Wheeler dealers: Silvio Berlusconi in comparative perspective

Abstract

Silvio Berlusconi is uniquely successful as a political entrepreneur, but that does not mean he is unique. Others have trod that path as well, albeit with lesser success. This paper looks at why others have failed where Berlusconi succeeded in order better to understand the secrets of that success. The conclusion is that Berlusconi needed to progress on many fronts at the same time – opportunistic, financial, institutional, ideological and personal. Hence even if Berlusconi has not made the most of his opportunities, what is remarkable is that he illustrates the possibility of bringing the whole constellation of factors together. Others may not have followed in his footsteps yet, but that does not mean they will not be able to do so in the future.     

From Alpine clubs to Baggio and Berlusconi: Italy reflected through sport

Abstract

This article attempts to convey something of the importance of sport in Italy by tracing a brief outline of its development in parallel with the modern Italian state. It then looks at Patrick McCarthy's vision of Italian sport to see how this fits with the latest developments in this turbulent world. It suggests that the fortunes of Italian sport will be somewhat dependent on the wider economic and political system, where the past and present record is not encouraging. Much bolder reform is needed if the trends of bleeding sport dry through commercial exploitation and the erosion of local loyalties are to be reversed. But even if there is not further reform, sport will use its powers of resistance to survive. Much of the article focuses primarily on soccer, both because it is the country's most popular sport and because it has led trends affecting other major sports including cycling and motor racing.     

Forging political entrepreneurs: Civil war effects on post-conflict politics in Italy

How does violent mobilization affect post-conflict elections? This article studies the impact that violent collective mobilization has on local electoral behavior after domestic conflict. We argue that post-conflict democratic politics at the local level can be dramatically affected by local experience of civil war. The use of violence during the war and especially local political entrepreneurs who have emerged from the conflict can influence post-violent politics. We use as case-study the civil war that took place in Italy during the last phase of World War II. Using new spatially disaggregated data on armed groups' location and violent episodes, we assess the impact of the violent mobilization on the 1946 elections, which took place after the conflict. We find that partisans' mobilization and, more weakly, Nazi-Fascist violent acts influenced local politics, shifting votes towards more radical positions. Our findings hold across numerous robustness checks.     

A community out of balance: nationality law and migration politics in the history of post-unification Italy

Italian government policies concerning foreign immigration have to be understood in the context of laws on nationality. Since the time of unification, Italian laws on nationality have been closely determined by policies on emigration and immigration. As a result, the laws regarding the nationality status of Italian emigrants returning from abroad, and for foreign immigrants in Italy, have on the whole been determined by the procedures adopted for the acquisition or deprivation of Italian nationality. This is a subject that has not been studied and this article reconstructs the principal stages in the development of Italian nationality laws from the early twentieth century to the present. This reveals that Italian nationality law treats Italian emigrants and foreign immigrants in very different ways. Both the legal system and government policy has in the past been extremely generous towards the former and has made both the preservation and the reacquisition of nationality relatively easy for Italian nationals, even before there were practical motives for this (e.g. the right for Italians living overseas to vote). When it comes to foreign immigrants, however, Italian law is amongst the most restrictive in western Europe. The article concludes by arguing that this underlying imbalance is a major but largely ignored weakness in Italian democracy.     

Italy and Yugoslavia: from distrust to friendship in Cold War Europe

Considering the relations of two neighbouring countries with a difficult past and separated by ideological barriers, this article takes a look at the relations between Italy and Yugoslavia in a long perspective during the Cold War. The aim is to portray the development of relations from enmity after the Second World War to good neighbourly relations in Cold War Europe. Including new archival sources of Yugoslav origin, the article shows how mutual relations between Italy and Yugoslavia developed, considering the importance of economic factors, political ambitions, but also the impact of diplomatic agents and political leaders for cooperation on the Adriatic. Taking the international environment into account, the article shows that many developments leading to détente in Europe had indeed their precursors on the Adriatic. This makes the development of relations between Italy and Yugoslavia a success story during the Cold War which has hitherto not been thoroughly acknowledged in historiography.     

Between myth and reality: the euro crisis and the downfall of Silvio Berlusconi

In mid-November 2011, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi tendered his formal resignation to President Giorgio Napolitano. It was a humiliating ‘political exit’ for the controversial Italian leader who had been the dominant figure in Italian politics since the mid-1990s. With Italy in the throes of an unprecedented financial crisis, Berlusconi’s squabbling centre-right coalition had appeared increasingly incapable of dealing with the economic emergency engulfing the country. To restore credibility, Napolitano appointed Mario Monti who quickly put together an emergency government. Since then, the downfall of Italy’s longest-serving post-war prime minister has generated a good deal of controversy. Allegations that Berlusconi was pushed out of power by a cabal of domestic and international detractors have been rife both inside and outside Italy. But how plausible are these claims? Was Berlusconi brought down by a conspiracy orchestrated by Napolitano and instigated by Italy’s EU partners? This article will address these questions and, to do so, it will chart the dramatic events that led to his downfall and examine the international and domestic contexts in which these events took place.     

Doing Italian history: Pleasure and politics

This is the second part of a general historiographical review of recent studies on the formation of a modern Italian nation and national identities. The review is organized chronologically, and this second part covers literature on the development of the Italian state and society from Fascism to the birth of the Republic. Si tratta della seconda parte di una articolo dedicato al tema del proceso di 'nation and state building' e modernizzazione in Italia, con particolare attenzione per i temi della costruzione della macchina statale e dell'identità nazionale. La prima parte si era soffermata sul periodo risorgimentale e sull'Italia liberale fino alla prima guerra mondiale e all'avvento del regime fascista. L'articolo tenta di ricostruire in maniera critica i nuovi contributi interpretativi di un dibattito come quello sul processo di costruzione dello stato nazionale unitario, che di recente sembra essersi riacceso, collocandoli nel solco di una tradizione storiografica sul tema, oramai consolidata. Accanto a questa, infatti, sembra farsi strada una nuova stagione di studi, molto meno ancorata al peso che per lungo tempo hanno esercitato i differenti condizionamenti ideologici. In questa seconda parte vengono analizzate le interpretazioni storiografiche, basate su nuove ricerche recentemente condotte, sul ventennio fascista e sulla nascità e lo sviluppo dell'Italia Repubblicana.     

Operationalising memory and identity politics to influence public opinion of refugees: A snapshot from Poland

Using a politics of identity and memory approach, herein, we explore how political discourse plays out in practice and ‘in place’ when Poles were compelled to consider the introduction of visibly different persons, with different cultural characteristics, to their society. In 2017, and at the height of the "migrant/refugee crisis", we conducted 200 short interviews in Wrocław, Poland, to gauge and interpolate attitudes and opinions to refugees, in a context where the refugees had been strategically Othered, and constructed as a threat to Polish society. Our discussion focuses on how the strategic use and dissemination of threat and fear, in public discourse, was operationalised to disrupt steadfast notions of belonging to the Polish nation. By exploring belonging to the nation through a politics of identity and memory framework, we can better understand and provide contextual nuance to the import of maintaining ‘a [Polish] cultural sense of belonging’ (Brockmeier, 2002, p. 18). While in a Polish context, place-based and culturally historical narratives of conflict, territorial incursion, and occupation have framed threats to belonging in the past, the contemporary political exploitation of threat and its (re)production in public discourse is not only strongly exclusionary, but also denies the opportunity for Poles to know diversity as a felt experience reinforcing ideas of a ‘closed’ Poland. The contribution of this paper, then, is to demonstrate both the effectiveness of control of public discourse in a specific place and time, but to also elucidate the less often heard Eastern European states responses to the refugee crises.     

The history of modern and contemporary Italy: Made in France (from the late 1970s to the late 1990s)

Abstract

Over the past three centuries Italy has been the focus of numerous studies by French historians, who have taken advantage of the great wealth of sources available there. While no new synthesis has yet been achieved, we can identify certain main lines of development in French historiography. In the late 1970s and into the 1980s international relations and, especially, the relations between France and Italy were given the greatest attention, before a new focus on forms of sociability and political pedagogy began to be more common. However, the shifting of focus of historical studies to the centres of political decision making often coincided with less attention being paid to social stratification. Beyond these major themes, some researchers have reconstructed ‘global’ historical models, which have been characteristic of the renewal of post‐war French historiography.     

Italy and Australia: a relationship made and unmade by immigration

Australia's new-found post-colonial ‘independence’ in 1901 initially required it to continue to hold on to the apron strings of its colonial master. After World War II, these needs changed, as did the geopolitical power of the leading nations. For Australia, there would be the need to secure its borders, build its labour power, find security arrangements, and adhere to a cold war framework in its geographical region. The USA and the Asian region fell into Australia's sphere of interest. Italy, on the other hand, was a nation of contrasting interests and perspectives. Besides being located in Europe, the post-war period defined Italy by its participation in the concept of a European community and an entirely different set of allies, concerns and trajectories, which made it position itself in a different orbit than that of Australia. Australia's changing economic and social needs required a new and vast migration program in 1947, which would change the dynamics of its relationships. Enter Italy. The two countries now had common destinies in relation to migration—Australia needed people to help build its country, whilst Italy encouraged its impoverished rural population to emigrate to this distant and foreign land. A relationship was born.     

Italians at war: war and experience in Fascist Italy

This article examines Fascist violence in war from the perspective of the strategies employed by the Italian army. Focusing on the military’s use of violence from the re-conquest of Libya to the civil war in Italy, the article argues that Fascism systematically employed forms of violence that were both typical and original.     

Gender and geography in Italy

Abstract

This article attempts to provide a picture of Italian gender geography in order to better understand the discipline’s key achievements and development. Rooted in a lively tradition of feminism stretching back to the 1970s, Italian gender geography has faced cultural and academic resistance while achieving a number of milestones. There is still much to be done if the multifaceted theme of gender is to be fully engaged by Italian geography. However, seminars, national and international congresses on gender geography themes, and the dialectic encounter with international gender geography have stimulated the domestic debate since the new millenium. Italian gender geographic voices may be self-perceived as limited and isolated but are continuously engaged in the struggle to overcome the many structural and cultural constraints imposed by Italian society and academia. This article tries to review Italian gender geography’s history to look forward and encourage new agendas and projects within a larger academic audience.     

Belonging without believing: Catholics in contemporary Italy

Abstract

This article seeks to illustrate some characteristics of the religiosity of Italians, focusing on Catholicism and interpreting the data in the light of the model of religious economy. The issue of belonging to the Catholic Church is addressed first, with an emphasis on problems of measurement and on the factors which underlie the differentiation of religious orientations in Italy. Next, the practice of Catholicism, primarily attendance at Mass, is examined as an indicator of the diffusion and vitality of the Catholic Church, and its course since the Second World War is described. Finally, the article deals with the issue of belief, showing Italians’ widely diffused propensity to ‘deviate’ from full Catholic orthodoxy. Our analysis shows that while the Catholic Church has maintained its pre‐eminent position in Italy's internal religious market, it has lost ground in recent decades and at present must contend with a considerable lack of both vitality and orthodoxy.     

Language Assimilation During the Modernisation Process: Experiences from Norway and North-West Russia

Abstract

The article gives an analysis of the demographic material for North Sámi in Norway during the last 150 years, and compares it to key tendencies in some of the Uralic languages of the Soviet Union. The present linguistic landscape can be predicted with great accuracy from Friis’ survey of 1860. At that time, bilingualism among the Norwegians was widespread in parishes with predominantly Sámi or Finnish (Kven) population. During the assimilation process, the preservation of Sámi was not due to the size of the Sámi population, but rather to its relative size. Today's Sámi communities are the ones with the least Norwegians one and a half centuries ago. A key factor in the language shift process has been mixed marriages. The Soviet data show a greater degree of language preservation, especially for the Nenets and Mari. The difference is partly a result of the Soviet language policy, but also to the degree of contact between the minority and majority populations.     

Racisms compared: Fascist Italy and ultra-nationalist Japan

This article tries to compare the racisms of Fascist Italy and ultra-nationalist Japan as evidenced by foreign policy, attempting to categorize them into three dimensions: the inner logic of the nation state; the justification of expansionist foreign policies; and as an accelerator of cruelty in war. It also surveys Italo-Japanese relations by choosing some points of contact to scrutinize how different racisms reacted to each other.     

A Georgian Language Island in Iran: Fereydani Georgian

This article describes a dialectal variant of the Georgian language in Iran, Fereydani Georgian, which has survived in Iran for about 400 years. Various relevant aspects of the history and research on Fereydani Georgian are analysed. The choice of topics and sources focuses on previously unknown or, for the English-speaking reader, inaccessible authors. Since 2009, a large part of the linguistic data has been collected in several field studies in Fereydan. They serve as sources and show a revealing perspective on the origin, preservation and existence of the Georgian language island of Fereydani in Iran.     

A new era and new themes in Italian politics: The case of Padania

Abstract

By calling for the independence of Padania from the rest of Italy, the Lega Nord has recently drawn a great deal of attention to itself. In support of this campaign the Lega has actively introduced mythical and Utopian models onto the Italian political scene, combining a degree of cultural innovation with a certain political adventurism. This article focuses on these elements, beginning with the events of the autumn of 1996 when the Lega organized a ‘grande festa’ along the banks and in the towns of the River Po aimed at marking the birth of the new nation of Padania. The principal events of the festival were dominated by the many performances of the League's founder and leader, Umberto Bossi, whose speeches were full of pseudo‐religious or pseudo‐prophetic elements. Though the festival ended in Venice with a unilateral declaration of independence by the Lega and its followers in the north, it did not lead to any immediate political consequences. Nevertheless, the situation in Padania is marked by a complex mixture of identities. The Lega has not just introduced new methods of political opposition, it has also brought many subjects (local cultures, regionalism, the right to self‐determination) into the Italian political debate. Furthermore, it has used the language of the sacred and of ‘origins’ to create new characters, new calendars and new sacred sites.     

Post-electoral politics in Italy: institutional problems and political perspectives

A dysfunctional electoral law and an obsolete bicameral Parliament contributed to the surprising results of the 24–25 February 2013 Italian elections, which have solved none of Italy's institutional and political problems. This article briefly analyses the distribution of votes, stressing especially that the success of the Five Stars Movement derives from the dissatisfaction and the protest of a significant sector of the electorate. Beppe Grillo, like Silvio Berlusconi, is a political entrepreneur, who through patience, hard work and commitment has constructed an organization with a wide geographical following. The presence in Parliament of the Five Stars Movement made the election of the President of the Republic very difficult. President Napolitano was obliged to accept an unprecedented second term and then led the Democratic Party, the People of Freedom and Civic Choice to form an unusual government, almost a sort of Grand Coalition. The government is here briefly assessed. The article ends underlining two critical aspects of the situation. Neither the Italian parties nor the party system have succeeded in reaching a satisfactory level of consolidation and stability. This means that the President of the Republic has been obliged to make good the shortcomings of the political parties. Even malgré soi, the President's behaviour has given rise to a situation in which his own position raises the urgent need for institutional reforms along the lines of the semi-presidential mould of the French Fifth Republic to bring to a close Italy's overlong political transition.     

Shaping labour migration to Italy: the role of labour market institutions

This article critically examines the existing explanations for the initiation and perpetuation of labour migration to Italy between the 1970s and early 2000s and highlights the role of labour market institutions in shaping demand for migrant labour. It posits that the institutions governing the labour market in Italy have contributed to creating demand for migrant workers first by generating a significant amount of low-standard employment and second by producing massive obstacles and disincentives to the labour market participation of the domestic supply of labour.