One glance at a map of Italy’s boot-shaped peninsula and you can distinguish various geographical features that have influenced the country’s history. Italy is surrounded by great mountains in the north such as the Alps, which also form natural borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia. Its territory is divided by 77 percent hilly terrain and 23 percent plains. Italy also represents a country full of history and culture. This helped gain the country a record number of 63,195,203 tourists in December 2018. The main reasons that attract tourists to Italy are the country’s rich culture, cuisine, art, history, beaches, its stunning coastline, its mountains, and ancient monuments.
Because of the differences in climate and terrain in the north and south of Italy, these two parts have distinctive features and development from one another. In the north, the climate is cool and wet while in the south it’s hot and dry. These factors help explain the diverse amount of products and economic development in the country. Historically the north produced more animal-based products such as meat and dairy products. Since rice favored wet conditions, it became a staple food item instead of pasta which was a characteristic of the south. The weather and soil in the center and south part of Italy favored the growth of olive trees. That’s the main reason why olive oil became one of the main ingredients in Italian cuisine and its principal agricultural exports. However, Italy is very poor in natural resources such as coal, iron and other materials that are necessary for industrial economics. In this case, the north has the advantage of being closer to northern Europe and has built important roads that enable easier communication with the rest of Europe. Southern and northern Italy weren’t connected by a highway until the 1960s. Another advantage the north has over the south is the ability to use its rivers and lakes to utilize hydroelectric power whereas the south’s rivers run dry over the summer and aren’t suitable for making electricity. Although these advantages favored the development of an industrial base in the north in the late nineteenth century, the lack of an important energy source and poor communications help account for the south’s failure to industrialize and to modernize its economy.
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Other than economic imbalance, the difficult terrain facilitated the peninsula’s division into many independent political units and hindered political, social, and linguistic unification. Up until the World War II in 1946, Italy was ruled by kings, but after Italians voted to abolish the monarchy in a referendum, the country became a democratic republic. The first republic lasted until 1992, after a series of scandals rocked the major political parties. Because of the major changes in political parties, the period after 1992 until now is known as the Second Republic. Italy has changed several dozens of governments since becoming a republic, indicating political instability in the country. The most recent political crisis happened during August 2019 when interior minister Matteo Salvini, the League leader broke the coalition between the League party and the Five Star Movement party. He called for snap elections, claiming that Five Star’s incompetence was weakening and isolating Italy. Prime minister Giuseppe Conte then accused Mr. Salvini of ‘political opportunism’ for pulling his support from the government in hopes of taking power for himself. The prime minister offered his resignation rather than giving Mr. Salvini an immediate path to power. This period was a time of political uncertainty for Italy, as prime minister Conte had two options left; either call for early elections or consult with other party leaders to see if a new majority could form yet another Italian government. In the meanwhile, the country’s financial situation had worsened.
The economy in Italy wasn’t able to grow and stayed around zero percent, the government was inefficient in solving the issues of major youth unemployment and a public debt of more than 2 trillion euros that represents more than 130 percent of Italy’s annual economic output. Due to the country’s political problems, Italy is very likely to have another economic recession, further worsening the debt and having to compromise its public finances. As was the case with the 2010-2011 Greek debt crisis, an Italian debt crisis is bound to cause turmoil in the global financial markets. This is also very likely to happen considering that Italy is the Eurozone’s third largest economy and since its debt is the world's third largest one after the United States and Japan.
In conclusion, Italy as a country has its flaws but there’s still hope for improvement. After the political crisis in August, an unlikely alliance formed between the Five Star Movement party and the opposition centre-left Democratic party. This should settle the overall situation in the country for a while, but whether Italy will successfully be out of debt soon is still questionable. The government should work on uniting the north and south part of Italy in its economic differences.
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