Italy: A new language for a new politics?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the language used by the major actors in contemporary Italian politics. After a brief introduction, which lists the general questions posed by such an analysis, we examine the language of the pre‐1992 regime, which has been rather too hastily condemned as obscure and solipsistic. We then pass to the self‐consciously simple language of Bossi, who constructs a discourse of protest, and of Berlusconi, who offers a discourse of government. These lead to the very different, albeit sometimes complementary, languages of Prodi and D'Alema, which go beyond populism and open new political perspectives. Through these and other examples we examine the role of political language in a changing Italy.     

‘Grace for the rebels’: the role of the royal pardon in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381

This article focuses on the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 as a means of examining some of the late medieval assumptions about the nature of royal mercy. Rather than adding to the weight of scholarship on the causes and characteristics of the Revolt, this article discusses the views on mercy (‘grace for the rebels’)1 1?The parliament rolls of medieval England [hereafter PROME], ed. C. Given-Wilson et al. (CD-ROM. Scholarly Digital Editions, Leicester, 2005), ‘Richard II: parliament of 1381, text and translation’, item 30. I would like to thank the audience of the Oxford Medieval History Seminar for their advice on an early version of this paper, and Mark Ormrod for his helpful comments on this essay in draft form. that were reportedly expressed by all parties during the course of the rebellion. The first section analyses the chronicles and their references to discussion of pardon and mercy during the revolt itself. The second section examines the role of the royal pardon in the subsequent judicial proceedings in the Home Counties — who were the first recipients of pardon, and how were they able to secure royal grace? The final section then discusses the formulation of the pardon in the autumn parliament, and the debate surrounding the course of government policy in the wake of revolt on an unprecedented scale. This article seeks to demonstrate that the Crown and commons shared a common language of pardon, and understood that by framing their discussion in terms of royal grace, they were alluding to a particular kind of idealised relationship between the king and his subjects.     

A Transformed Life? Geoffrey of Dutton,the Fifth Crusade,and the Holy Cross of Norton

Despite the volume of scholarship dedicated to crusade motivation, comparative little has been said on how the crusades affected the lives of individuals, and how this played out once the returned home. Taking as a case study a Cheshire landholder, Geoffrey of Dutton, this article looks at the reasons for his crusade participation and his actions once he returned to Cheshire, arguing that he was changed by his experiences to the extent that he was concerned with remembering and conveying his own status as a returned pilgrim. It also looks at the impact of a relic of the True Cross he brought back and gave to the Augustinian priory of Norton.     

A Christian democratization of politics? The new influence of Catholicism on Italian politics since the demise of the Democrazia Cristiana

A paradox exists in relation to contemporary European Christian democracy. Its ideological influence has increased as Christian democratic parties have declined. This is particularly evident in Italy since the demise of the Democrazia Cristiana (DC). By investigating the ideological development of Italian parties and some key policy reforms that they introduced after the fall of the DC, this article explains this ‘Christian democratization of politics’, a process by which Catholic ideals and symbols acquire a decisive impact on the Italian party system. Three types of Christian democratization are individuated and analyzed: the gradual replacement of liberal values with Catholic political ideas in the positions taken by liberal-oriented parties; the novel synthesis between social Catholicism and social democracy by moderate left-wing coalitions; and the Lega Nord’s use of Catholic values to stress populist positions and identity issues.     

Add shamans and stir? A critical review of the shamanism model of forager rock art production

The “shamanism” or “neurpsychological” model proposed by Lewis-Williams and colleagues has had a powerful impact on rock art research, and has significantly added to our knowledge of past foragers lifeways in southern Africa and elsewhere in the world. However, this model is primarily based on the view of shamanism as a universal and unvarying characteristic of foragers over space and time. This paper raises both theoretical and empirical problems with this view. The paper examines the relationship between the specific social roles and practices of shamanism and the overarching cosmological structures on which they are based in both southern Africa and Northern Eurasia. In both cases, the paper argues that many cosmological beliefs are highly persistent and durable, extending into prehistory, while the specific practices and roles of shamans are variable, changing to meet the immediate and local needs of their communities. This suggests that rock art is easier to relate to the overarching cosmological dispositions of the people that produced it and the paper closes by suggesting some theoretical and methodological alternatives recognizing this fact.     

Is Small Beautiful? Microhistory and the History of Everyday Life

Books reviewed in this article:
The History of Everyday Life. Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life Edited by Alf Lüdtke, translated by William Templer
Jeux d'Échelles. La micro-analyse àl'expérience Edited by Jacques Revel     

Qomolangmo:A World Full of Life

Whoever hasnot set footto theQomolang-mo tends to think it is aworld ot sterile whitenessdevoid of any life.My tripthere in May last year, how-ever, showed it to be aworld full of life.     

A new role for the plasmaphere in “quiet” ionospheric electrodynamics

Global scale longitudinal gradients of pressure in the plasmasphere may be formed naturally by ionospheric processes, or caused by electrostatic fields of ionospheric dynamo origin. It is shown that plasmaspheric gradients of pressure, orthogonal both to the magnetic field (B) and to grad B, generate geophysically significant field-aligned currents. Considering the ionosphere and plasmasphere as a coupled electrodynamic system, these currents alter non-negligibly the self-consistent ionospheric electric field and current. Criteria are established for this coupling mechanism (a kind of plasmaspheric impedance) to be significant. This has implications for the relationships of ionospheric electric fields and currents, F-region drifts, and magnetic variations, due to upper atmosphere tides and winds.     

Between Byzantium and Jerusalem? The principality of Antioch,Renaud of Châtillon,and the penance of Mamistra in 1158

In the summer of 1158, Manuel I Komnenos, emperor of Byzantium, brought a large force into Cilicia to quell Armenian resistance and to seek retribution for an attack launched on the Byzantine island of Cyprus by Renaud of Châtillon, prince of Antioch. In haste, Renaud came to the city of Mamistra, and performed a humiliating penance before agreeing to imperial overlordship. Historians have long conceived of this act as one forced on Renaud by Manuel and King Baldwin III of Jerusalem, and as marking the creation of a political condominium, which divided Antioch between these two rulers. This article seeks to challenge the established opinion by drawing attention to the diplomatic skill demonstrated by the Antiochenes, and the independence with which they pursued and secured close and favourable ties to Byzantium.     

From the ‘new localism’ to the ‘new regionalism’? The implications of regional development agencies for city–regional relations

Throughout the last three decades efforts to regenerate British cities have been based around the construction of new institutional alliances and policy networks supported by a series of urban-based initiatives. Successive Conservative governments premised their intervention on the assumption that cities (and particular parts therein) were the most appropriate geographical level around which to organise policy intervention. In pursuing this city-based agenda, the policies were themselves instrumental in constituting the city as an object of policy: a problem in need of a solution. The aim of this paper, however, is not to explore how certain spaces or scales become constructed through, for example, government policy, political practices or state restructuring. Rather the paper augments work conducted on the socially constructed nature of ‘cities’ and ‘regions’. It explores for regeneration policy and politics the implications of the tendential shift away from a model of ‘new localism’ towards an alternative model of ‘new regionalism’. The origins of the central element of New Labour's emergent regional project — the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) — are established before the paper moves on to examine the likely political relationships between the local state, drawing upon the example of Manchester, and the regional state, drawing upon North West England, under the new institutional arrangements.     

What's the grand story? A macro-narrative analytical model and the case of Swiss child and adult protection policy

This paper expands on the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) by adding a theoretical and empirical exploration into macrolevel narratives. Existing NPF research largely neglects macrolevel narratives, which prevents the NPF from developing its full power. The main contributions of this paper are threefold: (1) It provides a definition of macrolevel narratives by conceptualizing them as the “story form” of a policy paradigm. (2) It proposes a model and an empirical approach, which may lay the foundation for a standard macrolevel NPF approach. (3) It contributes to the NPF's aim of connecting the macro and meso level. The paper tests the model in a comparative multi-method design applied to the Swiss child and adult protection policy. The findings show that macrolevel NPF analysis helps understand where mesolevel policy debates come from, namely from an underlying paradigm and its effects on institutions and culture that enable and constrain macrolevel narratives.