The Italian state and small business

Abstract

Despite the certainty with which our theories of industrial society chorused the demise of the small-scale economy, Italy'ssmall producers have not merely refused to disappear but have continued to nourish, multiply and predominate in the postwar economy. Most explanations for this phenomenon have centred oneconomic factors—whether the old linear notions of delayed development and backwardness (Fuà 1976; Sereni 1966), or the more fashionable centre-periphery model which attributes the survival of small-scale production to Italy's ‘latecomer’ status within the international division of labour (see, e.g., Paci 1979; Bagnasco 1977). In this paper I shall attempt to provide a non-economic explanation for the persistence and reproduction of Italy's small business stratum. The weight and importance of small enterprise in a given economy is not entirely explained by economic factors, since comparative statistics tell us that in many advanced economies petty production is by no means a marginal organisational form. Indeed they indicate that the processes of industrialism, far from generating homogenous and purgative effects, produce a diversity of conditions in which small firms can survive. On these and other empirical grounds, the paper argues that the differences observable in the Italian case are the product of particular social and institutional factors.