Statistics, expertise and politics: Corrado Gini and the course of Italian history
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Statistics, expertise and politics: Corrado Gini and the course of Italian history Jean-Guy Prévost1
Received: 12 November 2015 / Accepted: 22 March 2016 © Sapienza Università di Roma 2016
Abstract This paper seeks to offer an analytical and contextual reconstruction of Corrado Gini’s intellectual trajectory up to 1945. The four decades to be covered were important from the perspective of the history of Italian statistics, since they were marked by methodological innovation and major developments in the organization of teaching, research and dissemination of the discipline. It was also during that period that official statistics were thoroughly reorganized with the creation of the Istituto Centrale di Statistica (ISTAT) in 1926. This period was also crucial with regard to Italy’s political history, with the country’s involvement in two global wars and the period of fascist dictatorship between them. Taking into account the constraints and opportunities that were available in this context provides us with a more thorough understanding of some of the developments undergone by Italian statistics and of the complex situation in which evolved technocratic intellectuals such as Gini. Keywords
Gini · Statistical field · Fascism · Expertise
1 Introduction For many a statistician or social scientist, the word ‘Gini’ brings to mind first and foremost the image of the coefficient attached to his name. This unbinding of the invention from its creator is no doubt in tune with the ascetic ideal of science and the notion that in the history of science only ideas matter and “biography is entirely subordinate” [36, p. ix]. Italian statisticians who view the history of their discipline as the rational reconstruction of concepts and techniques have generally been content with this view (see Giorgi’s extensive monograph on the concentration ratio [32], for instance; but see also, from a different perspective, Giorgi [33] by the same author). More general scholarly contributions about Gini’s biography have however come mainly from those concerned by the institutional history of public statistics
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Jean-Guy Prévost [email protected] Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Canada
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under Fascism [7,9,10,37]. Post-2008 renewed concerns about inequality have revived interest in the virtues—as well as limits—of the Gini coefficient, but also with the public path of its author, a man who besides devising indexes and formulas, was closely involved in some of Italy’s political upheavals during the first half of the twentieth century. The intent of this paper is indeed to bring back the focus on Gini the individual and to provide an analytical and contextual reconstruction of his intellectual trajectory from 1907 to 1945. These four decades were important from the perspective of Italian statistics as an academic discipline: it saw first, in the decade preceding the Great War, an impressive season of methodological innovation, and then, in the 1920s and 1930s, a significant development in the organization of te
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