Research Group:

Meriggi Marco (Coordinator), Maria Carmela Schisani e Francesca Caiazzo (development and implementation of the project of database ifesmez.unina.it), Lilia Costabile, Renata De Lorenzo, Silvio de Majo, Adriano Giannola, Luigi Musella

Title:

Abstract

The delay in Southern Italy’s development as well as the period when Italian dualism occurred, can be effectively re-read through a long-run systemic analysis which consider the interaction between internal factors and dynamics exogenous to the traditional system Mezzogiorno/National State, this last feature having been the major object of historical and economic studies the results of which diverge from each other in respect to the different analytical starting points (State/global economy).
We argue that the dialectic State-international capital flows – in the period of the 1st globalization (here backdated at 1850, corresponding to European financial revolution) – could be an effective research key to re-reading the history of Southern Italy’s economy, combining both the different analytical starting points.
Defining the relations of cooperation/opportunism and therefore the directions of the control between high finance and the actors bound to the territory (principal-agent theory) and analysing the distribution of the advantages of the game that is performed between the same actors can make both the perspectives of modernization and dependence complementary.
An analysis that makes use of the basic instruments of game theory seems to be a valid path to decode these behaviours, considering the institutions (absolute state, local and peripheral institutions of the liberal state) and their “use” by the agents as the connection node between internal factors and dynamics exogenous to the system.

State of art

In the analysis of the relationship economic development/globalization, the results of theoretical studies both on modernization (Rostow, Gerschenkron) and dependence (Wallerstein, Arrighi), which diverge from each other with respect to their analysis focus, can be considered complementary for the same reason. Considering alternatively underdevelopment causes as internal (modernization/institutions, society, economic factors) or external (dependence/international capital flows, imperialism) can suggest results inconsistent to development paths. This divergence is also present in the literature on the origins of Southern Italy’s economic delay with the outcome of an often incoherent interpretation. This is the idea which the present proposal originates from.
On the inflow of foreign capital and on the interests of high international finance in pre- and post-Unification Italy there is indeed an influential body of literature that has overlooked its paths and has tried its quantification (Gille, 1968; Cameron, 1961; Hertner, 1984; De Cecco, 1971). More specific studies on economics, public finance and infrastructures of the Mezzogiorno (Ostuni, 1992; De Matteo, 2008; de Majo, 2006 and 2011; Caiazzo, mimeo) confirm the interest of foreign capital for this area “throughout the 19th century” (Nitti, 1915).
Equally significant are the studies on the structure of the political and social networks of the Bourbon Kingdom. On parallel lines, the dependence of a politically and financially weak state on actors external to the system (Holy Alliance, haute finance) (Schisani, 2001, 2010) has been analysed, on the other the contribution of the consensus on certain internal actors (mercantile and financial elites) to the detriment of others (productive and propertied classes) (Davis, 1979). The outcomes of both lines of analysis show that the absolute state, with the exclusion of the representative bodies of the interests of the territory from the decision-making, undermines the survival of the Kingdom (Demarco, 1960). The post-Unification State, vice-versa, makes the territory fall within the places of the choices of economic policy. The alteration in the pre-existing centre-periphery relations, which makes of Naples an intermediate node, changes the territorial balance of the Mezzogiorno (Massafra, 1988; Salvemini, 1995). The local noble elites, to which the representation of the territory is delegated in the central and peripheral bodies of the State (Romanelli, 1995) become active agents of the contraction both for the recovery/maintenance of the centrality of their own territory and for the directions of the financial flows (sources of funding and expenditure). In that sense, the institutions and the organisations” (North, 1990) become the pivot around which the territory's infrastructure policies hinge at the national (railways, ports) and local (networked city) levels (Merger, 1998), on which the interaction with international capital in the development of global finance is played out (Chapman, 1984; Landes, 1956; Cassis, 2008 Flandreau, 2004, 2009).
In this general frame, it lacks an interpretative hypothesis which could link and deepen these results.

General and specific aims

The general objective of the research is a re-reading of some evidences supported by literature about the history of the economy of the Mezzogiorno, starting from the dialectic institutions- international capital. An analysis of this kind that makes use of the basic instruments of game theory seems to be a valid path for the recomposing of the contradictory interpretations on the growth of this Mediterranean periphery, often diverging in respect to the analytical base (endogenous growth vs world-economy).
The starting point is to define the actors involved, the strategies adopted and the interrelationship between their behaviours, in relation to the different environments in which they move (i.e. local/national/international), within a space that is necessarily transversal at the political and administrative borders and is necessarily variable over time; a space for analysis, therefore, which results to be the product and the construction of the same historical actors.
The arrival point is to analyse the distribution of the advantages of such a game that is performed within the scope of the wave of the first globalisation in which situations of weakness/dependency can be accounted for, with positive results for just a part and situations in which the systemic conditions allow for an advantage for all the actors.

The specific aim is to define the relations of cooperation/opportunism and therefore the directions of the control between high finance and the actors bound to the territory (principal-agent theory). In this sense, up to 1861, the restructuring of the networks of political power at several levels, with the change in the role of Naples to an administrative centre of lower rank, coincides with the restructuring of the international high finance networks affected, from 1850, by a process of structural revolution and concentration of capital, accompanied by the intensification of its exportation progressively from the traditional channels of government loans to direct investments both in infrastructures and organisation of the territory. This aim can be realised via the study of the relations between haute finance and the absolute Bourbon State (public debt) versus haute finance and representative organs of the unitary State in which the growth of the territory - becoming a political instance - introduces the local representations as fundamental actors in the institution-international capital dialectic.