All the Old, Familiar Faces

Alessandra Benedetti / Corbis

Italy's new Prime Minister rings a bell to mark the start of the first meeting of the new Cabinet in Rome on April 28

For anyone who's spent even a modest amount of time observing Italian politics, it was difficult to watch the aftermath of the country's elections in February and not think of the classic Italian novel The Leopard , by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Set in 19th century Sicily, at a time of crisis, the book's most famous sentence is an explanation delivered by a member of the island's threatened nobility as to why he is joining the rebels: "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change."

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