La convergenza possibile

The presence of pronounced economic imbalances on a territorial basis is a structural and inescapable condition of our country, where the South seems destined to permanent inferiority. Yet, in the period between the beginning of the economic boom and the mid-1970s, convergence between North and South had been not only possible, but achieved. Through an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, this volume traces the strategies, allocations and activities of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, the institution entrusted with intervention for the development of the southern regions. Using documentary sources from the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno preserved at the Central State Archive, quantitative historical series have been reconstructed, comparing them with evidence produced by the most recent national and international research. What emerges is a composite picture, not without contradictions, useful not for reproposing forms of intervention that are now outdated, but for understanding, through a reinterpretation of the successes of extraordinary intervention in its first twenty years and its subsequent involution, how the fate of the South represents the result of choices made by national ruling classes and local communities, within a framework of economic policies and national and European productive strategies.