Italians mainly rate the horizontal leaderships positively: the leaders of associations with social aims and the voluntary sector, at most the exponents of the world of culture and universities. They are already divided on entrepreneurs, but when we move on to consider the ruling classes of organised representations and institutions, the assessment drops considerably. And, among those rejected, we find politicians, trade unionists and bankers in common. It is a society that recognises itself in its proximity to the territory, in those who actively work in the many solidarity networks. It is more distrustful, however, when it thinks of the ruling classes that belong to the institutionalised forms of representation and politics. They are perceived as distant and detached, too particular and self-referential. Perhaps this is why, in outlining the characteristics of the leadership of the future for our country, he emphasises two aspects above all: the ability to have a strategic vision, capable of anticipating and tackling problems, on the one hand. On the other, being endowed with a sense of morality, of legality: in a word, the ethical dimension. Better still, if along with these aspects there is also a specific professional competence. The background to all this is then the political cultural orientations expressed by citizens. Beyond the electoral outcome, the results of which are well known, the political cultures of Italians show an upheaval in which, in addition to the traditional alignments, there is a significant emergence of inclinations that we could easily define as 'post-political'.
This is the general picture that emerges from the first survey on the Italian population of the LaST research promoted by Community Media Research for La Stampa, carried out by Questlab, the results of which we anticipate. It is an Italy tried by a long crisis, by a ruling class (not only politicians) that often offers its worst face amid scandals, robberies and a civic sense that has been derubricated from its lexicon. Above all, it is endowed with a profound sense of unreality.
The ruling class. Italians in such a bewildered country, without a leadership recognised as such, seem to find strength more in themselves than in the institutions: in particular in the forms of association and voluntary work present in the territory, in those who work in the construction of social capital and community solidarity networks. We have often seen them at work in the most complicated situations: the civil protection and Alpine troops during earthquakes, young people at work after floods, social cooperatives in helping marginalised people, Caritas with the poor and immigrants, to name but a few examples. They express a horizontal, territorial ruling class: to them goes the greatest appreciation and approval of Italians (66.1%), especially from older people, the inactive, men and those living in the North East of the country, where forms of volunteering are particularly widespread. Next in the ranking of positive appreciations is the ruling class expressed by certain elites from the world of culture and universities (59.3%), an assessment supported in particular by the younger classes. More detached, we meet the entrepreneurs and business managers who divide the sample almost evenly: 50.4% give a positive rating to this part of the national ruling class. Intuitively, the positive evaluations come from those who are active in the labour market and from the entrepreneurs surveyed themselves, from those who reside in northern Italy and from those who are centre and centre-right in their political orientations. So far, the positive evaluations. Below this threshold, most of the proposed managerial groups are positioned, which can be gathered in two prevailing areas. The first identifies the managerial class of structured organisational forms: magistrates (48.7%, who significantly obtain a very high positive judgement among those who place themselves on the centre-left, 53.9%; compared to those who place themselves on the centre-right, 36.5%), journalists and opinion leaders (41.8%), managers of trade associations (39.0%) and the ecclesiastical hierarchy (35.3%). The second group, more crushed at the bottom of the ranking, includes the leadership of political institutions and trade unions, as well as the great defendants of the crisis: bankers. National and European politicians gather only a fifth of the consensus (20.7%) and a similar result goes to regional politicians (20.1%), followed by trade union leaders (17.4%) and bankers (16.0%). A result, the latter, which further emphasises the distance and detachment of citizens from the institutions, but also from a trade union considered crushed on the political dimension.
Wanting to identify a summary measure of the degree of appreciation assigned to the various leaderships, we created an overall appreciation rate. Slightly less than a third of the respondents (31.6%) show a good level of confidence (rating of more than 6) in all the proposed leaderships, while 68.4% give a generally negative assessment. This negative opinion is held to a greater extent by men (71.5%), people of active working age (between 35 and 64, with peaks of up to 80.8%), the employed (76.6%) and entrepreneurs (71.3%). But also among the very young (under 24: 79.0%) and those living in the Centre (74.4%) and the South (75.1%). Above all, among those who no longer identify with traditional political cultures (79.9%).
