is not the power of the "Camorra." Beginning with the communal councils, in which the most minute affairs of the population are decided, there is scarcely a measure passed in which the main motive of decision is not the personal and pecuniary interests of the councillors. A relative who has been for many years in the provincial and communal councils in central Italy in which he held a large amount of real estate, assured me that at was the constant practice of the councillors to pass measures for the improvement of their personal property as measures of public utility-roads to open their estates as roads of public necessity.