The politics of the ‘Church’ in the Italy of Pope Wojtyła

Abstract

This article analyzes the development of different political tendencies with the Italian Church during the pontificate of John Paul II. Two different strategies enabled the episcopal conference to maintain stability for a long period, in which time Cardinal Ruini played a key role, first as secretary and then president of the bishops. In his years the conference of bishops accepted that the political unity of the Catholic world was over, but it still tried to retain a strong political influence even though the mediation of the Christian Democratic Party was no longer available. With the end of Wojty?a's pontificate, however, this period came to a close and the different tendencies that make up the rich and complex world of the Italian Catholic Church have become more visible.     

The Italian political system after the 9 – 10 April 2006 elections

Abstract

All recent Italian elections have produced important electoral consequences. In this brief introduction, the author highlights some of the problems, difficulties and perspectives for the Italian political system following the electoral victory of the centre-left. More precisely, he suggests that there are two complex issues in need of being analyzed and politically tackled: the revisions to be introduced into the Italian Constitution and the transformation of some Italian parties and the reorganization of the party system. In conclusion, at least in this phase, the Italian political system is bound to remain in a situation that can still be defined as an ongoing political and institutional transition.     

The exiles of the Risorgimento: Italian volunteers in the Portuguese Civil War (1832–34)

Abstract

Between 1832 and 1834 during the civil war against the partisans of absolutism in Portugal about a hundred Italians fought as volunteers in the Portuguese liberal army. These Italians were motivated to participate by a Romantic culture of war that was strongly rooted in the liberal nationalism of the Italian Risorgimento, but above all, the decision to fight as a volunteer abroad was the result of an international movement of political solidarity with Portuguese liberalism in the early 1830s with which the Italian liberals came into contact during their political exile in France and in Belgium. For the Italian, fighting as volunteers in Portugal proved to be a decisive political experience which deeply shaped their own political ideas of the nation that the volunteers would subsequently draw on in their different political and professional roles in Italy where they became ministers, diplomats and generals of the Kingdom of Italy.     

Sender,those who have not returned: Carlo Salsa and his ‘Trenches’

Abstract

Carlo Salsa’s book ‘Trenches: A foot-soldier’s tales’ (Trincee. Confidenze di un fante, 1924) was one of many published in Italy after the end of the First World War. It describes the facts of the war as they were lived by officers and soldiers on the Italian front line. The article tries to compare the book with the contemporary war literature in Italy and in Europe, without forgetting the use of the international historiography on the matter. Thus, it is analysed the way an Italian author described to his readers the brutal carnage of the war in years when Fascism was the rising star in Italian policy and the censorship was becoming the more and more a thornily factor for every writer of those days. From this analysis it is possible to note the quality of the volume both from the literary point of view, and its historical value as a reliable testimony of the facts, stepping up our knowledge of what the war literature was for the Italian public opinion after the 1918. As it is possible to note, the book puts under test our notions of the role played by this kind of literature in shaping the Italian political life at the end of the 1910s and at the start of 1920s, when Italy was becoming a country lead by the Fascist regime.     

The man who never was? The Italian transition and 2008 election

Abstract

The implications for the co-called Italian transition of the 2008 election initially seemed significant – but have since become increasingly uncertain as Berlusconi's conflict of interests has risen higher up the political agenda. This underscores the pertinence of asking about the sense in which the notion of ‘transition’ is actually applicable to the Italian case at all – bearing in mind that it describes a process now supposedly underway for some 17 years; and bearing in mind that its end point can seemingly not be identified (though by definition ‘transition’ implies movement between two points). Discovering if the term applies to the Italian case and if so whether 2008 has brought its conclusion nearer requires exploring if the political protagonists that have emerged from the election as the most significant players – the Popolo della Libertà and the Partito Democratico – have sufficient commonality of view, sufficient desire and sufficient power to complete a process of constitutional overhaul. The evidence suggests that while they have the view and the desire, there are significant limitations on their power. The election might potentially have been a watershed in the so-called Italian transition in the broader sense of system performance, aside from formal constitutional change. Here too, however, the evidence points away from the idea that 2008 represents a real sea change – though the chances seem good that it will come to be perceived as such.     

The judicialization of politics,Italian style

Abstract

The recent dramatic changes in the Italian political scene have been related to the expanding role of the judiciary. The judicialization of politics is a process at work in many other democracies, but in Italy the judicial revolution has been supported by an institutional setting of increasing independence and by the strong powers entrusted to public prosecutors. However, until 1992 judicial power was somewhat balanced by the strength of the political class. But the political crisis that came to a head in 1992 has opened a political vacuum that the judiciary has been able to fill.

The 1996 elections have brought to power a new and stronger political alliance, the Ulivo. A new political stability could lead to a containment of judicial power but it is unlikely that the Italian judiciary will be brought back to its traditional passive role. Judicialization has to be considered a permanent trait of the Italian political system.     

From enemy to opponent: the politics of delegitimation in the Italian Christian Democratic Party (1945–1992)

Abstract

This article reconstructs the dynamics of delegitimation of political opponents in the Italian Christian Democratic Party (DC), which had a relative majority and almost uninterruptedly led Italy’s governments from 1945 to 1992. The DC built its strategy of delegitimation on two levels, an ideological-religious one and a systemic one, which were only partly interdependent and overlapping. In almost half a century, the DC aimed its rhetoric and politics of delegitimation mainly at those opposition parties it considered as anti-establishment, that is, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), and the form of delegitimation changed a great deal over this period. However, it is possible to grasp a specific dynamic: from a rigid form of delegitimation, from time to time it became possible to legitimate (at least in part) the opposition parties at different times and in different ways, depending on the changes in the political sphere and in society. It was a process full of contradictions and ambiguities within which the political enemy gradually gave way to becoming a political opponent.     

Becoming the ‘party of civil rights’: the Radical Party, 1962–1979

ABSTRACT

The article reconstructs how the Italian Radical Party became, from the mid-1960s, the party of ‘civil rights’, and what its main battles for these rights were between 1967 and 1979. In the Italian political system the Party played a crucial role in the process of re-institutionalization that took place in the 1970s, helping to transfer demands formulated in social and cultural terms since the 1960s to the legislative-institutional level. Making the battle for civil rights the object of their own political action had a systemic meaning for the Radicals – namely, to undermine the dominion of the Christian Democrats and redefine the relations between the political sphere and society. This was closely linked to the political strategy of the party and to the organizational form it gave itself from 1967 onwards. These aspects, however, did not remain unchanged between 1967 and 1979; rather, they fed on the Radicals’ evolving vision of Italian society (on its social turmoil) on the one hand, and on the other they reacted to the evolution of the Italian political scenario, in particular to the possibility of building a parliamentary alternative to the Christian Democracy.     

The crisis of the Italian state: then and now

Abstract

The article argues that Patrick McCarthy's Crisis of the Italian State was a book of great value by an author who was a partisan in the struggle to reform the Italian political system. The book's argument that lasting reform of Italian politics is only possible if middle class Italians begin to act as citizens, rather than as clients who regard the state as a source of potential largesse, has proved to be a far-sighted one, although at the time it seemed simplistic. Many of Italy's current troubles stem from the failure of Italy to go beyond the ‘overworked state’.     

Italian Jews and their ‘political’ reactions to the fascist regime’s anti-Semitic campaign*

ABSTRACT

The article intends to emphasize the political redefinition of Italian Jews in reaction to the fascist aggression and its different answers ‘organized’. Since 1934 there arose strong divisions within Italian Judaism: the real issue of contention, however, did not reside in the attitude towards fascism, but in the judgement on Zionism and postponed a long-standing dynamics. A group of Jews, called ‘bandieristi’ from a magazine called La Nostra Bandiera, on the basis of a ‘fascist’ programme and anti-Zionism, tried to replace the official establishment of the Jewish representatives, the Union Community of Italian Jewish, as a reference to the fascist authorities. The Union was accused by the ‘bandieristi’ of being complicit with international Jewry and Zionism. The confrontation with fascism exasperated the Italian Judaism internal contradictions, putting in long-term dynamic light that preceded fascism and survived the early post-war years.     

Nation and state building in Italy: recent historiographical interpretations (1989–1997), I: Unification to Fascism

Abstract

This is the first part of a general historiographical review of recent studies on the formation of the modern Italian nation and national identities. The review is organized chronologically and the first part covers literature on the development of the Italian state and society to the end of the nineteenth century.     

Challenging intellectual hierarchies. Hegel in Risorgimento political thought: an introduction

ABSTRACT

The introduction to this special issue rethinks Italy’s liberal tradition and nineteenth-century Italian political thought in transnational perspective, with particular focus on the role of Italian Hegelianism during the emergence of the modern Italian nation state. Starting from an attempt to recast the transnational dimension of the Risorgimento, this co-authored article relates existing studies of Italian Hegelianism to wider trends in intellectual history elsewhere in Europe. Introducing the different contributions to this special issue, our approach challenges notions of centre and periphery in the history of intellectual flows, and helps to free the history of the Risorgimento from self-incurred exceptionalism.     

Piero Gobetti and the Liberal Revolution in Italy

Abstract

Piero Gobetti, who died at an early age in 1926 after a severe beating by Fascist squadristi, is one of the most remarkable figures in twentieth‐century Italian culture. A writer and thinker with deep political commitment, Gobetti launched the reviews and journals during the political crisis in Italy between 1918 and 1925 which provided a meeting point for the otherwise dispersed forces of the Italian Left. The republication of his essay ‘The Liberal Revolution. An Essay of the Political Struggle in Italy’ ‐ the fifth edition since it first appeared in 1924 — has reopened the debate on Gobetti and provides an opportunity to consider Gobetti's ideas outside the context of the often politically motivated interpretations that have been placed on them.     

The myth of Aeneas: The Italian Archaeological Mission in Albania, 1924–43

Abstract

The development of archaeology in Italy during the first decades of this century led to a partial rejection of positivist principles of experimentation in favour of a historically-based idealist philosophy. Under the Fascist regime archaeology was used to create and sustain the political mythology of Romanità. Excavations in central Rome sought to highlight the physical connections between the Rome of Augustus and that of Mussolini as well as emphasising the links between the chain of ‘great men’, who had created and sustained the Roman state.

The Italian archaeological mission to Albania was established against this background, with the aim of reinforcing Italian hegemony to the east of the Adriatic. The means of achieving this varied from reinforcing Albanian historical preconceptions to emphasising the mythological connections and traditional civilising mission of Rome in the Balkans. Within these political objectives, the mission was able to follow a serious scientific research programme, although full publication was prevented by the outbreak of war. Thereafter, the changed political situation enforced the abandonment of the project.     

Double opening,split temporality,and new spatialities: an interview with Sandro Mezzadra on ‘militant research’

Abstract

A militant research approach, Mezzadra suggests, should gesture towards a ‘double opening’: towards struggles on the one hand, and towards the production of concepts and theoretical innovation on the other. Mezzadra defines militant investigation as ‘the ability to localize and consolidate the possibility for ruptures’ and as a practice that does not take the meaning of ‘political struggle’ for granted. Building on the ‘within and against’ militant posture of the Italian Workerist tradition, Mezzadra reflects on the split temporality of militant investigations and on the contested spaces of a political epistemology of migrations.     

The 2019 European Elections: a ‘second-order’ vote with ‘first-order’ effects

ABSTRACT

In this article we provide a general interpretation of the results of the 2019 elections of the European Parliament in Italy. The Italian case contains several elements that are, at the same time, ambivalent and interesting, especially if observed in a larger, European-wide comparative perspective. Besides a general interpretation of the vote for the European Parliament, the article discuss also the consequences of the elections results for the transformations of the Italian party system and the patterns of government formation in a context characterized by an increasing process of political integration in a multilevel political system. Finally, we discuss the trend of Euroscepticism in the Italian public opinion and the role played by radical or ‘sovranist’ parties in promoting a feeling of distrust or detachment towards the European Union.     

The European Union in the media coverage of the 2019 European election campaign in Italy: towards the Europeanization of the Italian public sphere

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the patterns of Europeanization of the Italian public sphere during the 2019 European Elections campaign. Europeanization is meant as a multifaceted process. The visibility and salience of the European Union (E.U.) within the public debate is realized by dynamics involving different actors, in terms of interactions, connections and contaminations between different public spheres. The aim of the article is to clarify whether and to what extent the Italian media covered the E.U. during the European Parliament (E.P.) elections campaign and more precisely to assess through which dynamics of Europeanization the E.U. entered the domestic public debate. We relied on data from a human content analysis carried out on 10 Italian media outlets during the seven weeks before election day. Our findings suggest that, compared to 2014, the visibility of E.U. and E.U. related issues is increasing within Italian media coverage. Italian media still maintain a neutral approach to the issue, resisting to Eurosceptic claims from political parties and public opinion. With regard to the Europeanization, we found that media tend to focus on the vertical dimension especially, providing visibility to domestic actors addressing the E.U. and its political actors. Elements of horizontal Europeanization, instead, are mainly referred to events from other E.U. member states, with few connections among political actors. All in all, our results confirm the idea of a growing centrality of the E.U. within national public debate combined with signals of more structured and substantial Europeanization.     

The Italian resistance between history and memory

Abstract

Since the 1960s the Resistance has held pride of place in public ceremonial, political debate and to a point also in historcial writing in Italy. The emphasis on its popular and national character transformed the Resistance into the struggle of the whole country to rid Italy of the German invaders and the small number of Italian fascists who remained their allies, but in ways that took no account of the complexity of people's reactions and the different ways in which Italians experienced the years immediately after the fall of fascism. In the last decade, however, numerous accounts have been published that contradict the images of the Resistance that for 30 years have constituted the ‘official’ memory of the Italian Republic. As a result, the Resistance offers a classic example of the ‘public use of history’, in which historical interpretation has served primarily to justify party political, instutitional and idelogical ends. It is now clear, however, that the supposed unity against fascism was more the result of agreement that there were limits beyond which political differences could not be pressed rather than of a deeper political unity that might have provided the basis for the political and institutional reform of the Italian Republic. The contrasting memories and interpretations of that period that have recently re-emerged for the same reason make it more difficult to project a new Italian democracy for the future.     

The transformation of the Italian party system

Abstract

This article analyses the political and social changes that occurred in Italy in the 1980s and 1990s in ways that bring economic and sociological models together in a historical perspective. It argues that the rise of the new Right following the disintegration of the Christian Democrats and the Socialist Party was the result not only of the changed international situation (which was none the less important) but of the changes that had been taking place within the Italian political parties and the growing importance of neo‐patrimonial tendencies over the previous fifteen years. Increasingly open forms of corruption (on the part of the political classes rather than the industrial bourgeoisie, even though they too were to some extent accomplices) are interpreted as a sign of the crisis and disintegration of the political system that had taken shape in the postwar period. Hence the nexus of anguish and politics for both the upper classes and the rest of Italian society that has become one of the most important features of the situation in Italy today.