Introduction
The official name is Italian Republic. It consists of a boot-shaped peninsula and the two islands of Sicily and Sardinia, spanning about 1,200 km from northwest to southeast in the central Mediterranean. It borders the Alps to the north and borders France, Switzerland, and Austria, to the east is the Adriatic Sea, and to the west is the Tyrrhenian Sea. Due to its geographical location, it grew in the past by spreading Eastern culture to the West, leading to a renaissance in European culture. It is an advanced country with well-developed agriculture, industry, and service industries and is a member of OECD and G7. Italy has an administrative system consisting of 15 regular regions (Regione) and 5 autonomous regions (Regione Autonoma).
Nature of Italy
Italy is rich in mountains and hills, and plains only make up about 1/5 of the country’s land area. The largest plain is the Po Plain (55,000 ㎢), and smaller plains such as the Campania Plain (1,900 ㎢) are scattered. Italy is geographically divided into four parts: the Alps, the Po Plains, the Peninsula, and the Islands.
The Alps region refers to the mountainous area south of the Alps Mountains from the western end to the eastern end. The Alps were an obstacle for Italy to advance into continental Europe. However, the plains south of the Alps helped develop Italian agriculture. To the west, there are numerous passes over 2,000 meters high, including Mont Blanc (4807m) as well as the Saint-Bernard Pass (2469m), between Italy and Switzerland, and the Alps to the west also cross between France and Italy. To the east, numerous mountains extend all the way to Trieste, forming a border with Austria. In the foothills of the Alps, there are lakes such as Maggiore, Lugano, Como, and Garda, which are filled with water melting from the Alps’ ice caps.
The Po Plain in the Po River basin is about 400 km long from east to west and 100 to 200 km wide from north to south, and is surrounded in a U shape by the two mountain ranges of the Alps and Apennines on three sides, and faces the Adriatic Sea on the east. To the northeast, it meets the Venetian Plain and borders the mountains of Slovenia’s karst region. Due to the high western plains, the Po River flows from west to east into the Adriatic Sea. The Po River Plain is a fertile plain that forms a rice farming area. In addition, the canal network has developed and plays a major role not only in agriculture but also in industrial water and maritime transportation. Meanwhile, sedimentation was so active that no major cities other than Turin developed, and due to the construction of embankments, the water level of the river reached the level of the roof of a house in downstream Ferrara.
The peninsula is divided into northern, central, and southern parts. The Appennino Mountains, which run from north to south and are the spine of the peninsula, form a convex surface toward the east. Wide hilly areas appear at both east and west ends of the mountain range, playing an important role in forming living areas. The northern part extends from the north of Genoa to the lower elevation of the main branch of the Tevere River in Rome. The central part of the peninsula extends from the Bay of Naples to the north of Mount Gargano (1,056 m). The central mountain range is formed as a gentle mountain range.
The Central Apennines are generally rugged and contain a lot of Mesozoic limestone, so karst landforms appear everywhere and lowlands such as the Fuchino Lake Basin are distributed. To the south, it consists of several mountains. To the east is the Abruzzi Mountains, home to Mount Corno (2914m), the highest mountain in the Apennines. This place is mainly composed of tuff and volcanic rocks, and there are many beautiful volcanic cones, making it a tourist area. Mount Albano (950m) south of Rome is a volcano and has a new crater on its outer ring. To the west of Mount Albano lies a lowland area that extends to the Campanian Plain near Naples. This plain is the most important on the peninsula and is composed mostly of volcanic sediments, but to the north is the alluvium of the Volturno River. On the coast of the Bay of Naples is Mount Vesuvius (1281m).
Sicily, the largest of the Italian islands, is geographically divided into three regions: the mountains connected to the central Apennines, the surrounding hills, and Mount Etna (3,323m). Mount Etna is Europe’s tallest volcano and has over 260 parasitic volcanoes. The second largest island, Sardinia, along with Corsica Island, is a landform that was submerged in the sea and then exposed to land, and the crystalline rocks of the Western Alps extend here. At the northern end of the Tyrrhenian Sea is the ancient island of Elba, and at the southern end is the volcanic Lipari Islands. Two volcanoes, Vulcano and Stromboli, are active within the Lipari Islands. Most of Italy’s geology is composed of rocks from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras, and crystalline rocks formed before that exist as individual massifs inside the Apennine Mountains, excluding the high peaks of the Alps. Italy is a country with unstable ground, so there are many earthquakes. In particular, the 1908 Messina earthquake, which occurred due to a fault in the Strait of Messina, was very strong and caused 110,000 casualties. In addition, the phenomenon of uplift and subsidence also appeared, and land uplift was proven through the remains of Roman architecture at Pozzuoli in the Bay of Naples.
People of Italia
Italy was once one of the countries in Europe showing significant population growth. Concentration of the population in cities was a common phenomenon after World War II, but because the agricultural structure was partially reformed due to participation in the EEC (European Economic Community), unemployment among agricultural workers increased. Because of this, agricultural workers moved to various cities in Northern Italy, including Milan. In particular, from 1876 to 1970, there was a lot of overseas migration from an early age due to the adverse conditions of poor natural resources and narrow territory caused by a high population growth rate. The largest number of Italian immigrants live in South and North America, followed by Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia. However, recently, the country has been struggling with the problem of illegal immigration, mainly from Eastern European and African countries.
Most residents are Italian, but there are also German, French, Slavic, and Austrian minorities living in the north, and Albanians and Greeks live in the south.
The population density is 201 people/km² (2017). The birth rate has fallen to the lowest since 1995, the country has been classified as a very low birth rate country, and the country is rapidly entering an aging society.
Most of Italy’s residents (97.7%) use Italian, the official language. Additionally, there are residents who speak German in Trentino-Alto Adige, French in Valle d’Aosta, and Slovenian in Trieste and its surrounding areas.
Italian is a family of languages called Roman, or Neo-Latin, derived from Latin. The language can be broadly divided into Italian-Celtic dialect and Italian dialect. Italian-Celtic dialects include those of Piedmont, Lombardy, Mantova, Liguria, and Emilia-Romagna, which sometimes exhibit significant dialectal differences but generally have linguistic boundaries corresponding to historical and geographical regions.
Italian dialects are divided into several dialect groups, such as Apulia, Otranto, Calabria, and Sicily, in addition to the Veneto dialect, Roman dialect, and southern dialect. There are also residents who speak Provençal dialects, Catalan, and Romanian, but they are only a small minority.
Constitution of Italy
Before the transition to a republic, Italy had maintained the constitutional order of the unified Kingdom of Italy for over 100 years since 1861 under the Constitution of the Kingdom of Italy (Constitution of the Kingdom of Sardinia) enacted in 1848. After Italy lost World War II, it enacted a republican constitution with the purpose of establishing a new political system. Italy abolished the monarchy and chose a republic through a referendum in 1946, and later enacted the Constitution of a Parliamentary Democratic Republic through the Constituent Assembly, and the new constitution came into effect in January 1948 and continues to this day.
The Italian Constitution emphasizes labor. The Constitution clearly states in Article 1 that ‘the Italian Republic is a democratic republic based on labor’ and that Italy is based on the ideology of a social state. Therefore, the Italian Constitution includes numerous social rights, including the social function of private property rights. In addition, Italy’s constitutional order is centralized but has decentralized elements.
Italy’s constitutional order has extreme separation of powers to overcome the legacy of the fascist dictatorship. First, the Senate and House of Representatives, which constitute the legislative branch, have the same powers. The president, the head of state, is elected by a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives. Congress can impeach the president, and the president can also dissolve Congress. The judicial power is completely separate from the executive branch to ensure complete independence. The personnel of judges is controlled by the High Council of the Judiciary. The executive branch consists of a prime minister and ministers appointed by the president. In addition, the Constitutional Court has been established as a constitutional institution to implement the spirit of the Constitution.
Since its enactment, the Constitution of the Italian Republic has not yet been amended to change the form of the state or government, except for partial revisions. The reason why the Italian political system after 1994 is called the Second Republic is not because of a change in the form of government through constitutional amendments, but because the political system created by the new election law in 1994 and the two-party system have completely different characteristics from the previous political system. am. In 2001, then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi held a referendum to amend the constitution to give local governments more power over education, health, and taxes. This amendment partially amended the Constitution with 64.2% approval. In 2006, under the leadership of Berlusconi, who had fallen from office, a referendum was held on a constitutional amendment to give the prime minister the right to dissolve parliament and expand local autonomy. This was the first constitutional amendment to simultaneously change the form of government and the state, but was defeated by about 60% of the opposition. In addition, in 2016, a constitutional amendment was proposed to change the bicameral system into a de facto unicameral system in order to eliminate the negative effect of the House of Representatives and the House of Representatives having the same authority and repeatedly rejecting bills. However, the constitutional amendment was defeated due to opposition of about 60%.
Conculsion
It is a peninsula country located in south-central Europe and, along with Greece, is the origin of European civilization. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, the country was divided, but was unified by the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1861. Italy, which abolished the monarchy and became a republic in 1946, is a cultural powerhouse with developed cultural heritage, art, and music left behind by the Roman Empire.