What Silvio Berlusconi Tells Us About Modern Democracy

Despite their willingness to incorporate modernisms of one kind or another, for some unknown reason dictionaries have not adopted the word ‘Felliniesque’. One wonders why, because the term is widely used. Its derivation lies in the movies of Federico Fellini, peopled and cast as they were with wonders, absurdities and grotesques from Rimini and Rome.

The word comes to mind as Silvio Berlusconi steps down as Italian Prime Minister. Here, truly, was a figure straight from a Fellini film. This isn’t to underestimate him. Many see him, and with justification, as a braggart, buffoon and philanderer. But he is also much more than that. With his ownership of a huge media empire, he continues to control a critical crossroad in Italian public life.
He isn’t alone. The degree to which the Murdoch empire is coiled throughout political life in the UK and the USA (through Fox) has been exposed in recent times though not, one suspects, to its full extent.
Of course, it’s a complex scenario. We need communications industries. The alternative is either the kind of controlled pabulum peddled by the ‘press’ in totalitarian and fundamentalist states or the kind of rumour-driven hysteria characteristic of much of the internet and social media. No choice there.
But if we need the industries, then we need the owners too. The issue isn’t actually about who owns the media nor indeed about their private lives. It’s about the degree to which the media are deployed to protect and promote private and sectoral agendas over what might be termed the common good, insofar as that can ever be defined and agreed.
Like his pal Colonel Gaddafi, Berlusconi seems to have believed that he knew what was good for Italians and that, by a happy coincidence for him, this coincided with his own interests. Indeed, Felliniesque as it might seem, he saw himself as a role model for Italian men and believed he was greatly envied.
Well, the biter is being bitten, in his case and also that of Murdoch’s conglomerate. Heads have rolled, mirroring events in the political domain.
But it isn’t just media owners who control key crossroads in public life. So do those rather mysterious entities ‘the markets’.
Who are they and how is it that they, like the media, can topple governments? How else to describe what happened in Greece and Italy?
It suggests a fascinating new interpretation of public and political life. In Ireland we think of the government, the judiciary and the constitution as the tripod on which our democracy is founded. Where does the media fit in?
Or, to take another angle, in medieval times there was the concept of the three estates, the clergy, the nobility and the commoners. In France the numerical dominance of the ‘third estate’ – the commoners – was invoked in support of the revolutionary changes of the late 18th century.
In those terms, the press (and now by extension the media) is sometimes known as the ‘fourth estate’. But this presupposes a common purpose with the rest of civil society. And in fairness, that common purpose is explored and exercised in the best print and electronic journalism. But it is clearly not exercised in the worst. As Oscar Wilde said, ‘In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press.’ Plus ca change… When the media are bad these days, they are very, very bad.
In addition, some writers now refer to a ‘fifth estate’ which they see as including alternative media and post-digital communications such as blogs.
So, in that kind of construct, should we now start to think of the markets as the ‘sixth estate’, thereby drawing them into the social contract?
We can no longer deny their profound influence on society, even though they are multinational and essentially without moral or scruple. It’s all about profits. They are very mobile and will relocate for maximum advantage. They have no loyalty other than the bottom line.
Insofar as they are in any country, they endeavour to stay beyond regulation – that is, they try to distance themselves from participation in society or in any consideration of the public wellbeing. In this they are bedfellows with various magnates who use their publications to maintain the freedom from restriction of press and markets alike.
As we welcome a new president in Michael D Higgins, and as we all draw on his inspiration to talk of a new republic characterised by a recommitment to common purpose and democracy and a rebuilt civil society, we would do well to ponder those massive external forces and how little they care for any of these things. The determination to limit the unfettered powers they have ben exercising, and to bring them into the social and political consensus, is shaping up to be one of the great challenges of the 21st century.
We won’t do it alone here in Ireland. The construction of relationships with this prospective sixth estate will have to be as multinational and multipronged as the sixth estate itself. As we have seen from the euro crisis, such cohesive action from many States is very hard to co-ordinate. But co-ordinate it we must. Otherwise we might as well be playing accordions on the seafront in Rimini and whistling at the sailors and the pretty girls…