[johnzim]

I lived this as an Italian trying to do the same for an American wife.

I had already steeled myself for the experience but it was still mind-numbing, until the appearance of one glorious stroke of luck.

The official in our consulate had incurred some minor peccadillo in the filling out of a form - their stamp was in the wrong part of the document, and because of that, their counterpart in Roma had officiously refused the document.

Suddenly, what had been a grinding war of attrition between us and the establishment, turned into a civil war within the machine. A principal adversary had flipped to our side.

We had serious firepower and the rest of the process was made incredibly easy, as our slighted new friend slashed through the red-tape and bulldozed our application through.

It ended with the final document being stamped at least a dozen times out of spite. I wish I had that copy (it probably rests in an aging manila envelope in the comune somewhere.)

[andrepd]

Just consult a report like this one https://www.transparency.org/en/gcb detailing the percentage of people who said they had to pull favours / personal connections to access public services... You can only begin to imagine how incredibly damaging it is to everything, from economic efficiency to the perpetuation of the culture of caciquism.

[Log_out_]

That inefficiency is how a open hand looks like

[andrepd]

?

[SeanLuke]

At Politecnico Milano (kinda Italy's MIT) they have this nice display for visitors where kids can pull out drawers of stuff representing different majors you can take. One drawer is for management or administration or something like that. It's filled to the brim with all sorts of rubber stamps.

Italy bureaucracy loves stamps.