Italy

From the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Italians lived in a ‘blocked political democratic system’ (Ginsburg, 2001; Jones, 2003).This is the political and cultural humus in which Public Relations (PR) activities have developed: a continued communication effort to deter a Communist seizure of national power. A strong underlying influence that characterized the profession was the Anglo-American ‘communicating-to’ matrix approach in which propaganda and persuasion are the main purpose (Muzi Falconi, 2005). The profession consolidated during the post-war reconstruction (1945–1955), the economic miracle (1955–1965), the socio-economic slowdown (1965/1975) and stagnation (1975–1990). Following almost a decade (1992–2000) of ‘wound-licking’ induced by a corruption scandal of the early 1990s, the institutionalization of PR and a transition to the communicating-with approach characterized the first decade (2000–2010) of this new century.