In Search of the Third Way between State and Market: State Entrepreneurship in Italy in the Middle of the 19th Century - the End of the 20th Century
This article is related to the currently renewed discussion in academic and political community about different possibilities of organizing the economic space that would be resistant to external shocks and have fair distribution mechanisms. In this regard, the fundamental theses of the liberal model are called into question and the active role of the state in the economy, including various models of state entrepreneurship, is discussed. Despite the fact that Western countries at the current stage advocate primarily the regulatory function of the state in the economic space, it is often overlooked that the economic breakthrough in the mid-twentieth century in a number of European countries was provided by the activities of state-owned enterprises with active financial and resource support of the state. Of particular interest is the little-studied experience of establishing and developing a number of state holdings in Italy in the twentieth century, a distinctive feature of which was the presence in their ownership of a large number of management companies that were subjects of private corporate law. The aim of this study is to analyse the establishment, growth and causes of the decline of state entrepreneurship in Italy for more than a century from the middle of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. The objectives of this study are to identify the features of public entrepreneurship in Italy, analysis of the main stages of the growth of state-owned enterprises, identification of the reasons for transiting private enterprises to state ownership, consideration of the processes of gradual expansion and subsequent decline of state-owned enterprises in the twentieth century. The results of the study are of particular interest for the experience of managing strategic enterprises with state participation in Russia, since these results demonstrate both successful practices and mistakes of state management of systemically relevant companies in a European country that made an industrial breakthrough in the twentieth century mainly at the expense of these companies.