Italian Politics Research Articles

Sui requisiti di una buona comunicazione nel libro di Kamila Miłkowska-Samul (S)cortesia e social network. Opportunità e rischi del dibattito pubblico su Facebook

On the requirements of good communication in the book by Kamila Miłkowska-Samul (S)cortesia e social network. Opportunità e rischi del dibattito pubblico su Facebook The article aims to discuss the latest book by Kamila Miłkowska-Samul, entitled (S)cortesia e social network. Opportunità e rischi del dibattito pubblico su Facebook, published in 2019. It is the second time that the author takes up the subject of the language of Italian politics, this time in a pragmalinguistic and communicative perspective. The interpretation key to which the analysis of numerous examples of politicians’ statements on Facebook was subordinated is the theory of politeness (or impoliteness). The reader will also find an in-depth study of individual theoretical component issues: concerning the language of the Internet, politics, and the already mentioned theory of politeness and related sociopragmalinguistic issues.

The Italian Political System at the Test of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan

The Italian Political System at the Test of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan

The Politics of Differentiated Integration: What do Governments Want? Country Report - Italy

The analysis of how differentiated integration is discussed in Italian politics returned two clear results. Firstly, the topic is not very salient in the period of time considered (2002-2020) and there is no clear trend overtime. Salience peaked around specific key events such as Treaty changes (2004-2005: Constitution, 2007-2008: Lisbon) and debates on the future of Europe (2016-2019). Secondly, despite the low saliency of the issue, Italian governments appear to hold a clear and coherent position on this issue. Italy supports the multi-end DI model and favours tools such as enhanced co-operation. In particular, after Brexit, Italian governments saw this tool as the solution to keep the EU together while moving forward with the integration process and keeping Italy in ‘core Europe.’ On the contrary, a multi-speed Europe is strongly opposed by Italian politicians, who fear that their country might be among those left behind if such a model of integration is implemented.

Una prospettiva storiografica: l’Italia repubblicana, la rappresentanza, le rappresentazioni di genere (1945-1968)

La storiografia ha esaminato con originalità e da diverse prospettive il suffragio e la rappresentanza ma ulteriori approfondimenti possono giungere dallo studio dei significati che l’«universo semiotico» della politica attribuisce alle differenze di genere nello spazio pubblico. Sulla base di una ricerca sulle fonti a stampa e d’archivio, il saggio esamina le pratiche discorsive sull’«uomo pubblico» e sulla «donna pubblica» nei primi vent’anni dell’Italia repubblicana. Al fine di mettere in evidenza le tante eredità del passato sulla politica italiana, offre alcuni spunti sulle rappresentazioni della femminista di primo Novecento e sulla «sovversiva» negli anni del regime fascista.

The problem of illegal migration in Italian Mediterranean politics

The article discusses the current problem of illegal migration for Italy and the main ways to combat it. In particular, issues of its solution at the national level, as well as coordination of actions at the European and international levels are raised.

The representation of Matteo Salvini in gossip magazines: the Ordinary Super Leader

ABSTRACT One of the most prominent personalities of contemporary Italian politics is Matteo Salvini, the leader of the Lega (League). Salvini is not only a popular politician: he can also be considered a celebrity. He became a recognizable character through his constant presence in the popular media and his habit of appearing in informal contexts. Through an analysis of three of the main Italian gossip magazines (Chi, Oggi and Vanity Fair) between February 2017 and February 2018, we provide an overview of the coverage obtained by Salvini in the gossip press, in order to understand what type of celebrity emerges and how it contributed to conveying his political message. Our main hypothesis is that he has been able to appear both as a ‘super celebrity politician’ and as an ‘everyday celebrity politician’, meaning someone similar to ordinary people.

Systemic corruption and disorganized anticorruption in Italy

TThis paper provides, trough different indicators, empirical evidence on the presumably high relevance of corruption in Italian politics and administration, providing an explanation of how this “obscure” side of Italian politics – a pervasive market for corrupt exchanges – has found its way to regulate its hidden activities within an informal institutional framework, i.e. systemic corruption. A general theoretical framework for the analysis of limits and “windows of opportunity” in Italian anticorruption policies will then be provided, crossing the degree of salience and politicization of corruption issue to explain how in different periods such variables shaped such policy arena. Finally, it will be shown how occasionally this dark side of Italian politics clashed with the clean side of politics, focusing on the reasons of the weak political accountability of Italian politicians involved in corruption scandals in the last decades.

Catholics and Communists in Twentieth-Century Italy: Between Conflict and Dialogue

Catholics and Communists in Twentieth-Century Italy: Between Conflict and Dialogue

Young Generations' Activism in Italy: Comparing Political Engagement and Participation of Native Youths and Youths from a Migrant Background

Focusing on individuals aged 14–35 still living with their family of origin, we compare the political activism of Italian natives with their first and second-generation migrant peers. We based our analysis on two different national household surveys, carried out by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) in 2011–2012: the survey 'Condizione e integrazione sociale dei cittadini stranieri' [Condition and Social Integration of Foreign Citizens] and 'Aspetti della vita quotidiana' [Multipurpose Survey on the Aspects of Everyday Life]. Our results revealed that natives are more likely to be involved in politics compared to their migrant peers. However, the migrant background is not a factor negatively affecting youth participation or involvement in politics in itself. The gap with native is fully explained by differences in socio-economic background and family political socialisation. When these aspects are controlled, data suggest that no differences exist in participation to most time-consuming acts (such as taking part in political meetings, demonstrations, participation in a political association, etc.). More of it, young people with migrant backgrounds are more likely to be engaged in activities that reflect a general interest in politics, such as discussing politics, seeking information on Italian politics, and listening to political debates, compared to their native counterparts.

Immigration as a Divisive Topic: Clusters and Content Diffusion in the Italian Twitter Debate

In this work, we apply network science to analyse almost 6 M tweets about the debate around immigration in Italy, collected between 2018 and 2019, when many related events captured media outlets’ attention. Our aim was to better understand the dynamics underlying the interactions on social media on such a delicate and divisive topic, which are the actors that are leading the discussion, and whose messages have the highest chance to reach out the majority of the accounts that are following the debate. The debate on Twitter is represented with networks; we provide a characterisation of the main clusters by looking at the highest in-degree nodes in each one and by analysing the text of the tweets of all the users. We find a strongly segregated network which shows an explicit interplay with the Italian political and social landscape, that however seems to be disconnected from the actual geographical distribution and relocation of migrants. In addition, quite surprisingly, the influencers and political leaders that apparently lead the debate, do not necessarily belong to the clusters that include the majority of nodes: we find evidence of the existence of a ‘silent majority’ that is more connected to accounts who expose a more positive stance toward migrants, while leaders whose stance is negative attract apparently more attention. Finally, we see that the community structure clearly affects the diffusion of content (URLs) by identifying the presence of both local and global trends of diffusion, and that communities tend to display segregation regardless of their political and cultural background. In particular, we observe that messages that spread widely in the two largest clusters, whose most popular members are also notoriously at the opposite sides of the political spectrum, have a very low chance to get visibility into other clusters.

Leader Polarisation: Conflict and Change in the Italian Political System

ABSTRACT Polarising issues, polarising narratives, polarising leaders: this is the picture suggested by Italian politics in the 2018–20 time-frame. The article introduces the concept of leader polarisation and suggests a Leader Polarisation Index (LPI) to trace the recent evolution of the Italian party system. After the 2018 general election, the Italian political space experienced rapid change marked by the weakening of tripolarism, the re-emergence of bipolarism and the rise of elite-driven polarisation. The analysis of voters’ perspective through use of survey data reveals the increasingly divisive role of the Lega’s leader, Matteo Salvini.

Italy in the Eastern Mediterranean: between economics and geopolitics

The article analyzes Italian politics in the Eastern Mediterranean in the context of current geopolitical rivalries and conflicts. Italian relations with Turkey, that is leading an increasingly active policy in the region, are analyzed in the context of the Libyan settlement and the escalation of the conflict of Turkey with Greece and Cyprus. The conclusion is made that geopolitical escalation in the region and the need to adhere to the principles of European solidarity may negatively affect Italy’s ability to realize its economic interests in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa.

El Partito Democratico: del partido de los reformistas al partido fallido. Un primer balance (2007-2019)

The story of the Partito Democratico provides an important glimpse of the transformations that have affected the Italian political and party system over the past decade. Born by merger of the two main parties of the center-left coalition, DS and Margherita, which for twenty years have been protagonists together with Berlusconi’s center-right in the bipolar evolution of Italian politics, a dozen years after its birth act, the PD is a party whose political project has yet to be considered undetermined and uncomplete. In this article a first balance of this experience is outlined, through the reconstruction of the different political phases lived by the PD, from his birth act (2007) to 2019, trying to indicate the main causes that have so far influenced its alternating events, from the debut to 2018 National elections until the electoral defeat of 2018 and the limited recovery of consensus that occurred in the 2019 European and Regional elections.

The reception of Robert Owen's thought in ninteenth- and twentieth-century Italy

ABSTRACT This article examines the reception of Owen's thought in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italy. The articles shows that while Owen attracted the attentionof Piedmontese liberals in the early 1820s, such as Giovanni Arrivabene, and were integrated into the wider Risorgimento, they were, as the Guiseppe Manzzini's work demonstrated, eclipsed by what were considered more the immediate political objectives of the Risorgimento. Where Owen's ideas did attract widespread interest was on the question of educational reform. This was because education was very much bound up with questions of individual independence, autonomy, and self-governance that were also integral to the political objectives of the Risorgimento. The article traces the impact of Owen's educational thought not only in the nineteenth-century Italian context but in the twentieth century as well. It shows how Owen's reflections on the role of education in character formation would prove important to twentieth-century Italian political and social thought.

Current foreign and security policy issues regarding stationing nuclear tactical weapons in Italy

Italy has been storing U.S. nuclear tactical weapons since the fifties. During the Cold War Rome considered hosting nuclear weapons a tool to strengthen the international ranking of the country, hoping that it provides opportunity to restore trust in Italy’s international image, which had been shaken by World War II. As a consequence of the effect of bipolar logic on Italian domestic politics, hosting nuclear weapons guaranteed that the Italian Communist Party remained in opposition. Although the original reasons of hosting U.S. nuclear weapons have disappeared at the end of the Cold War, Italy is not actively promoting nuclear disarmament.

Early childhood education, politics, and memory: tracing social imaginaries in Reggio Emilia schools’ diaries of the 1970s

ABSTRACT In this paper, I examine memory as it relates to politics and early childhood education in the context of the internationally known preschools of Reggio Emilia in Italy. I draw a connection between foundational stories, ideologies connected to Italian politics in the 1970s, and the construction of the educational visions in these preschools. To do so, I examine school diaries from the 1970s that I encountered in the Reggio Emilia schools’ official archives – the Centre for Documentation and Educational Research. These diaries, which are mostly unpublished, have a great value: they show us how stories about the past and visions of the future can merge to constitute the social and political imaginary of a school community, with the power of shaping the decisions, actions, and beliefs of its members. Though much of the literature around the so-called Reggio Emilia Approach used in the Reggio Emilia schools talks about the “democratic” character of its educational practices, it often does not touch on the specific political character historically associated with such an approach. In this article, I begin to address this lacuna.

The Italian State, its Regions and the Virus

AbstractItalian politics has always been characterised by deep regional divides. While the north and centre are well integrated into the European economy, southern regions struggle to keep up their productivity and employment levels. Although this divide has a long history, the Covid‐19 crisis is set to worsen the inequality separating the two parts of the country. This article looks at how the coronavirus pandemic immediately assumed a regional dimension, which was reflected not only in the geography of the contagion, but also in how the central state struggled to manage the contrasting demands coming from northern and southern regions. Although the north has been the epicentre of the health crisis, the south is set to pay the highest economic and social price for the lockdown measures. The conclusion suggests that, while the Covid crisis has confirmed the salience of regional divides for Italian politics, it might also strengthen autonomist forces.

Through the media lens. Women activities in Italian politics

ABSTRACT Everywhere, the gender gap is an expression of the imbalance in the representation of women involved in politics and in gender issues in the media. Several studies show that the representation of gender politics tends to reproduce a very stereotyped public image of women, which emphasizes more their personal features than their political skills. In contrast, female activism in social media produces interesting networking experiences and innovative initiatives with many followers. Starting with a general assessment of the data, this contribution discusses the under-representation and misrepresentation in Italy of female politicians and gender policies in Italy, focusing on the profiles of selected women and on specific media strategies adopted to place gender issues on the public agenda.

The Continuity of the Board of Statutory Auditors Across Social, Economic and Political Institutional Changes

This study examines how and why the board of statutory auditors, an important accounting institution, has continued to operate from its establishment in 1882 until today, with little change in its nature and role. This is despite the fundamental changes that have occurred in the Italian social, economic and political environment. This study reveals that even though Italy’s societal institutions have substantially changed, the board of statutory auditors has continued to exist, with no material change in its nature, across different historical blocs, such as monarchy, fascism, post-war socio-democratic republic, neoliberal republic, and major changes in Italian politics and economy. This long-lived accounting institution has also faced a series of potentially significant sources of change, which appeared dramatic at first sight, but had no significant far-reaching historical impact, as hegemony was unaffected. In Italian society, the board of statutory auditors has provided a reassurance role, in principle this is to monitor company directors, a role which is perceived to benefit all society. However, in practice, this institution has provided a legitimating, rather than a substantive monitoring mechanism. It helped to exercise the ruling class’ hegemonic control, whose power was diffused across society through civil institutions during various historical blocs.

Explaining Italian “exceptionalism” and its end: Minimum income from neglect to hyper‐politicization

AbstractTraditionally at the margins of the political debate, minimum income protection has recently become a key issue in Italian politics. After decades of social and political “neglect” letting Italy the only European country (with Greece) still lacking an anti‐poverty minimum income safety net in the 2010s, finally a national programme called Inclusion Income was introduced in 2018, then replaced by a more robustly financed scheme, the Citizenship Income in 2019. The introduction of these new programmes was the object of an intense political debate, which raises two main puzzles. Why a policy field characterized by the low political resources of would be beneficiaries and low incidence on the overall welfare budget has become so important in the political debate? How did it occur in Italy, where minimum income protection had been absent in political discourses for at least five decades after World War II? To answer these questions, this article first elaborates a novel theoretical framework which combines the main properties of socio‐political demand and political supply in order to explain the scope and direction of minimum income reforms. Second, it provides an analytically oriented reconstruction of MIS policy trajectory in Italy in the three different phases: the phase of MIS “neglect” (1948–1992) characterized by inertia; the period of political “contentiousness” (1993–2012), marked by attempts of path departure followed by policy reversals; the more recent phase leading to the introduction and institutionalization of a MIS. Third, the article provides a theoretically framed interpretation of the overall MIS trajectory in Italy.