Containing containment: rethinking Italy's experience during the Cold War

This article examines the impact of the Cold War on the Italian political system. It compares the relations of the two main Italian parties - the DC and the PCI - with their external interlocutors and allies - the USA and the USSR - during the first decade of the Cold War. By doing so, the article rejects traditional interpretations of how post-Second World War international constraints limited Italy's sovereignty. It argues instead that the main Italian pro-western party, the Christian Democrats, deliberately opted for a policy of containment of American pressures. Such a policy was functional to the twin objectives of consolidating DC hegemony, and safeguarding Italy's new republican constitution.     

In Love with Garibaldi: Romancing the Italian Risorgimento

This article discusses the meaning of ‘love’ in the political transfer of the Italian Risorgimento. After a general introduction on the possible connections between love and nineteenth-century politics, the author focuses on Giuseppe Garibaldi, one of the most colourful Founding Fathers of modern Italy. While Garibaldi's overwhelming presence in Italian monuments suggests that his political role has been defined by the Italian nation, he started his career as an international fighter for freedom for whom national borders did not matter. In fact, the Garibaldi myth that made the Italian Risorgimento a popular cause in other countries might have been heavily shaped by ‘warm attachments’ between Garibaldi and women and men all over the world. By analysing how these ‘foreigners’ turned both themselves and Garibaldi into vehicles of revolutionary politics, this article shows that in the political transfer of Garibaldi it is not so clear who is the receiver and who the transmitter, what is the centre and what the periphery, male and female: as happens in romantic love as imagined by revolutionaries like Garibaldi, the active and passive subject alternate, giving shape to a political practice that is truly interactive and international.

Résumé: Cet article se penche sur la signification de ‘l'amour’ dans le transfert politique du Risorgimento. Après une brève discussion des connections entre amour et politique au dix-neuvième siècle, l'auteur discute plus en détail Giuseppe Garibaldi, le père fondateur le plus pittoresque de l'Italie moderne. Alors que les représentations monumentales de Garibaldi suggèrent un rôle politique purement national, il commença sa carrière comme un internationaliste combattant pour la liberté plutôt que pour des frontières. De fait le mythe Garibaldi qui fit du Risorgimento une cause populaire dans bien des pays aurait été produit par des attachements chaleureux entre Garibaldi et des hommes et femmes à travers le monde. En analysant comment ces étrangers se firent des agents de la politique révolutionnaire cet article montre que dans le transfert politique Garibaldien il n'est pas très aisé de distinguer qui donne et qui reçoit, qui est au centre et qui est périphérique. Tout comme dans l'amour romantique imaginé par des révolutionnaires comme Garibaldi, les sujets passifs et actifs alternent et donnent forme à une pratique politique véritablement interactive et internationale.     

Leaders,dreams and journeys: Italy's new political communication

This article argues that the modernization of Italian political campaigns and their relationship with the media have led parties and candidates to reconceptualize both their symbols and their rhetorical visions. In contrast to the past, Italian political communication now appears clearly 'Americanized' and candidate-centred. Candidates evoke symbolic visions stressing leadership and personal characteristics instead of referring to the ideological and party symbols that dominated the old campaigns. As in the USA, dreams and journeys are now used in Italy as political images, and communication focuses on the construction of leadership. The author argues, however, that despite these similarities, the Italian personalization of politics differs in many respects from that found in the USA, above all in the lack of institutionalization of political symbols in Italy.     

Italy's unfinished transition: between domestic dynamics and international change

In the early 1990s, Italy was drawn into a spiral of unprecedented transformation precipitated by changes that were taking place both inside Italy and on the international scene. Financial, political and institutional crises were superimposed in ways that brought into question the survival of the whole Italian system. This occurred at a moment when world geo-political relations were shifting dramatically and radically changing established relations, attitudes and policies and marked the beginning of a long period that is often described as a ‘transition’. But since the outcomes still remain far from certain, it is necessary to consider how accurately this term describes what has been taking place in Italy over the last two decades. This paper shows how more careful identification of the different phases and components of the crisis enable us to understand why the upheavals of 1992–94 have led to a systemic crisis of the Italian economy and politics.     

Tangentopoli or the democratization of corruption: Considerations on the end of Italy's first republic

Emilio Sereni (1997) History of the Italian Agricultural Landscape, translated and Introduction by R. Burr Litchfield. Giovanni Agnelli Foundation in Italian History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), pp. i‐xliv, 1–369, ISBN 0–691012164 hardback; ISBN 0–691012156 paperback.

Peter Brand and Lino Pertile (eds) (1996) The Cambridge History of Italian Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1–701.

Bruno Bongiovanni and Nicola Tranfaglia (eds) (1996) Dizionario storico dell'Italia unita (Rome‐Bari: Laterza), pp. 1–1031, 95,000 lire, ISBN 88–420–5081–4.

Giuseppe Maranini (1995) Storia del potere in Italia 1848–1967, prefazione di Angelo Panebianco, 2nd edn (Milan: Corbaccio), pp. 1–530; Mariuccia Salvati (1997) Riflessioni sul Leadership nella storia dell'Italia contemporoneo (Rome‐Bari: Laterza), pp. 1–156.

Domenico Del Rio (1996) I Gesuiti e l'Italia. Storia di passioni, di trionfi e di amarezze (Milan: Corbaccio), pp. 1–522, ISBN 88–7972–111–9 hardback.

Anna Foa (1998) Giordano Bruno (Bologna: Il Mulino), pp. 1–107, 16,000 lire, ISBN 88–15–06604–7.

Roland Sarti (1997) Mazzini. A Life for the Religion of Politics (Westport, Conn.: Praeger), pp. 1–249, ISBN 0–275–95080–8 hardback.

Jonathan Dunnage (1997) The Italian Police and the Rise of Fascism: a Case Study of the Province of Bologna, 1897–1925 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger), pp. i‐xvi, 1–198, $57.95, ISBN 0–275–95286–1 hardback.

Jane Slaughter (1997) Women and the Italian Resistance, 1943–1945 (Denver, Colo: Arden Press) pp. i‐xx, 1–171, $32.00, ISBN 0–912869–13–5 hardback.

Gabriele Turi (ed.) (1997) Storia dell'editoria nell'ltalia contemporanea (Florence: Giunti Gruppo Editoriale), pp. 1–503, 48,000 lire, ISBN 88–09–21236–3.

Carlo Guarnieri and Patrizia Pederzoli (1997) La democrazia giudiziaria (Bologna: Il Mulino), pp. 1–186, 18,000 lire, ISBN 88–15–05706–4 paperback.

Alessandro Brogi (1996) L'ltalia e l'egemonia americana nel Mediterraneo (Scandicci (Florence): La Nuova Italia. Editrice), pp. 1–425 pages (including appendix of documents, bibliography, and index of names), 40,000 lire, ISBN 88–221–1752–2.     

意大利公众参与文化遗产保护的经验与启示

意大利公众参与遗产保护已成为一种民族自觉。意大利公众参与文化遗产保护的经验主要集中在重视吸引公众参与遗产社会教育、加强公众参与遗产保护法律建设、保障公众参与遗产保护渠道等三个方面。意大利的经验启示我们,中国遗产管理也应在这三个方面加强建设。     

Institutional alignment: The anniversary of Italy's 150 years of unity

This article introduces the concept of institutional alignment, referring to the contemporary convergence of a number of institutions (political, governmental, economical, clerical and media) working to hegemonize legitimate knowledge and privilege certain issues. In such instances institutions are called upon to align themselves in terms of narrative style, use of lexicon, symbolic array and, most importantly, the diffusion of a homogeneous and approved truth. Institutional alignment has been implemented in the last few years in Italy on a number of issues crucial to the ideological and economic preservation of the established order: the support for the wars conducted by the Italian armed forces under the guise of humanitarian intervention, especially during periods of patriotic mourning; the backing for the construction of large public infrastructural projects; the condemnation of what is labelled as ‘political violence’; the protection of policies said to generate ‘economic and financial stability’. The issue is illustrated with reference to the celebrations for the anniversary of Italy's 150 years of unity. The agencies involved in promoting a uniform representation in this context are examined. Finally, the frailty of the hegemonic grip is discussed.     

Italy's foreign policy toward China: missed opportunities and new chances

Abstract

This essay provides an account of the erratic and troubled history of the relations between Italy and the People's Republic of China since the 1950s. After reaching their highest point in the two years immediately following the Tiananmen events – when Italy, more than any other Western country, worked to break China's international isolation – they have considerably frozen for a long time. The reason has to be found not only in the crisis that, since 1992, has overcome the Italian political system, but even more so in the structural limits of Italy's economic foreign policy and in the lack of a coherent strategy aimed at promoting Italian goods in world markets that provide huge opportunities – opportunities mostly neglected by the political-economic Italian establishment. The Berlusconi government replaced this negligence with fear-mongering behavior and recurring and outspoken protectionist remarks of various centre-right leaders, who feared the potential damage caused by China's increased competitiveness (which represented, in their opinion, an unfair trade practice) to the national industry. Though too recent to say if it will bear fruit, Prodi has made a desperate attempt for Italy to make up lost ground by leading to China what has been emphatically defined ‘the greatest institutional and business mission ever organized by Italy’ just a few months after his comeback to Palazzo Chigi.     

From Cuba with Love

Book reviewed in this article:
Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976     

From Texas with Love: LBJ Confronts Some Parts of the World

H. W. Brands. The Wages of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power . New York & Oxford.     

论冀察政务委员会的对日交涉

冀察政务委员会存在期间,在冀东察北问题、共同防共问题、华北走私问题、经济提携问题上与日本进行了多次交涉。冀察政务委员会在当时的具体情况下,根据南京政府的对日方针,与日本进行了艰难曲折的交涉,维护了国家主权,捍卫了中华民族的利益。