This article analyses the British perceptions of contemporary Italy and Italian politics. Through the use of a number of sources (parliamentary debates, governmental documents, newspaper articles and interviews) it argues that Italy is not perceived, within Great Britain, as a great power within the European system nor it is viewed as a peripheral actor. Rather, it suggests that Italy seems to have finally found in the post-Cold War scenario its proper role–a European middle power, with important responsibilities within a regional sub-system. A frequent request–and expectation–coming from British politics and society is that Italy should take on more international responsibilities, even in the sphere of defence–as the different readings of Italy's role and leadership in Afghanistan and Lebanon reveal. However, Italy's ability to play this role is believed to be hampered by several factors: its uncertain political situation, its unwillingness to engage in military operations, its reluctance to respect international commitments and its structural economic problems. As a result, further possibilities of cooperation with other international partners as well as its potential for autonomous action on the international stage are, in several cases, precluded. Moreover, if the relations between Italy and the UK are usually seen in a positive way, and Italy is viewed as a reliable partner, the nature of the cooperation between the two countries is often considered to be fragile and based on short-term common interests and strategies.

The southern question has been posed at the key moments in the history of the Italian state. Today we face a moment of comparable importance which urges that the southern question be re-thought. It is not an unchanging question, yet it concerns issues fundamental to the state and has been treated by the country's greatest intellectuals as a national issue. The meridionalisti have been Italy's critical conscience yet, at the same time, stereotypes of a uniformly backward South have taken hold. The post-war intervention in the Mezzogiorno should not be seen through such stereotypes as a wholly negative experience. Its successes and failures fit into an Italian pattern of state-led modernization and it cannot be understood in isolation from the Italian state's weaknesses. Today, a new pact between the weakest and strongest sectors is essential. The South's economic and political leadership will be a central object of study if intellectuals are to help inform new policy.

Wine consumption is affected by intertwined needs generated by factors such as production and marketing methods, as well as by the individual's desire for social differentiation in a democratised mass drinking culture. Our study sought to determine whether consumption patterns have changed in the Italian province of Trentino and how such changes may have affected the meaning that wine drinkers living in this area assign to the concept of quality in wine. The paper presents a qualitative study (n=57 interviews) carried out in a wine producing region in north-east Italy. In addition to investigating the changes that have taken place in the area's wine drinking culture, the study also focuses on how consumers perceive and define wine quality. The findings show that economic, political and social factors have brought major changes in drinking culture and consumption over the last 50 years. In addition, changes in the wine industry have had a significant impact on how consumers’ views on wine quality and its key features have evolved. Nevertheless, the study found that some traditional aspects persist in the drinking culture and still determine the perception of quality.

This article is focused on one of the most relevant novelties in the Italian electoral market of the past decade: the emerging phenomenon of intermittent abstentionism. Rather than an increase in overall abstentionism rates, aggregate and survey data show a clear increase in the number of floating voters who swing between voting and non-voting. After a description of the characteristics of intermittent abstensionists, the article discusses the relationship between different electoral systems at different levels of government and territorial differentiation as far as voting participation is concerned. It then discusses the impact of intermittent abstentionism on the results of the 2006 general election where the parties’ electoral campaigns appear to have been aimed at mobilising intermittent abstensionists. The article concludes with some considerations of the Italian electoral cycle, particularly in relation to the changes generated by the run-up to the 2008 elections.

Recent developments, especially the outcome of the 2008 election, appear to point to the definitive sidelining of centrism in Italian politics. In reality, it remains significant – not least because of the opportunities for influence all bipolar systems give to parties not of the left or right, and because of the possible consequences of reassessments of centrism's historical significance. The term itself has been used to denote a kind of political outlook or ideology and, consequently, a kind of political strategy. A number of party and elite-level strategies called centrist are identified; one of these – transformism – has roots that stretch back at least to the nineteenth century and is not specifically Italian. Transformism has been variously interpreted. Against this background, the articles in this special issue together evaluate the historical importance of centrism and its current significance for Italian politics. As a governing strategy, centrism is practiced differently now than in the past, but it continues to be practiced.

In the last decade, in spite of a large number of parties taking part in elections, the Italian party system has shown an increasing simplification in the programmatic supply, with two large coalitions showing a process of convergence of their policy platforms. This article shows that on the crucial themes characterising the confrontation between neo-liberalism versus regulated capitalism, the distance between the two coalitions has progressively reduced. The theory of the cartel party has predicted convergence in the policy positions of parties. Thus, the article will attempt to test the validity of this theory and of the predicted consequences on the Italian case. For this purpose, a longitudinal analysis will be presented grounded on party manifestos for the Italian general elections.

This article analyses the place and meaning of female heroism in the process of the making of modern Italy. Beginning with Garibaldi's first wife Anita in Brazil, a great number of women all over the world were attracted to Garibaldi and his movement. Theirs was a sentimental and political engagement, which in some cases turned them into real soldiers, like those who joined the ranks of Garibaldi's troops. Whereas until 1860 the Garibaldinian volunteer was not understood as an exclusively male category, this changed around that key year, both in reality and in the collective imagination of the Risorgimento. Women were denied the right to be soldiers in Garibaldi's legendary Thousand. Subsequently, stories of militant women like Anita Garibaldi were softened in the foundation fictions that narrate the birth of Italy, turning women into passive members of the Italian nation. This change is analysed in depth by focusing on the emblematic case of Esperance von Schwartz, one of Garibaldi's biographers, and for a time, one of his female companions in arms.

With the removal of Khrushchev in 1964 the Soviet Union adopted—at the level of the secret service—a more aggressive policy towards western countries, with a more intensive recourse to so-called ‘covert operations’. These operations regarded even western communist parties, such as the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which were close to being viewed as ‘orthodox’ by the Soviet leadership. The so-called ‘active measures’ which resulted were realised through the infiltration of agents, the training of (usually young) extremists, and (through them) the sending of warnings to the PCI leadership about its divergence from the Soviet line. This context helps us to understand better than before three key events of the years 1968–1973: the emergence of the first terrorist groups in Italy (the Partisans Action Groups and the Red Brigades); the bombing of the electric mains line where Giangiacomo Feltrinelli lost his life; and the car crash in which Enrico Berlinguer was involved in 1973 during an official visit to Bulgaria. An analysis of the Cold War context in which Italian terrorism (and specifically the Red Brigades) developed reveals origins and patterns that are different to those usually identified in the literature.

This article explores the racialisation of women’s sexuality in contemporary Italy at the intersection between the national imagination and transnational cultural and commodity flows. Starting from the experience of a young Italian woman whose work centres on the commodification of her sexual desirability and who is recurrently classified as ‘foreign’, it discusses the roots as well as effects of the racialised male gaze under which she negotiates her agency. In so doing, it examines the meanings of her failure to be recognised as an Italian citizen as she navigates between contempt and desire, stigma and praise, alienation and pleasure. On the one hand, the article traces the thread between her experience and the othering processes underpinning the construction of Italy as a nation state and an empire, and whose legacies persist in the country’s postcolonial present. On the other hand, the article explores women’s racialisation as a process which can magnify the social and economic value of their desirability in a context increasingly characterised by the sexualisation of culture and trade. Based on ethnographic research undertaken in 2012–2013, this article contributes to the emerging body of postcolonial scholarship and intersectional studies on women’s sexuality in contemporary Italy.

While almost all European democracies from the 1980s started to accord legal recognition to same-sex couples, Italy was, in 2016, the last West European country to adopt a regulation, after a tortuous path. Why was Italy such a latecomer? What kind of barriers were encountered by the legislative process? What were the factors behind the policy change? To answer these questions, this article first discusses current morality policymaking, paying specific attention to the literature dealing with same-sex partnerships. Second, it provides a reconstruction of the Italian policy trajectory, from the entrance of the issue into political debate until the enactment of the civil union law, by considering both partisan and societal actors for and against the legislative initiative. The article argues that the Italian progress towards the regulation of same-sex unions depended on the balance of power between change and blocking coalitions and their degree of congruence during the policymaking process. In 2016 the government formed a broad consensus and the parliament passed a law on civil unions. However, the new law represented only a small departure from the status quo due to the low congruence between actors within the change coalition.

This article analyses the experience of the second Prodi government from the standpoint of its political communication. The opening part contextualises the case by placing it within the broader framework of coalition governments generally, and briefly outlines the critical elements that, in Italy, prevent any majority from making a genuinely strategic use of communication in the policy-making process. The second part focuses on Prodi's poor communication, highlighting both its limits and the attempts at improvement made by the leader and his staff in 2007. Finally, the third part examines the journalistic coverage of the centre-left majority and considers the trend in public approval for the premier and the government, emphasising the problems that emerged on each side.

Fascism saw education as a key way to ‘make Italians’ both at home and in its colonies. Schools for Italians and for the indigenous population in Africa were a key part of this project. These educational institutions were set up, partly, to convince young Italians of their role as colonisers and bearers of an idea of ‘Italian civilisation’. A small minority of Africans, who were permitted to attend schools created for a section of the local population, were given an education that was designed to reinforce their role as inferior and as targets for an idea of a superior ‘Italian civilisation’. This article will analyse the role of the schools set up in the colonies both for Italians and for the local population, as well as their use of politics, propaganda and their educational techniques. The article looks at continuities and breaks with the pre-Fascist period, as well as the radicalisation of racist educational policies after the proclamation of the empire.

The struggle led after 1860 by the Anti-Risorgimento (understood as the conservative opposition to Italian unification) went beyond the frontiers of new Italy. The transnationality of this campaign manifested itself in numerous ways, from international networks of financial support and militancy that were closely associated with counter-revolution and supported by the international structures of the Roman Catholic Church, to forms of transnational mobilisation such as armed volunteerism. This internationalisation of anti-Unity fighting was a conscious strategy of the movement's leaders. They relied on a tradition of solidarity and exchange within the ultraconservative camp – a sort of ‘white international’ – to further the transnational construction of a European identity of counter-revolution. In Italy, the victory of the nationalist movement endowed various anti-liberal forces with a common adversary and common goals; yet the strategy adopted by the Papacy (still a temporal power until 1870), in relation to the cause of the dispossessed sovereigns, was not devoid of ambiguity.

The Italian futurist movement and its founder, F.T. Marinetti, have stimulated a vast historiography. Why has futurism fascinated so many and how, in particular, have the futurism-fascism and Marinetti-futurism relationships been conceived? To answer such questions, this article surveys nearly five decades of scholarship on futurism. It shows how futurism's fascist trajectory has polarised it and led scholars to a wide variety of positions. Some scholars limit themselves to the ‘heroic years’ up to 1916; others focus on ‘second futurism’ after 1915 without much reference to Marinetti; and still others treat futurism's ‘multiplicity’ using a centre-periphery model with Marinetti at the centre. Similarly, some insist on futurism's continuously ‘revolutionary’ character, others limit that claim, and still others deny it altogether. It is argued that recent biographical work on Marinetti has helped to clarify how one ought to approach and resolve these differences, but that scholarship on futurism nonetheless remains intensely politicised.

This article suggests some new interpretations of the significance of the general elections of 18 April 1948 by examining the prosecution of Italian ex-partisans in the Republican era. A reappraisal of those trials – which took place from the summer of 1945 to the early 1950s – is offered through examination of the documents of the National Committee of Democratic Solidarity, set up after the assassination attempt on Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti on 14 July 1948, and the sentences of the Corti d'Assise (High Courts) and Military Tribunals. The papers of both Umberto Terracini and Lelio Basso, promoters of the Pro-partisans Defence Committee, show how judicial repression had its roots not only in the failed purge of former Fascists from the judicial system, which was unsuccessful because of a desire for continuity within the bureaucratic apparatus of the State, but most of all thanks to the ideological position and anti-communist policies of the political elites of that period.

The 1952 MoMA exhibition Olivetti: Design in Industry has come to mark the moment when the established art world recognized the cultural legitimacy of mass-produced goods. This article contests such an interpretation by showing how the exhibition was organised and paid for by the Olivetti company. This enables a comparative analysis of the MoMA exhibition with a second New York space, the Olivetti showroom. Located on Fifth Ave, less than a half kilometre from the museum, the Olivetti showroom sold the company’s products to the same American public. The article concludes that the MoMA exhibition and the New York Olivetti showroom must be understood together as a clever case of corporate marketing.

This article is an analysis of a long union dispute between the workers and the management of the Società Mineraria del Valdarno (S.M.V.), a company which had mining rights in the lignite basin of Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni, in the municipality of Cavriglia. Cavriglia is in a ‘red zone’ in the province of Arezzo, in central Tuscany and the dispute raged on from the end of 1947 to the first half of the 1950s. The article focuses primarily on two aspects: (1) how the union dispute of the miners of Valdarno fits into the broader political strategy of the Italian Communist Party (PCI); (2) how this struggle was perceived and elaborated by workers and incorporated into the collective memory of local communities.

In this article, it is argued that Garibaldi's global fame owes much to his own experiences as a migrant and exile in the Americas. Overseas, Garibaldi not only acquired several practical and political skills, he also built up an important network of friends and supporters and became a hybrid figure able to adapt his image to diverse political settings. At the same time, Garibaldi relied on the trope of exile, developed by people like Ugo Foscolo, to define his opposition to, first, Italy's Restoration governments and, after Italian unification, the new moderate liberal regime. The article also looks at Garibaldi's life on Caprera and it is further argued that here Garibaldi combined elements of his previous experiences to fashion a role for himself as a ‘foreigner in Italy’. Garibaldi was a symbol of many worlds as well as a hero of two and it is precisely this hybrid nature of his appeal that can explain his global popularity.

This article, based on ethnographic research, describes the precarious integration of Africans, Asians and others in the Sicilian city of Palermo. Most newcomers perform low-status jobs (particularly domestic work), have little access to state-sponsored services, lack political representation and suffer from derogatory stereotypes of non-whites and non-Westerners. In this context, immigrants express frustration at their marginality and they obtain jobs, housing, information and mutual aid from family and co-national networks that span the city, Italy itself and international borders.

Comparative research suggests that parties regularly campaign by emphasizing issues on which they are advantaged and by ignoring topics that are traditionally associated with other parties. Focusing on the 1996 Italian elections, this article discusses whether such a generalization holds when the party system is affected by radical changes such as those that occurred in Italy in the mid-1990s. Moreover, the analysis of the party electoral platforms highlights some basic features of the new parties, and identifies either innovations or continuities with the past. I present evidence that in 1996 the Italian parties mostly competed on a similar range of issues. Especially regarding economic policy, there was not a polarized ideological debate: also the centre-left parties converged on a moderate position by playing down typical socialist themes such as state intervention and the expansion of social services. I also analyse the degree of internal programmatic cohesion of the two main coalitions, the Ulivo (Olive Tree) and the Polo delle Libertà (Freedom Pole) and relate it to the stability of the Italian political system.