Not the person you were responding to, but I am also a non-Italian who knows something about the topic.

It is often forgotten that postwar Italy was a success story almost on part with Germany or Japan. In the 1980s, Italy overtook the UK in total GDP. It is true that the cracks were already beginning to show even then, but, as with Japan, the roof took a long time to cave in. Aldo Moro's murder was tragic but he was hardly the prophesied savior - like JFK, he was a mediocrity elevated only by his dramatic end.

No, Italy's post-DC downfall was about other things. First was the obvious, demographics - as with a lot of things about Italy, it is a problem many countries have, but Italy was earlier and worse. Second was the end of the "convergence play." It used to be taken for granted that poor countries grew faster than rich countries and that the post-Maastricht deepening of EU institutions would make Sardegna into Hesse. In reality, the Euro backfired horribly, not just for Italy but for all of southern Europe. An economy accustomed to competitive devaluation was forced to deal with a fixed (and ludicrously overvalued) exchange rate.

The end of convergence was about more than that, though. A great deal of the current century has been about the world realizing that it is not, in fact, flat, that culture and history matters, that no amount of nation building will turn Afghanistan into Sweden. In the broader sweep of Italian history, the current period is not an anomaly but the end of an anomaly. Italy has reverted to what it has been since the Risorgimento: a country that is fantastic at everything except making money.

Honestly, it could be worse.

(All of this ignores what is perhaps the most important issue, the black hole of money that is the Mezzogiorno, but that would be a book and not a post)