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A few comparatively youthful politicians have managed to penetrate the system. Enrico Letta was the youngest Cabinet member in Italian history when a center-left coalition made him Minister for Community Policies at 32. But at 39, Letta bemoans how few of his peers have entered the ruling classes: "At 40 you're still considered a kid." Letta says the current élite practices what he calls "co-optation" to keep challengers at bay. When talented youngsters emerge, the old leaders "co-opt" them into the fold with the perks of power, but no real influence to upset the status quo. "Co-optation assures that there is no competition," he says. Letta looks back with envy at the 1968 generation, which had demographics on its side. "Then the country was young, so the political orientation and interests were focused on the young," he says. "But today, the '68 generation is still in complete control."
Guia Soncini, 33, a columnist for the women's magazine supplement of Corriere della Sera and for Il Foglio, is less forgiving than Letta. She says an unspoken complicity across the generations is the key to understanding Italy. "By definition, power is not something I can give to you," she says. "The 30-year-olds must seize power — and why don't they? Because they're comfortable with how things are. In America, you move out of the house even if you don't have a full-time job. In Italy, you say you won't leave until you're earning thousands a month." Soncini pauses over her pasta all'amatriciana, recalling compliments on her success from veteran colleagues: "'Look at you. You're so young,' they tell me. Oh please! The people who've really made a mark on history were already dead at my age!"
Developing the potential of a Giotto requires masters with the wisdom and magnanimity of Cimabue. Even if Italy's under-40s were to push harder for responsible roles, Italy's old guard — in virtually every field, from academia to entertainment — shows few signs of ceding space to them. Some tactics for hoarding power are part of unwritten custom, such as the infamous raccomandazione, a system of recommending candidates that in other cultures could be a good-faith job reference, but in Italy often reflects political patronage and outright nepotism. And other structures that block renewal are fixed by law: closed professional societies for everyone from notaries and architects to journalists and taxi drivers help ensure that co-optation and complicity are the only way to get in. Last year Soncini, one of Italy's sharpest popular-culture writers, failed her required exam to enter a journalists' guild. That means a reporter who jets off to interview the likes of Madonna and Jack Nicholson is not officially a journalist in Italy, and has no right to basic union benefits. Soncini waves away campaign promises by the center-left to abolish the closed shops. "They'll never do it," she says. "They're the privileges of the caste, and those who have managed to get inside will do whatever it takes to defend their privileges."
Restrictive social and professional structures manifest the Italian tendency toward a weak state, says Giuliano Milani, a medieval historian at Rome's La Sapienza University. Notaries established such societies in 12th century city-states, and attorneys followed suit two centuries later, as a way to guarantee people services that the government could not provide. But what had a logic in the past is an anachronism today. "Everyone has as their point of reference their own boss, not the client," says Milani. "It is a system based on admission, which prizes obedience over individualism. So you end up being paid for what you are, not for what you do."
Perhaps surprisingly, nepotism and favoritism run rampant in academia. Universities ought to be open to new faces and new ideas. Yet while the system of assigning teaching jobs is based on apparently open and competitive public exams, in practice, positions are divvied up by ranking professors to favor their own chosen protégés. The result is the very opposite of competition, a system where old university barons wield power over up-and-coming scholars. Italy has the world's highest percentage of professors over 60 (43%), while the average age of a university postdoctoral researcher is 40. As a result, much of the young talent heads abroad to more receptive societies, like the U.S. and Britain, depriving Italy of the new minds it needs for innovation: a recent Eurispes survey found that more than half of all university graduates would like to work elsewhere. After earning a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University, Parma native Andrea Coscelli returned to Europe — but not to Italy. Now a London-based antitrust consultant, he wouldn't mind returning to the Italian lifestyle and weather. But back home, advancement in his field is based on politics, he says, not competence: "We're missing basic meritocracy and generational turnover."