Tangentopoli. Una costruzione giudiziaria

The trials of the political class have been studied by Luigi Musella since the mid-1990s. The aim, at the beginning, was not so much to understand the Mani Pulite phenomenon, as to delve into the hidden’ side of politics. Participant observation led him to experience the investigative processes and the various moments of the trial. Tangentopoli thus turned out to be very different from how the newspapers had presented it. Their representation immediately seemed very ideological and divisive. In reality, things were different. The complexity of the events faced by the magistrates would have seemed increasingly difficult to interpret, just as the heroic figure of the judges would have faded. A magistrate, who later became a close friend, realizing that he had brought him to see their world with all its weaknesses and contradictions, one day asked him: ‘Aren’t we more heroes than you thought we were?’ He replied: ‘After all, you are like the people of all other worlds.’