Medical dominance in Italy: a partial decline

In the last three decades, a number of changes in health systems has been challenging medical dominance in many countries. It has been widely debated whether the medical profession has been able to cope with these changes and maintain its power or, rather, has been deprofessionalised or proletarianised. In this paper, the effects of these changes in Italy are examined, by using a multi-dimensional concept of medical dominance. As a result of this analysis, medical dominance in Italy is depicted as declining on some dimensions while changing its nature on others. The final part of the paper discusses some current explanations of this trend and suggests that the transition to post-modern society and the “late modernity” argument (Giddens 1990; The consequences of modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1990; Beck, 1992; Risk society: towards a new modernity, Sage, London, 1992) may provide an entry into more adequate explanations.