Law enforcement activities in Italy

This article examines the organization and function of Italy’s police forces. In contrast with other countries there have been very few recent studies on policing in Italy. This article starts from the origins of the modern police in Italy and tracks changes over time. Police activities that relate specifically to surveillance of territory and individuals, maintaining public order, controlling immigration and the coordination of police operations are reconstructed and documented, with a specific focus on crime prevention. The article attempts to assess to what extent this has been achieved in recent decades, and to what extent the efficiency of crime prevention has increased or decreased over the last thirty years. The article also examines the relations between the size of the police force and crime statistics to discover whether the increase in the former is directly linked to a decline in the latter.     

Italy's Postcolonial ‘Question’: Views from the Southern Frontier of Europe

In Italy, like in many other European countries, cultural roots and national identity are currently shifting as the result of contemporary transnational migrations and globalization. This essay analyses how the paradigm emerging from the Italian national case contributes to a redefinition of the postcolonial canon centered on British history and culture and to the notion of a “European” postcolonial as a whole. To this aim, the authors identify in colonial history and contemporary immigration the threads that connect the postcoloniality of Italy to that of other European countries. At the same time, they locate the specificity of the Italian postcolonial in the intersection between these factors and other events in Italian history that have strongly influenced the process of shaping an Italian national identity: the Southern question, intranational and international mass emigrations, new mobilities, the subaltern position of Italy within the European Union, and the geopolitical dislocation of Italy as the Southern frontier of Europe. The authors close their essay by presenting a Mediterranean Southern perspective grounded in new forms of knowledge and aesthetic sensibilities that counteract Europe's sense of encroaching and its politics of border protection.     

Spatial Effects of Labour Policies Promoted in Italy from 1996 to 2006: An Analysis in the EU Context

One of the most important economic and social facts concerning the European Union consists in the mismatch among its regions in terms of unemployment rates. The paper aims at examining and measuring the efficiency of Italian policies for labour market carried out in the last 10 years, in terms of reduction in the regional disparities in comparison with the whole European distribution of unemployment. We question whether these policies have been successful or the territorial dimension has still a relevant role on the unemployment in Italy. We try to answer to this question by calculating the Theil Index using data from 1996 to 2006 on unemployment and participation from Eurostat at NUTS 2 level, comparing Italian data with those of other EU countries. Our results show that Italy has still a prominent role in the geographical disparities among regions and that its contribution to the geographical concentration of unemployment is still high (especially if we consider female and youth unemployment).     

Patterns of Regional Inequality in Transition Economies

This paper provides a comparative account of important aspects of regional development in transition economies, on the basis of regional statistics available for Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. More specifically it examines the geographical pattern of disparities, the convergence/divergence trends that have taken place at the regional level and the relation of regional disparities to the process of transition. It is found that spatial adjustments under transition favour metropolitan and western regions, especially in countries sharing common borders with the European Union (EU) and being a short distance from the European core. In addition, disparities have increased at various rates and degrees in transition countries to levels that are higher than most of the EU countries. Given that the catch-up process, which favours more often efficiency than equity policies, has a long way to go, the regional problems in these countries may take alarming, by EU standards, dimensions.     

‘You shouldn't blame religion … but the person’ – the ethnic boundary work of young second-generation migrants in Rotterdam

In the Netherlands, as in most other western European countries, the desirability and the governability of a multicultural society are topics of debate. In the last decade, this debate has increasingly centred on second-generation migrants, focusing on their high rates of crime and school drop-out. In the Dutch context, however, little scholarly research has paid attention to second-generation migrants’ own experiences. In this paper, I therefore focus on the perceptions of ethnic boundaries held by 12- to 19-year-old second-generation migrants and how they negotiate these boundaries in the low-income, multi-ethnic Feijenoord area of Rotterdam. The study shows that young people are used to living together with many different cultures and see themselves as being on both sides of the ethnic boundary between the Dutch-majority society and the culture of their parents. However, they also encounter prejudice and discrimination in their day-to-day lives, which calls into question the success of multiculturalism.     

Declining,transition and slow rural territories in southern Italy Characterizing the intra-rural divides

As metropolitan areas around the world keep expanding, behind them, rural areas continue to be affected by greater rates of depopulation. This is not a new phenomenon: rural to urban migration has been reported in the developed world at least from the period between the two world wars. However, recent rural depopulation trends have dramatically intensified in both the developed and the developing countries worldwide. In planning literature, greater emphasis is placed on the “urban–rural” divide, that is, people leaving the countryside to look for better opportunities in urban areas. However, a growing body of literature points to the fact that not all rural areas are declining at the same rate. Indeed, some rural towns have managed to retain population and even to grow. Therefore, at least in developed countries, an “intra-rural” divide notion is emerging. To exemplify this notion, we have studied rural towns in Southern Italy.     

Pension Fund Capitalism: A Causal Analysis

Since 1980, UK individual pension and retirement assets have increased about twelvefold to around 1.5 trillion. Over the same period, US household retirement assets have increased about tenfold to more than US$7 trillion. High rates of asset growth have also been observed for Australia and Canada. Notwithstanding their current high standards of living, countries in much of continental Europe have not shared in these extraordinary rates of growth of pension assets. In fact, many analysts believe that their long-term prosperity is threatened (relatively speaking) by inefficient, institutionally cumbersome finance sectors. While saving now for retirement has significant advantages for beneficiaries, less recognized is the fact that the growth of pension assets in the Anglo-American economies has profoundly changed the financial structure of these countries. In this paper I explain how and why pension assets have grown so large in the Anglo-American countries, beginning with a historical account which helps to identify the reasons why German and continental European countries (excluding The Netherlands and Switzerland) have not shared the same rates of growth in pension assets. In doing so, the paper develops a causal model which discriminates between various causes of Anglo-American pension fund capitalism: structural determinants (institutional framework), second-order determinants (postwar conditions), and third-order determinants (the flow of contributions). The identified causal logic integrates structure with historical and geographical contingency. Implications are also drawn regarding the significance of Anglo-American pension funds for global capitalism.     

Italy during the Rhine Crisis of 1840

The paper addresses the impact of the Rhine Crisis of 1840 on Italian countries and explains the role they played in the European State System when the Continent seemed to be on the eve of a general war. As the paper attempts to prove, the crisis seriously alarmed the ruling classes as well as the general public and revealed the internal problems of the Italian countries as well as their deep distrust towards the egotistic and self-serving policies of the Great Powers. The paper therefore introduces the history of Italy during late 1840 within the wider context of European diplomatic history and serves as a probe into the history of the European State System during the Pre-March period in general.     

'Institutional thickness', political sub-culture and the resurgence of (the 'new') regionalism in Italy – a case study of the Northern League in the province of Varese

In recent years, the 'regional scale' within the European Union (EU) has become more central within academic and policy debates. In particular, there has been an increased focus upon the importance of so-called 'institutional thickness' for regional development within the EU. Furthermore, the fact that in several European countries, regionalist political parties have made significant electoral gains has ensured that the 'regional question' in Europe has become even more prevalent. This paper explores the linkages between institutions and regionalist political parties by focusing upon the situation in Italy where the resurgence of political regionalism, centred on the Lega Nord (LN) or Northern League political party, has been particularly strong. In particular, the paper focuses upon the development of the LN in a particular province of Northern Italy, Varese. This section explores the ways in which the LN has developed institutionally and electorally and indeed whether the party has been able to develop a specific political sub-culture to replace the previous one associated with the Christian Democrat (DC) party, which was the main party in Varese before the landmark changes that took place in Italian politics in the early 1990s.     

The sociospatial ecology of deaths during police interactions in the United States, 2016–2020

Who dies in police custody? Where? To answer these questions, we use spatially disaggregated georeferenced data that measure 9098 deaths occurring by multiple causes during interactions with police throughout the U.S. from 2016 to 2020. We use a Sociospatial Ecology framework and Bayesian statistics over U.S. counties that establishes the relationship between social contexts – regional poverty, White/non-White population, violent crime rates, and political identity – and the risk of dying during police interactions. In addition, we evaluate the effects of police force Whiteness on deaths during police interactions. Controlling for alternative explanations, we show heterogeneous distributions of fatality risk, with large clusters in the Southwest and isolated high-probability pockets in other states. Risk maps allowing for visualization of these patterns are provided. We arrive at five main results. 1) There is a general trend of higher death during police interaction in areas of high poverty, fewer White people, higher violent crime rates, and higher populations with conservative values. 2) A great risk of deadly encounters for Black people exists throughout most of the U.S., while regional patterns of high risk exist for all other people of color. 3) White deaths during police interactions are most sensitive to ecological factors. 4) The risk of Blacks getting killed by police increases in White areas regardless of violent crime rates. 5) Higher proportions of White police within U.S. counties leads to higher interactive death risk for all races/ethnicities except Asian/Pacific Islander. Ultimately, our findings identify widespread racial/ethnic biases in situations of power and control.     

Property and Personal Crime in Istanbul

In recent studies on urban safety, close relationships between physical and demographic characteristics have been found in crime levels in cities. In many countries social, political and economic turmoil have been the main reasons for the increase in urban crime and violence in the last 50 years. In physically deprived environments, the most important factors that increase urban crime are socially isolated communities, economic discrimination and lack of equality in political citizenship rights. In developing countries, it is difficult to obtain data about crime and safety. For this reason, there are very few studies on crime compared to developed countries. In the research in this paper, the similarities and differences of crime ratios against property and persons in Istanbul are compared with those in other countries. For this purpose, the spatial distribution of crimes committed were analysed on a comparative basis between 1998–2002 in 32 districts displaying different characteristics in terms of distance to the centre, use of land, value of land, physical and demographic features. The research revealed that the crime rates in Istanbul against property and persons were in parallel with developed countries. The districts which have mixed use (residential and commercial, residential and industrial), high population increase, high number of households, high density and high land value, property and personal crime levels are high; when date of becoming a district is recent and the size of the district is large, property and personal crime levels are low.     

Sins of memory: reflections on the lack of an Italian Nuremberg and the administration of international justice after 1945

This article reconstructs the history of the major trial that the Allies planned to institute against the entire military command of the Nazi armies operating in Italy from 1943 to 1945. The trial was prepared on the same juridical and technical bases as the Nuremberg Tribunal, but it never took place. The reason was that it would have jeopardized the re-integration of the Federal Republic in the European community, and would also have risked placing the Italian government in the embarrassing position of having the Italian army prosecuted for crimes committed in the countries occupied by the Rome?–?Berlin axis. For those reasons, the trial was abandoned and instead only legal proceedings were taken only for some marginal cases, creating the impression that these were simply isolated cases of individual responsibility. The enigma of this missing trial and an explanation of the limits of international justice can only be understood in terms of the political situation in post-war Europe, the relations between Italy and the Allies and the double game played by the Italian government. These events served, however, to give rise to highly selective memories of totalitarianism and the war.     

A colpi di cuore. Storie del sessantotto

This article attempts to tackle the problem of how a colonial culture that was elaborated through the written word may have impacted on an Italian society that was significantly more ‘backward’ than its western European counterparts. The Prima Guerra d'Africa (1885-96) has often been seen as a military campaign desired exclusively by an isolated Italian government in a society that was incapable of using the occasion to develop cultural themes that impacted on the desires and aspirations of the ‘real’ Italy. This supposed societal dysfunction meant that Italy failed to create a ‘culture of imperialism’ in the years of the Scramble for Africa in a way that has now come to be considered of such central importance for the histories of France, Britain or even Germany.

Through an analysis of the role played by primary schools in Italian culture in these years, this article attempts to reverse this view, arguing that even taking into consideration Italy's ‘backwardness’ there was not only a great awareness of what Italy was supposedly doing in Africa but also a serious attempt to load the events that occured there with a meaning that had a much more intimate relationship with Italy's population. Although defeat in Africa meant a major setback in this process, imperialism as a cultural phenomenon continued to be of fundamental importance to the progress of nation building and the development of nationalism in Italy and, Finaldi argues, it should therefore be assigned a place in Italian culture that is much more on a par to that which culture and imperialism are deemed to have held for other European nation-states.     

What kind of veto player is the Italian Senate? A comparative analysis of European second chambers

The literature finds evidence that the presence of strong institutional veto players correlates with policy gridlocks. In recent years, in several European countries the rationale of parliamentary second chambers as veto players has been called into question. With regard to Italy, in 2016 the parliament approved a broad constitutional reform, later rejected by a referendum. According to the proponents, this reform would have made Italian institutions more functional in a comparative perspective. Did voters actually block some sort of functionality? To answer this question, this article presents a systematic comparison of second chambers in the European Union. The theoretical framework is based on three dimensions of strength, operationalized by means of quantitative indicators and a comprehensive index of strength. The article ends with a discussion of the findings and a proposal for further research outlooks.     

Polished Stone Axes in Caput Adriae from the Neolithic to the Copper Age

This paper reports the results of a long-term project on the stone axes from Caput Adriae. Available data show that jade axes originating in the western Alps reached the Neolithic groups of Friuli Venezia Giulia and coastal Istria as early as the second half of the 6th millennium BC, during the Danilo/Vla?ka culture. The exchange of this and other classes of lithic artefacts testifies that in this period this area was fully integrated into long-distance exchange systems that used mainly coastal routes. These systems would have continued in the 5th millennium BC, as indicated by a few oversized jade axe blades and other materials. Far from the coast, jade axes entered central Slovenia, probably reaching sites of the Sava Group of the Lengyel culture in the first half of the 5th millennium BC. In roughly the same period, shaft-hole axes made of Bohemian metabasites (BM) spread over central and southeastern Europe, crossed the Alps and reached Italy. According to different Neolithic traditions, during the 5th millennium BC Europe appears to be divided into a jade-using western area and a central-eastern BM-using one. During the 4th millennium BC, the exchange networks of Caput Adriae are increasingly influenced by the eastern Alpine and Balkan world, where the raw material sources of the main groups of shaft-hole axes are located. The association of the rocks used for axe production and copper ore suggests that the changes in raw material exploitation strategies during the Copper Age were probably related to the development of the first metallurgy.     

21 世纪以来西方犯罪地理研究述评

犯罪地理学主要研究犯罪现象的空间发生、发展和分布规律。从21 世纪以来SSCI、SCI 收录的地理学及相关学科期刊中整理500 多篇犯罪地理研究相关论文,分析西方近年来犯罪地理学发展态势,并选取100 余篇代表文献重点评述。总体来看,2000年以来,西方犯罪地理研究通过创新研究方法、加强学科融合等途径推进了犯罪过程和机制的研究,犯罪时空模式、城市社会环境与犯罪的关系、犯罪仿真模拟与地理画像、犯罪空间防控等领域发展迅速,犯罪地理研究不断扩展和深化,学科体系和发展脉络日益清晰。以此为鉴,未来国内的犯罪地理学应加强实证研究,以犯罪空间分析为重点,逐步形成包括新的研究方法、研究视角和空间观的研究体系。     

国外文化遗产基金制度及其借鉴

文化遗产基金制度或与文物保护相关的艺术基金制度在西方发达国家已基本完善。基金会通过多渠道广泛地筹集资金,并有效地进行战略管理和再投资;同时,基金会的日常运作公正透明,具有完善的内外部监督机制。这些贯穿于基金运作各层面的制度及运作经验十分值得我国借鉴。     

Women's history in Italy (nineteenth and twentieth centuries)

This essay surveys the development of women's history in Italy since its origins, examining the principal questions that have driven research and debate from the 1960s to the present, the ways in which women's history in other countries (notably the US) has been influential in Italy, the impact of women's history on other branches of historical research in Italy and its place — or rather lack of place ‐ in Italian universities.     

The demographic transition: model and reality

Observed exponential population growth curves are short-term parts of a logistic or S-curve in demography or a product-cycle curve in technology. All human populations have the ability to adjust their rates of growth, a fact recognized by the demographic transition model. The acceleration of world population growth that began after 1650 and became conspicuous after 1850 was largely confined to industrialized countries of European culture until after World War II, when the S-curve passed the inflection point. Many signs indicate that the decline in growth rates may become striking in the 1980s or 1990s. The demographic transition agrees with the logistic curve, and since the ultimate carrying capacity of the Earth is limited, represents an intelligent adaptation. The industrial countries with the longest statistical records, such as Sweden and Finland, evidence early efforts to control fertility. The demographic transition in Sweden lasted from 1815 to 1930 and occurred without government interference. A question for postindustrial western society is whether birth rates will be adjusted to the rising death rates expected as the population ages. Birth and death rates in most formulations of the demographic transition model are typical of Western Europe at the start of the transition process but are much too low for most countries of the world. Japan's demographic transition and that of several other Asian countries have occurred much more rapidly than those of Western Europe and have demonstrated not only that the demographic transition model was applicable but that the time span could be shortened by a factor of about 10 when government policy was substituted for spontaneous development. The Indian experience however shows that the shortening of the transition cannot be imposed from above. The demographic transition is well on its way in most of Asia and Latin America, but Africa and the Muslim countries of Asia have so far done little to restrain their high fertility. It may be concluded that the actual form of the demographic transition is influenced by the point of departure and by how and when it takes place.     

19世纪晚期法国反犹主义政治化原因初探

19世纪70年代以后,几乎所有西欧和中欧国家都出现了现代反犹主义思潮,其中法国尤为典型。当时,法国反犹主义的突出表现是反犹主义政治化,即反犹立法的确定、大规模的群众反犹运动以及民众对反犹观念狂热的、盲目的信仰。法国反犹主义政治化是个复杂的社会历史现象,是宗教、思想、历史、社会、经济、现实的政治状况等因素交互作用的结果,其中最为重要的是经济和现实的政治因素。