What makes Southern Italy still lagging behind? A diachronic perspective of theories and approaches

Since the unification of the country in 1861, Italy has faced a large North–South divide, which persists despite the huge efforts made to determine the reasons for its existence. This paper has the aim of building a unified, coherent and logically structured theoretical review of theories and approaches that have dealt with the backwardness of the South of Italy. It further assesses the extent these are able to highlight the reasons for the emergence of a particular interpretation, the reasons for its failure once applied at a normative level, and for the rise of the subsequent theoretical interpretation. A logical storyline in the development of thought on the Mezzogiorno emerges on building the theoretical framework from a diachronic perspective, and policy lessons can be learnt.