“Italy’s economic stagnation coincides with the European Union’s quest for monetary unification culminating with the introduction of the euro. This fascinating book makes a forceful argument that this was indeed cause and effect, while no doubt other influences were at play too. As many economists had warned at the time, the single currency put Italian policy in a straitjacket, without necessarily unleashing the productive energies that might have compensated. The reorientation of priorities towards financial integration at the cost of productive capacity backfired. Gabriele Guzzi reopens a debate beyond Italy itself — one that Europe still needs to confront.” Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard University

“Can Italy stand on its own feet? It could very well – before its elites tried to discipline their voters and citizens by locking them into an external constraint, to make the country fit for neoliberal globalism and themselves for adoption by the American-led global oligarchy. As Guzzi rightly notes, Italy has no choice but to liberate itself from its deadly entanglement in the declining neoliberal capitalism of our age.” Wolfgang Streeck, Emeritus Director, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

This book offers a historically grounded and theoretically ambitious interpretation of Italy’s long-term economic, social and political decline within the framework of European integration. Combining political economy, the history of economic thought, and political and philosophical theory, the book argues that the euro and the institutional architecture of the EU have acted as structural constraints on Italy’s development, eroding its productive base, limiting democratic sovereignty, and amplifying inequality. Amidst the current economic and geopolitical crisis facing the Continent, moreover, this book argues that the roots of today’s European crisis lie in the very process of integration launched with the Maastricht Treaty. While it initially harmed certain countries―those on the periphery relative to the core―it is now extending its effects to other nations as well, making a rethinking of the approach to common policies increasingly necessary. Thus, the book challenges the mainstream narrative that attributes Italy’s stagnation to national mismanagement and instead situates the country’s trajectory within broader contradictions of the EU’s economic governance. Drawing on both heterodox and institutionalist literatures ―as well as on extensive descriptive data― the analysis engages critically with the Maastricht Treaty, the “external constraint” strategy, the technocratic role of the European Central Bank, and the political theology underpinning the euro as a secular promise of salvation. By reconstructing key turning points―from the 1992 crisis to the sovereign debt turmoil, and from constitutional reforms to ideological transformations―the book shows how European monetary integration has redefined Italian statehood and weakened the post-war democratic and social contract. The final chapter explores alternative scenarios and argues for a broader cultural and political reorientation capable of reimagining Europe beyond its current institutional form. Targeted at scholars in European studies, political economy, economic history and political theory, the book offers a bold and timely contribution to core debates on the EU, sovereignty, and the crisis of European capitalism.