The Leading Role of Southern Italy. From Market Globalization to a New Industrial Revolution: A Development Proposal for the South and our Country as a Whole

Despite the first signs of recovery in the years 2015-2017, the most recent estimates on Italy’s growth prospects for the period 2018-2019 indicate a sharp slowdown, if not of a substantial GDP stagnation. The involutional trend over the last twenty years of our economy and the gradual departure from the more advanced social and economic processes deriving from this cannot be overlooked. In this context, the conditions of the South appear particularly serious which, despite its excellent productive and research establishments, in recent decades has shown a resurgence of divergence from other areas of the country, not only in terms of wealth creation but also of social cohesion. The aim of this paper is to try to highlight how, similarly to what has already happened in recent Italian economic history, the rebirth of the South is a necessary condition not only for the improvement of the living conditions of the southern populations, but also for the recovery of our Country as a whole. This is even more true in the face of the opportunities offered by the new industrial revolution underway, which is profoundly changing aspects and characteristics of the global value chain and which brings back unprecedented development potentials to the South, based on the connection between local features and technological innovations, the entry of digitization into the production processes and a progressive and articulated reorganization of the secondary and tertiary sectors.