Italian Politics: Final Paper

Today, we had to submit our final research topic. Mine is as follows.

Provisional Title: The Link Between Silvio Berlusconi and Corruption within Italian Bureaucracy

Broad Theme: For this research paper, I’d like to study the link between the current Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi and corruption within the Italian Bureaucracy. Berlusconi has been implicated in many political scandals, and I believe he would make for an excellent research topic. I’d like to focus on the hazy dealings involving accusations made against Berlusconi magically being dropped.

Resources I’ve found so far:
• http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/08/the-corrupt-reign-of-emperor-silvio/
• Papi: Uno Scandalo Politico (Papi: A Political Scandal)
by Peter Gomez, Marco Lillo, and Marco Travaglio
• Silvio Berlusconi : television, power and patrimony
Ginsborg, Paul.
London ; New York, N.Y. : Verso, 2004.

Case Study Chosen: I’m still looking for a specific case study.

Will Consult: I’m going to consult academic articles, online newspaper articles, and any textbooks that I can find. While searching for information on this topic, I’ve found that the vast majority of literature is in Italy or German, so I will have to search diligently to find books about this subject matter that are written in English. I will not be conducting interviews because my Italian is very rudimentary, and this is an extremely controversial topic.

The main sections of my paper:
1) Introduction to Berlusconi, as well as a brief summary of the reputation for corruption that Italy currently holds.
2) A brief summary of allegation and accusations made against Berlusconi with the end result included.
3) A focus on the bribery allegations as well as the impact of the legislative changes passed by his administration during his legal trails.
4) The link between corrupt actions and Berlusconi’s ownership of three of the seven national television channels.
5) A brief mention of other corrupt political actions linked to Berlusconi.
6) Draw conclusions about allegations that Berlusconi is a corrupt politician.


Does anyone have any thoughts on my paper topic? Too broad? Too specific? Not interesting?