Italy maintains elaborate formal rules, regulations, and procedures—often more detailed than anywhere else in Europe. At the same time, everyone understands that the formal system and the actual system are not identical. The way things officially work and the way things actually get done exist as two parallel realities.
This gap is not a secret or a scandal. It is an openly acknowledged feature of how Italian institutions operate. Navigating between the formal system and the functional system—knowing which rules matter, which can be worked around, and where the real levers are—is a fundamental competence in Italian professional life. Taking the formal system at face value without understanding how things actually work is considered naive.
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