Italian Foreign Policy Research Articles

Альянсы ad hoc как доминанта внешнеполитического инструментария Италии

Despite economic troubles and constant political instability Italy manages to keep its historical role as a key EU state and one of the three major economies of the region, which justifies its G7 membership and therefore formally endues it with a great power status. This owes to accommodationism as the main behavioral pattern since the establishment of the Italian Republic and the skillful use of ad hoc alliances – a pragmatic statecraft tool which renders Italy flexible and unpredictable. Too big to be defensive, but not big enough to be offensive, Italy does not provoke antagonism in any EU country, becoming a potential universal ally. Cooperation with Greece on fiscal flexibility, with Spain and France on coronabonds and Hungary on EU common migration policy strengthens its bargaining power in the EU, since the latter needs Italy for reasons of security and solidarity. Being furthermore a devoted US partner since the end of World War II, Italy considers US a guarantor of its national security and position on the international arena and is inclined to lend its support to Washington even if such actions contradict the policies of closer geostrategic partners in the EU. Thanks to such allegiance Italy manages to preserve a certain room for maneuvering in interactions with other non­euroatlantic partners to an extent that does not imperil its strategic alliance with Washington, which has always been an invariable of Italian foreign policy. However, scarce attention from the USA under the current administration makes Italy utilize its statecraft tools towards Washington as well, and a pragmatic rapprochement with China on the Belt and Road Initiative and humanitarian aid during the pandemic presents a clear example thereof.

Explaining Italian foreign policy adjustment after Brexit: a Neoclassical realist account

ABSTRACT Drawing on a neoclassical realist approach, this article delves into the impact that Brexit is likely to have on Italian foreign policy. We argue that there are two areas of issue, which are particularly affected by Brexit. Firstly, the Italian relationship with France and Germany. Secondly, the Italian defence policy within the European context. Although Italy has not appeared to have significantly changed its foreign policy course after the British referendum, policymakers in Rome have been concerned by the risks that Brexit entails for the country, and have reacted accordingly. We will observe the variation in governmental interest of three ruling coalitions which have alternated in power since 2016 and, through a neoclassical realist approach, we argue that the Italian response to Brexit has been shaped by both the international pressure to preserve its standing in Europe and the need shared by all governments to keep up to their electoral promises.

Italian Foreign Policy during Matteo Renzi's Government: A Domestically Focused Outsider and the World, by Fabrizio Coticchia and Jason W. Davidson, Lanham, MD, Lexington Books, 2019, vii + 169 pp., $80.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-4985-5154-0

Italian Foreign Policy during Matteo Renzi's Government: A Domestically Focused Outsider and the World, by Fabrizio Coticchia and Jason W. Davidson, Lanham, MD, Lexington Books, 2019, vii + 169 pp., $80.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-4985-5154-0

‘I’ll take two.’ Migration, terrorism, and the Italian military engagement in Niger and Libya

ABSTRACTIn January 2018, the Italian parliament approved a new military operation in Niger and an extension to the existing deployment in Libya. Italian leaders explicitly cast this as a ‘pivot’ to Africa, a ‘relocation of troops’ from Afghanistan and Iraq to the Sahel and Northern Africa. What factors underlie this strategic shift? Despite the importance of this question, to date, little analysis of the decision-making process underpinning the recent change has been forthcoming. The article seeks to address this gap through an analysis of the parliamentary debates on the missions. Specifically, it examines the ‘relative importance’ of the two threats/challenges motivating the interventions: irregular immigration into the E.U. (and the related smuggling phenomena) and transnational terrorism. The article contributes to the ongoing debate on the evolution of the Italian foreign, security and defence policy in the broader Mediterranean, offering insights for comparative analyses with other states engaged in those contexts.

Biography of an Industrial Town: Terni, Italy, 1831–2014 by Alessandro Portelli

Book Review| March 01 2020 Biography of an Industrial Town: Terni, Italy, 1831–2014 by Alessandro Portelli Biography of an Industrial Town: Terni, Italy, 1831–2014. Portelli, Alessandro. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. v–xxii + 400 pp., $109.99 (cloth); $109.99 (paper); $84.99 (ebook) Steve Soper Steve Soper University of Georgia Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2020) 17 (1): 162–163. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-7963033 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter Email Permissions Search Site Citation Steve Soper; Biography of an Industrial Town: Terni, Italy, 1831–2014 by Alessandro Portelli. Labor 1 March 2020; 17 (1): 162–163. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-7963033 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsLabor Search Advanced Search Anglophone students of modern Italian history can wait decades for classic works to appear in translation. In what may be an extreme example, almost a half century passed before Federico Chabod’s history of Italian foreign policy came out in English. The wait for Alessandro Portelli’s outstanding oral history of Terni, the historic center of steel production in modern Italy, has only taken thirty years, perhaps because Portelli produced the English translation himself. Regardless, the publication in English of Biografia di una città (1985), together with the shorter, follow-up study of Terni, which Portelli published in Italy in 2008, is nothing less than a cause for celebration. From start to finish, Portelli’s collective portrait of Italian steelworkers and their town is fascinating.In a short but brilliant introduction on the sources and methods of oral history, Portelli prepares the reader for the... Copyright © 2020 Labor and Working-Class History Association2020 You do not currently have access to this content.

Silencing history: forgetting Italy’s past during the refugee crisis in Europe

Most scholarly analyses of memory politics investigate how historical events are remembered selectively in order to justify political choices. Recent research has shown that ‘silencing the past’, notably the omission of relevant historical events, is also an important aspect of memory politics. This article examines how Italian leaders silenced significant periods of Italy’s history during the refugee and migrant crisis in 2014–2018. Drawing on memory politics and postcolonial literature, the article argues that Italian foreign policy discourses are based on both historical oblivion and the long-standing myth of the ‘good Italian’. The myth negates the controversial aspects of Italy’s colonial experience and permeates the country’s self-perception as an international actor. Italian foreign policy narratives also silenced the highly relevant precedent of Italian migration abroad. The focus is on the public speeches of Italy’s main political actors, notably national ministers and the leaders of the largest parties in parliament.

Wojtyla, Gaddafi and Andreotti: Diplomacy and Religion for a Mediterranean Strategy against the Isolation of Libya (1978-1997)

The essay describes -through unpublished documentation -the diplomatic workof Italy and the Holy See to gradually reintegrate Gaddafi of Libya into a system ofpeaceful relationships around the Mediterranean basin, combined with a system ofguarantees for the Catholic community present in Libya. These objectives have seen aconvergence of Italian foreign policy led by Andreotti and the pacification projects ofJohn Paul II, with a view to the future of relationships between the North and Southof the world, between Christianity and Islam

Публічна дипломатія Італійської Республіки

Публічна дипломатія Італійської Республіки

Italy’s Cultural Diplomacy: From Propaganda to Cultural Cooperation

Cultural diplomacy has always been an important tool in Italian foreign policy. Culture represented a significant resource already in the liberal period and was also widely used by Fascism. During the inter-war period, cultural promotion abroad aimed at spreading the regime’s political-social organizational model. In the second post-war period, cultural resources played a fundamental role in Italian international relations. The democratic government carried out a transition from an essentially propagandistic action, which Fascism implemented especially in the second half of 1930’s, to a cultural diplomacy more attentive to the issues of dialogue and cooperation. The soft power of culture grew in importance. Lacking effective diplomatic tools of a political and economic nature, the new ruling class promoted the nation’s cultural tradition. Although with means and personnel widely used already during the Fascist period, democratic Italy adopted an innovative cultural diplomacy with regard to premises and goals. This policy was apparently low-key and devoid of political themes, but in reality it was aimed at acquiring, in the long run, the friendship and the sympathy of the elites of other countries, so as to bolster political and economic relations. In the framework of a broader course of action, aimed at supporting multilateral diplomacy, the new leaders of post-Fascist Italy also promoted an international cultural cooperation which reversed the previous power politics and the unilateral assertion of Italian culture, but was still careful to defend the nation’s interests. This cooperative dimension was realized above all with the participation in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Italian cooperation with Mozambique: explaining the emergence and consolidation of a normative power

AbstractItaly has developed a long-dated partnership with Mozambique, where it has emerged as an actor committed to norm promotion in the fields of conflict management, debt relief, and sustainable energy cooperation. This paper challenges the dominant interpretation of such a cooperative relationship that emphasizes ideational motivations and focuses, instead, on the role of Italian investors in the sectors of infrastructure and energy and of the Italian economic diplomacy. A favorable institutional and political climate in Italy has channeled investors' demands in the policy process since the independence of Mozambique. The late institutionalization of Italian development policy, the long gestation of the reform of development policy, and the lack of clear-cut borders between the competences of foreign and development cooperation institutions have empowered business groups that shape the investment strategy of the Italian foreign ministry as actors in development policy-making. Finally, convergence of interests between Italian investors and the NGO Sant'Egidio, which ultimately led to a partnership between these actors, has increased the legitimacy of Italian foreign and development policy toward Mozambique, contributing to consolidating Italy as a norm promoter in the country.

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

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.

The Albanian Nationalism: between the National Revival and the Security Prospects in the Adriatic Region

The study will address the phenomenology and the processes that marked the Albanian independence movement, concomitantly illustrating it as an integrated stage into the Balkan trend of nation-state edification during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, hence enforcing the debate over the mechanism that had been used in administrating the territorial possessions of the quasi-defunct caliphate. On this occasion, the research will highlight the external involvement in supporting the Albanian independence movement, mentioning in this way the Italian Kingdom, the actor that assumed the role of protecting independent Albania as a result of Rome`s primordial interests in assuming a predominant role in the Adriatic security architecture.Simultaneously will be pursued Tirana`s nationalist projects and the points of tension from the relations with Greece and Yugoslavia as a result of overlapping the territorial expansionist ethnic agendas of these three states. Therefore, it will illustrate how the Albanian state`s interactions with proximity are influenced by the regional climate of state-building on ethnic backgrounds, with a major impact on the security perspectives over the divergent energies of militant nationalism. In this way, the paper will analyze both the Albania – Greece – Italy triangle, with Rome inoculating the moderation in the Athens – Tirana relationship and mentioning the main the Italian foreign policy objective of assuming the role of a Mediterranean power.Last but not least, the Albanian National Revival Movement is presented from the perspective of social history and ideology, legitimizing Albania's independence, highlighting the domestic lines of rupture and the societal manifestations that could be framed in post-Ottomanism. Differentiating from the Balkan space by Albanian Kemalism eradicated by Ismail Kemal, the Albanian nationalism marked also by a modernization dichotomy: on the one hand by the desire of building a state based on the West-European model, by the agrarian reform and by overcoming the religious differences, and on the other hand the outstanding nationalist conservative revolution of returning to Albania's national values under Skanderbeg`s flag of the two-headed black eagle.

Кризис Корфу 1923 года: оккупация Керкиры в контексте итальянской политики в Восточном Средиземноморье

The history of the Italian occupation of the island of Kerkyra (Corfu), one of the Ionian Islands currently part of Greece, is considered. The period after 1912 when Italy, having won a military victory over the Ottoman Empire, occupied Libya and the Dodecanese Islands is characterized. It is noted that at this time another goal of Italian foreign policy in the Mediterranean was Albania, independence of which was proclaimed in 1912, and the adjacent Islands of the Ionian archipelago. The author of the article dwells on the fact that the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, which finally secured the possession of the Dodecanese Islands for Italy, allowed Italy to intensify its policy in the Ionian sea region. The author was able to identify the main stages of the diplomatic struggle over the occupation of the island of Corfu, to show the special interest of Italy in resolving the issue of Corfu outside the structures of the new international organization - the League of Nations. It is proved that the final withdrawal of Italian troops from the occupied island was the result of negotiations between Italy, Britain and France, while the opinion of Greece was practically not taken into account. The article is based on Italian and British official publications of diplomatic documents.

Italian foreign policy under the Gentiloni government: do the ‘three circles’ hold in 2017?

ABSTRACTItaly under the Gentiloni government faced significant foreign policy challenges in 2017 against the backdrop of a volatile geopolitical climate. The present chapter employs the ‘three circles’ approach to analyze Italy’s foreign policy, arguing that the three circles approach remains relevant in 2017. In the first Atlanticist foreign policy circle, Italy’s foreign policy influence appears at first blush to have weakened, owing to growing American isolationism and uncertainty surrounding support of NATO and multilateralism more broadly, though the Gentiloni government succeeded to some extent in bridge-building efforts with the United States. In the second European foreign policy circle, Italy’s influence was somewhat enhanced as it took positions of solidarity with its European partners on critical security, economic and environmental matters. In the third Mediterranean foreign policy circle, Italy sought to take on a more active role in addressing the Libyan conflict and the migrant crisis, but its role within this circle was to some degree overshadowed by France following the election of President Emmanuel Macron. On balance, however, Italy continued to focus on its traditional interests within its three foreign policy circles and to seek to leverage multilateral institutions to achieve foreign policy goals within an ever more turbulent global environment.

Le banche italiane e il commercio con l'Unione Sovietica

The essay focuses on the commitment of Italian banks to increase export in the USSR. In the late 1950s, Khrushchev was re-opening Soviet trade with the Western countries. At the same time, Italian foreign policy was opening up to new cooperation in the Mediterranean area and towards the Eastern Bloc. Trade became the starting point for new economic and political relationships between Rome and Moscow. Soviets needed long-term loans with low rates to buy special industrial supplies. Italian bankers gave funding and, working as financial experts, provided useful support to the government’s project and to exporters.

L'assemblea dell'Ueo nella cooperazione aeronautica: l'Italia tra costruzione europea e offerta statunitense (1973-1985)

On September 1973, the Weu Assembly reintroduced the debate on aeronautical cooperation between the European countries highlighting the benefits engendered by industrial harmonization. Alessandro Pagni, director of external relations of Aeritalia, agreed with the proactive approach of the Weu and the European aeronautical industries, with a caveat: Italian industry did not want to compete against the American one, but to cooperate with, and to benefit from, its leading position in the global market. Thus, the Italian Parliament enacted the so-called Legge Crociani which funded the aeronautical production in cooperation with Boeing. This essay surveys the role of the Italian delegates and their link with the Italian foreign policy choices. Specifically, it analyses the technicians’ attitude towards the debate on European cooperation in the aeronautic industry field aiming to illustrate the influence that experts have in shaping foreign and industrial policies.

Italy’s defence policy in the European context: the case of the European Defence Agency

ABSTRACTThe creation of the European Defence Agency (EDA) in 2004 represented an important step towards more cooperation in the European defence industry. Notwithstanding the Agency’s potential for redefining relations between domestic and European defence industries, few analysts have systematically examined the EU member states’ preferences towards the EDA. This article – focusing on two theoretical approaches to uncovering the contradictory nature of EU defence-industry cooperation – investigates the specific case of Italian interaction with the Agency. Despite the predominantly empirical focus of the analysis, I argue that a detailed investigation of Italian interaction with the Agency sheds light on unexplored aspects of its behaviour in the EU context, contributing to the recent academic debate on Italian foreign, security and defence policy.

The Italian foreign policy: challenges and continuities

Italian foreign politics is facing tough challenges in the near future. For more than 60 years, the Italian foreign policy compass was set on two poles, the European Union and the United States. Sometimes alternatively, much more often conjointly, these two polar stars oriented each and every Italian government’s choice since the end of Second World War. All this has been changing over the last few years. In this context, the article intends to introduce the special issue on Italian foreign policy drawing a stylized map of theoretical approaches that knits together the dispersed theoretical and empirical studies of Italian foreign policy, using a couple of theoretical perspectives as light posts in orienting the articles in this special issue. This introduction is organized in four sections. First, it discusses the approaches that explicitly combine together domestic and international factors in explaining foreign policy. Next, it maps studies on the Italian foreign policy within these frameworks. Then the main characteristics of Italian foreign policy, using these theoretical perspectives, are discussed. The article concludes summarizing how the contributions in this special issue fits into these theoretical frameworks and help shed light on present Italian foreign policy.

Foreign posture in comparative perspective: a quantitative and qualitative appraisal of Italian foreign and defence policy during the Renzi Government

ABSTRACTThe performance of the Renzi government (2014–2016) in the realm of foreign and defence policy is a mixed bag. Struggling with significant structural constraints at home but called upon to shoulder increased responsibilities abroad, Italian foreign policy (IFP) has balanced instances of retrenchment, characterised by inward-looking tendencies and continued budget shortfalls, with its traditional emphasis on bandwagoning with stronger allies to retain a degree of influence over international events. Secondary only to Italy’s traditional focus on the European project and the broader North Atlantic Alliance, the Mediterranean pillar – including the fight against extremism and the search for new markets and economic opportunities – has dominated IFP under the Renzi government. While staying true to its traditional reluctance to ‘go it alone’, Italy has pushed hard in Europe to consolidate a common response to the migration crisis, while seeking to assume a leading role in efforts to support political reconciliation in Libya. Italy has also enhanced its participation in the US-led anti-ISIS coalition, but has to date refused repeated requests by the US and its allies to begin offensive military operations in Syria and Iraq. The article analyses Italian foreign and defence policy from a comparative perspective, employing a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach to assess the strengths and weaknesses of Italy’s foreign posture between 2014 and 2016.

Revisiting Italian Mediterranean Policy in the 1950s: Internal or Externally-Driven? The Interplay of External Pressures and Domestic Constraints

This article aims to explore Italy's Neo-Atlanticist foreign policy (FP) strand in the mid-1950s to highlight the complex interplay of external and internal political dynamics. It corresponded to the third circle of Rome's FP loadstars – the Mediterranean and Arab world – with Rome intending to conduct an autonomous policy that was often seen as clashing with its Atlanticist commitments. Italian foreign policy was tightly constrained by its integration in Euro-Atlantic alliances, but it was also able to cut for itself a margin of independent maneuver in pursuit of a more autonomous policy in the Mediterranean.