Italy, the developing world, and aid policy, 1969–1979: the ‘historic compromise’ and Italian foreign policy

Abstract

ABSTRACTPolitical support and economic cooperation with progressive developing countries was a key factor in the ‘historic compromise’, the cooperation between the Communist Party and the Christian Democrats that dominated Italy in the 1970s. Circumventing the so-called ‘conventio ad excludendum’, the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) gained a voice in Italian foreign policy which reached beyond the pro-Soviet camp, in particular in the Mediterranean, in the Horn, and in South-Eastern Africa. The real nature and the ultimate aim of this cooperation, in a country in which the borders between domestic and foreign policy were often blurred, remains a matter for historical debate.