He was supposed to have been
reluctantly pushed into briefly stepping in as prime minister in Italy to push
austerity measures through the state legislature. According to Deutche Welle, “The 69-year-old
former European Commissioner was appointed to lead Italy’s government . . . to
restore Italy’s finances following Berlusconi’s departure.” The technocrat was
not supposed to so interested in power that he would want to stay on. At the
end of December 2012, Mario Monti announced that he would lead a centrist group
of politicians against the Democratic Party and Berlusconi’s People of Freedom
party in the upcoming election. Had the
former bureaucrat “found religion” in some political cause, or had he developed
a taste for power? If the latter, we might ascribe the motive to the human
propensity to resist giving up power willingly.
The full essay is at Essays on the E.U. Political Economy, which is available at Amazon.
