Italy's development policy and the domestic politics of Europeanisation: why Europe matters so little

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn spite of Italy's extraordinary ratio of foreign aid channelled through the European Union and its support for a common European approach to international development promoted by the European Commission, combined with significant Europeanisation pressures since the early 2000s, the ‘impact of Europe’ on Italy's development policy has been rather limited. Examining the issues of quantity and quality of aid between 2002 and 2014, and the process that led to the adoption of a new development law in 2014, this paper seeks to explain why Europe matters so little in the evolution of Italy's development policy. The central argument is that Italy's propensity to Europeanise its development policy depends on two key factors: domestic politics, in particular the different agendas of governing party coalitions; and the multilateralisation of aid, specifically the set of perverse effects it generates on the bilateral component of development policy, irrespective of changing governing coalitions.