Reviews

Gino Bedani, Politics and Ideology in the Italian Workers’ Movement: Union Development and the Changing Role of the Catholic and Communist Subcultures in Postwar Italy, Berg, Oxford, 1995, xiv + 365 pp., ISBN 0–85496–827‐X, £44.95.

Anna Bull and Paul Corner, From Peasant to Entrepreneur. The Survival of the Family Economy in Italy, Berg, Oxford, 1993, ix + 174 pp., ISBN 0–85496–309‐X, £29.95.

Daniela Luigia Caglioti, Il guadagno difficile. Commercianti napoletani nella seconda metà dell'Ottocento, Ricerca, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1994, 272 pp., ISBN 88–15–04755–7, 36,000 Lire.

Salvatore Casillo and Vincenzo Moretti, False imprese e falsi imprenditori. Dall'industria fantasma allo sviluppo delle aree terremotate nel Mezzogiorno, Koinè, Rome, 1993, 258 pp., 28,000 Lire.

Christopher Duggan, A Concise History of Italy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994, xiv + 320 pp., ISBN 0–521–40285–9, £25 hbk, ISBN 0–521–40848–2, £8.95 pbk.

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia. The Business of Private Protection, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 1993, 335 pp., ISBN 0–674–80741–3, £24.95 hbk.

Stefano Zamagni (ed.), Mercati illegaliemafie. L'economia delcrimine organizzato, II Mulino, Bologna, 1993, 410 pp., ISBN 88–15–04159–1, 50,000 Lire.

Marco Giusti and Alberto Piccinini, Ambra, Nuova ERI, Turin, 1994, 121 pp., ISBN 88–397–0902–9, 18,000 Lire.

Antonio Gramsci, Pre‐Prison Writings, edited by Richard Bellamy, translated by Virginia Cox, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994, 350 pp., ISBN 0–521–41143–2 hbk, £40.00, 0–521–42307–4 pbk, £10.95.

Richard M. Locke, Remaking the Italian Economy, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1995, xiii + 232 pp., ISBN 0–8014–2221–3, £23.50.

Luisa Passerini, Mussolini immaginario, Laterza, Bari, 1991, 290 pp., ISBN 88–420–3738–9, 45,000 Lire.

Gian Franco Pompei, Un Ambasciatore in Vaticano. Diario, 1969–1977, a cura di Pietro Scoppola, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1994, 604 pp., ISBN 88–15–04317–9, 60,000 Lire.

Lucy Riall, The Italian Risorgimento. State, Society and National Unification, Routledge, London, 1994, 101 pp., ISBN 0–415–05775–2.

Salvatore Vassallo, Il governo di partito in Italia (1943–93), Il Mulino, Bologna, 1994, 324 pp., ISBN 88–15–04589–9, 42,000 Lire.     

Reviews

Art and Power. Europe under the dictators, 1930–45 Hayward Gallery, London, 26 October, 1995–21 January 1996; Centro de Cultura Contemporània, Barcelona, 26 February‐6 May 1996; Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, 7 June‐20 August 1996.

Richard Bessel (ed.), Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, 256 pp., ISBN 0–521–47129x hbk, £35.00,0–521–477115 pbk, £ 12.95.

Alexander J. de Grand, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, The ‘Fascist Style of Rule’, Routledge, London, 1995, 128 pp., ISBN 0–451–105986 pbk, £ 7.99.

R.J.B. Bosworth, Italy and the Wider World 1860–1960, Routledge, London, 1996, 252pp., ISBN 0–415–134773–3, hbk, £40.

Philip V. Cannistraro and Brian R. Sullivan, Il Duce's Other Woman, William Morrow and Co. Inc., New York, 1993, 685 pp., ISBN 0–688–06299–7, pbk, $25.00.

Lino Del Fra, Sciara Sciat. Genocidio nell'oasi. L'esercito italiano a Tripoli, Datanews, Rome, 1995,103 pp., ISBN 88–7981–051–0,15,000 Lire.

Angelo Del Boca, I gas di Mussolini, Il fascismo e la guerra d'Etiopia, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1996,190 pp., ISBN 88–359–4091–5,15,000 Lire.

Giovanni De Luna, Donne in oggetto. L'antifascismo nella società italiana, 1922–1939, Bollati Boringhieri, Turin, 1995, 435 pp., ISBN 88–339–0932–8, hbk, 50,000 Lire.

Roberto Franzosi, The Puzzle of Strikes. Class and State Strategies in Postwar Italy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995, pp.502, ISBN 0–521–45287–2 hbk, £.40.00.

Adriano and Luca Sofri (eds), Si allontanarono alla spicciolata. Le carte riservate di polizia su Lotta Continua, Sellerio Editorio, Palermo, 1996, pp.183, ISBN 88–389–1228–9, hbk, 15,000 Lire.

Stephen Gundle and Simon Parker (eds), The New Italian Republic. From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to Berlusconi, Routledge, London, 1996, 352 pp., ISBN 0415 12161 2 hbk, £45.00, ISBN 0 415 12162 0 pbk, £14.99.

Marco Innocenti, L'Italia del dopoguerra 1946–1960. Come eravamo negli anni dal boogie‐woogie alia dolce vita, Mursia, Milan, 1995, pp.238, ISBN 88–425–1911–1 pbk, 28,000 Lire.

Richard S. Katz and Piero Ignazi (eds), Italian Politics. The Year of the Tycoon, Istituto Cattaneo/Westview Press, Oxford and Boulder, Co., 1996, 261 pp., ISBN 0–8133–8972–0 hbk, £37.00,0–8133–2976–0 pbk, £13.50.

Gian Enrico Rusconi, Resistenza e postfascismo, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1995, 207 pp., ISBN 88–15–04850–2, pbk, 18,000 Lire.

Giulio Sapelli, Southern Europe since 1945: Tradition and Modernity in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey, translated by Ann Fuller, Longman, London, 1995, 251 pp., ISBN 0–582–07064–3 hbk, £35.00, 0–582–07065–1 pbk, £14.99.

Frank M. Snowden, Naples in the Time of Cholera, 1884–1911, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995, 478 pp., ISBN 0–521–48310–7 hbk, £40.00.

Lucio Sponza and Diego Zancani (compilers), World Bibliographical Series: Volume 30: Italy, Clio Press, Oxford and Santa Barbara, Ca., 1995, xxi + 417 pp., ISBN 0–903450–44–5 hbk, £67.50.

Storia dell'Italia repubblicana. Volume seconda, La. trasformazione dell'Italia: sviluppo e squilibri. I. Politica, economia, società, Einaudi, Turin, 1995, pp.897, ISBN 88–06–1365–6 hbk, 130,000 Lire.

Carlo Tullio‐Altan; Ethnos e civiltà. Identiche etniche e valori democratici, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1995, 181 pp., ISBN 88–07–10193–9 pbk, 30,000 Lire.

Perry R. Willson, The Clockwork Factory: Women and Work in Fascist Italy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993, 291 pp., ISBN 0–19–822732–9 hbk, £35.00.     

Rural regeneration strategies for declining regions: trade-off between novelty and practicability

ABSTRACT

Innovation comprises both novelty and practicability. These two dimensions of innovation correlate partly negatively in our analysis of survey data about planning processes in declining rural districts. As argued in the literature, declining regions need innovative concepts beyond traditional counteracting strategies to ‘shrink smart’. Competitions are suggested as feasible-to-initiate innovative local concepts by the state. The German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture invited 39 particularly affected rural districts to participate in such a competition among the best concepts. We address the questions of how the districts dealt with the requirements for novelty and practicability in their concepts and how the rules of competitive bidding procedures influence those concepts. Answering these questions, we conducted a survey and statistically tested hypotheses deduced from governance and innovation theory. Moreover, we analysed the bidding documents. The results show that most districts came up with hardly novel and only partly practicable concepts because the organization of the competition, and local bargaining processes impede innovation. Furthermore, the ministry’s requirements for the competition overburdened local actors with a lack of resources in declining regions. As a policy implication, we propose to integrate external experts in local networks and to accompany declining regions over a longer time instead of short-term competitions and projects.     

THE TIME OF POLITICS,THE POLITICS OF TIME,AND POLITICIZED TIME: AN INTRODUCTION TO CHRONOPOLITICS

Time is so deeply interwoven with all aspects of politics that its centrality to the political is frequently overlooked. For one, politics has its own times and rhythms. Secondly, time can be an object and an instrument of politics. Thirdly, temporal attributes are used not only to differentiate basic political principles but also to legitimize or delegitimize politics. Finally, politics aims at realizing futures in the present or preventing them from materializing. Consequently, the relationship between politics and time encompasses a broad spectrum of phenomena and processes that cry out for historicization. In our introduction to this History and Theory theme issue on chronopolitics, we argue that the concept of chronopolitics makes it possible to do this and, in the process, to move the operation of rethinking historical temporalities from the periphery toward the center of historiographical attention as well as to engage in a dialogue with scholars from a wide range of disciplines. To this end, we propose a broad concept of chronopolitics by discussing existing definitions, by distinguishing between three central dimensions of chronopolitics (the time of politics, the politics of time, and politicized time), and by systematizing possible approaches to studying chronopolitics.     

DEMOGRAPHIC PROXIES FOR THE NEOLITHIC: WITH EMPHASIS ON THE LANGELAND REGION,DENMARK

The article discusses the use of summed probability distribution as a demographic proxy, and highlights several issues with this method, especially during periods of change in the exploitation of the landscape or during social transformation. With a case study from the Langeland region in Denmark an alternative and corrective approach is applied, were number of settlements and size of settlement is included. With this approach a very different development can be described.     

Explaining Advocacy Coalition Change with Policy Feedback

Despite the prominence of exogenous factors in theories of policy change, the precise mechanisms that link such factors to policy change remain elusive: The effects of exogenous factors on the politics underlying policy change are not sufficiently conceptualized and empirically analyzed. To address this gap, we propose to distinguish between truly exogenous factors and policy outcomes to better understand policy change. Specifically, we combine the Advocacy Coalition Framework with policy feedback theory to conceptualize a complete feedback loop among policy, policy outcomes, and subsequent politics. Aiming at theory-building, we use policy feedback mechanisms to explain why advocacy coalitions change over time. Empirically, we conduct a longitudinal single case study on policy-induced technological change in the German energy subsystem, an extreme case of policy outcomes, from 1983 to 2013. First, using discourse network analysis, we identify four patterns of actor movements, explaining coalition decline and growth. Second, using process tracing, we detect four policy feedback mechanisms explaining these four actor movements. With this inductive mixed-methods approach, we build a conceptual framework in which policy outcomes affect subsequent politics through feedback mechanisms. We develop propositions on how coalition change and feedback mechanisms explain four ideal-typical trajectories of policy change.     

THE FORMATION OF EARLY NEOLITHIC COMMUNITIES IN THE CENTRAL ZAGROS: AN 11,500 YEAR‐OLD COMMUNAL STRUCTURE AT ASIAB

Communal buildings have been reported from a number of early Neolithic sites from the Levant and Anatolia, but none were known from the central Zagros. Here we report on the recent excavations at Asiab, Kermanshah province, Iran, and argue that the principal feature found during Robert Braidwood’s excavation at the site in 1960 should be interpreted as an example of a communal building. We discuss the results of the previous and recent excavations, highlight the key features of this building, and the implications for our understanding of the early Neolithic in the ‘eastern wing’ of the Fertile Crescent.