The Egg of Berlusconi

BOOK REVIEWS OF THE BOOK:

"THE EGG OF BERLUSCONI"

Il Giornale - 20.12.1998

The vision of Amedeo Nigra summarized in a book:
"Government administration can be saved by following entrepreneurs' methods"

Is 'The Egg of Berlusconi' just a dream that is going to to remain such, an intellectual provocation or the precocious intuition of an unstoppable trend ? The Egg of Berlusconi is the title of the latest book by Amedeo Nigra, a 50 year old Milanese lawyer who writes for Il Giornale: it was presented yesterday at the Milan Press Club by some university professors, Giampiero Cantoni (another writer in Il Giornale) and Giorgio Fiorentini, Mario Cervi (director of Il Giornale), Paolo Giuggioli, president of the Corporation of Advocates in Milan and Sandro Grespan, president of the Catholic union of managers and entrepreneurs of Mantova. Before becoming a lawyer the author worked in marketing at the Rinascente department store and in 1985 published a book on the defence of profit. The main idea of his latest book is that the time has come for applying to government the methods of advertising and marketing, i.e. instruments enabling the entreprise method to prove that it is the most effective system for creating economic growth. A conviction that attorney Nigra shares with Silvio Berlusconi, the first Italian to utilize in the political arena these techniques that were created by and perfected by private corporations. 'Social welfare - explained Mr Nigra - is a product because it is the result of political choices. Even if they don't realize it politicians are also entrepreneurs because taxation determines the pricing of goods and services. Therefore a politician with knowledge of how companies work is capable of creating more economic growth than his rivals'. 'Nigra's approach - says Cantoni - is basically an idea that is perhaps some decades in advance of our time. It is a 'provocation' and perhaps a dream because above all here in Italy politicians can never act in the same way as a businessman because they are forced to negotiate everything. Also because entrepreneurs attempting to go into politics are prejudicially blocked as the experience of Berlusconi proved'. 'Aside from our personal friendship and holding the same views which is my link with Berlusconi - says Cervi - I am convinced that he had strongly innovative ideas that were not at all impossible to realize. Those who mocked him were wrong, just like those Americans who made fun of Ronald Reagan when in the early 80s he said that soon we would be witnessing the collapse of communism. The Cavaliere's promised objectives of a million new jobs to be created and privatizing government departments, proved to be impossible for Berlusconi to meet. The only thing that I find perplexing in Nigra's book is the risk that in order to adopt enterprise methods our government administration would multiply the numbers of cronyism, bureaucracies, top jobs and blue ministerial cars'.
vi.pri.

Il Sole 24 Ore - 27.12.1998

"Enterprise methods of government"

A book about politics that is full of convincing ideas and suggestive analyses. With one defect: its title, The Egg of Berlusconi. This work by Amedeo Nigra is not what it might seem to be: it is not a summary of the experiences of an entrepreneur who has moved on to politics, in the same way that it is not a theoretical synthesis of the Cavaliere's thoughts. There is something more and different and above all it contains a careful assessment of the 'enterprise method' as an instrument of political action, maintaining a courageous distance from the commonplaces of theories of power. With a deliberately provoking approach the elements of company management become instruments of a new and different strategy for government which through marketing, advertising and competition should better be able to meet the needs of Italian citizens. 'Our national sickness - Nigra remarks - is the excessive number of laws and massive regulations issued by the authorities'' The solution is to 'follow the enterprise method as a vaccine', injecting small quantities of it to transform and strengthen our society. And many examples can be cited: from schools to justice, from health services to fiscal policy. Examples which after the inevitable collapse of Marxist ideologies should constitute points of reflection for all parties in politics, because the problem is not how to turn the state into an enterprise but to operate in the political arena with efficiency, proper assessment of results & strategies that characterize our country's entrepreneurs. In an Italy still too sick with Stalinism, such a call to concrete realities and to the responsibility of each one of us can certainly be beneficial. Also because the 'enterprise method' should not be monopolized by anyone. Not even by entrepreneurs.
(g.f.)

Il Denaro - 02.12.1998

Berlusconi and government in Nigra's book

Government should copy the methods and procedures of private businessmen. This is the solution offered in 'The Egg of Berlusconi', which we see ahead of us every day but which we do not decide to apply (like the famous egg of Christopher Columbus ...The solution of managing government with the typical instruments and methods of business - in order to produce welfare and solidarity for all - this is in substance the main proposition and anathemy of Amedeo Nigra, lawyer and author of several books and articles, on which is based his latest work entitled 'The Egg of Berlusconi'. The intellectual vivacity of the author is rooted in his personal experience of marketing, advertising and promotions, and it shows up in these techniques: in fact he suggests they should properly be applied through following the enterprise method in government administration, where are to be found the worst inefficiencies. 'Only an entrepreneur can work out the solutions that are necessary to make things function properly, through enterprise methods'. With a lucid analysis, which is passionate and convincing, like a true story teller of successes, an important characteristic of the author of this book - which does not seem to belong to the statesman Berlusconi, whose abilities as an entrepreneur must be recognized - in which Nigra describes in detail how Berlusconi in 1994 decided to enter the political arena and the results of the elections that followed. Berlusconi seemed then to have become subject to the constrictions of the Italian political system, to have forgotten his origins as a self-made man, an entrepreneur following concrete objectives in order to achieve effective results for his 'Italy corporation'. An example for everybody: the choice of ministers in forming his cabinet. Public opinion was expecting this time a 'new approach to politics' and the application of entreprise methods. Had it not been for the judicial problems that were proof of his businessman's background, in all honesty it must be said that public opinion gained a different impression of the then Prime minister's plans, as the expression of an Italian political party rather than as representing the electorate's true wishes.

(editor's note) This review is rather unfavourable to Berlusconi whereas the events from 1995 to 1999 demonstrate that Berlusconi's policies were the right ones.

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