For international comparative studies, the importance of the Italian case cannot be stressed enough. In hardly any other country did the events of 1968 lead to such a similarly comprehensive rivoluzione antropologica, and no other country can so clearly differentiate the before and after in historical time. Only in Italy did the protest mobilization of 1968 directly carry over into a new social movement, the Extra-parliamentary Opposition. This constitutes the distinctiveness of the Italian case, the causes of which are analyzed in this chapter.¹