"Il carro del progresso". Spesa pubblica, politica e società a Varese in età liberale (1859-1898)

Through the study of a case, Varese- a municipality of the Kingdom of Italy since 1881 – the book deals with a precise historiographical problem: the nature of the Italian liberal state and of its supposed administrative centralization considered through public expenditure as a privileged place for analyzing the relationships between the centre and the periphery. The outcome is a picture of profound disruption of the municipal finances – shared, for that matter, by the whole peninsula in the second half of the nineteenth century – but also the confirmation that it depended mostly on the autonomy of action enjoyed by the local ruling class in the government of the common good. These were the ways of a large-meshed “Italian-style centralization” conditioned by politics and by the complex relations of the municipality with the provincial and central watchdogs. Also in Varese, a lively neo-entrepreneurial little town, rich in financial and economical initiatives, political reasons were often crucial in the choices of the municipality concerning public expenditure, in the direction of the civil renewal of the middle-class town and of development. But the real key to the success of the modernization of Varese was the profitable contact between public and private intervention which was here accomplished early not only in comparison with other Italian local communities but also compared to the end-of-the-century strong industrial boost.