This article uses an original dataset to sketch a portrait of women mayoral candidates and women elected as mayors in Italy in the period 1993–2021. The analysis highlights several significant findings. Women must compensate for their political marginality by deploying other resources, such as higher levels of education. Nevertheless, women are penalised not only by the reluctance of parties to put them forward as candidates, but also by the elections themselves. More specifically, the electoral presence and strength of women decreases when the population size of the municipality grows, except for municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Moreover, women candidates are most disadvantaged in geographical areas where the socioeconomic condition of women is more marginal. However, women mayors running for a second mandate have the same chance of winning as men. Finally, it is the protest parties, rather than the left-wing parties, that are revealed as doing the most to promote women.

Since the beginning of mass vaccination campaign for COVID-19 in Italy (December 2020) and following the rapidly increasing vaccine administration, sex differences have been emphasized. Nevertheless, incomplete and frequently incoherent sex-disaggregated data for COVID-19 vaccinations are currently available, and vaccines clinical studies generally do not include sex-specific analyses for safety and efficacy. We looked at sex variations in the COVID-19 vaccine’s effectiveness against infection and severe disease outcomes. We conducted a nationwide retrospective cohort study on Italian population, linking information on COVID-19 vaccine administrations obtained through the Italian National Vaccination Registry, with the COVID-19 integrated surveillance system, held by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità. The results showed that, in all age groups, vaccine effectiveness (VE) was higher in the time-interval ≤120 days post-vaccination. In terms of the sex difference in vaccination effectiveness, men and women were protected against serious illness by vaccination in a comparable way, while men were protected against infection to a somewhat greater extent than women. To fully understand the mechanisms underlying the sex difference in vaccine response and its consequences for vaccine effectiveness and development, further research is required. The sex-related analysis of vaccine response may contribute to adjust vaccination strategies, improving overall public health programmes.

This paper contributes to the debate on the role of religiosity in party competition in democratic political systems by analyzing the role of religious practice and belonging in the 2022 Italian elections. By using the newest Italian National Election Studies dataset, we combine indicators of both religious affiliation and practice to show how the electorates of the main Italian parties are composed in terms of voters' religiosity, to highlight how these differences influence the probability to vote for each of those parties and to further investigate the relationship between religious affiliation/practice and voting behavior. Results show the emergence of an increasingly identity-based relationship between religiosity and vote within the Italian context. We find that religiosity – in the form of Catholic affiliation – maintains a direct effect on vote choice which is also partially mediated by attitudinal indicators, such as those toward immigration, homosexuality, and abortion. We conclude that party competition in Italy is mainly fueled by identity dynamics – and less on religious practice or beliefs – concerning the whole group of those who identify as Catholics opposed to the group of those who do not.

When archaeologists discuss ‘ancestor cults’ or ‘ancestor veneration’, what this might entail in practice usually remains vague, leading to charges that the concept of ‘ancestors’ is often applied generically. In this article, the authors combine bioarchaeological, taphonomic, radiocarbon, and isotopic studies to explore the ritual practice of the selective retention, curation, and deposition of a group of human crania and mandibles. Between 5500–5400 bc, Neolithic people at Masseria Candelaro (Puglia, Italy) deposited broken crania and mandibles from about fifteen individuals in a heap in the centre of the village. These individuals were mostly probable males, collected over the course of two centuries and actively used, with their deposition marking the final disposal of a ritual collection. The motivations for the curation of cranial bone are investigated through comparison with archaeological and ethnographic examples, advancing an interpretation of ritual practice directed towards ancestors.

During the second half of the first millennium BC, hundreds of hillforts dotted the central Italian Apennines. Often interpreted as ‘proto-towns’, the authors present results of investigations at Monte Santa Croce-Cognolo that challenge this idea. Previous studies identified a small area (<1ha) of occupation and suggested that habitation extended across the whole 18ha site. Combining geophysical and pedestrian survey with remotely sensed data, and local ethnographic accounts, the authors detect little evidence for permanent habitation and instead argue for activities connected with animal husbandry. The results challenge urban-centric interpretations by demonstrating the coexistence of monumental but uninhabited hillforts and urban sites—usually seen across the Mediterranean and Europe.

After 78 years of democracy, Italy continues to grapple with its recent past in the political, social, and cultural spheres. Its experience of fascism under Mussolini, its dual participation in the Second World War, and the continuous and still existent connections between the ideological factions of the 1930s–1940s and now render the country a rich case for the study of public history and memory. The specificity of these characteristics has often made Italian history and memory look like an outlier, shaped by circumstances difficult to compare with those of other countries'. This paper argues that contemporary Italian memory politics are in reality a valuable source of information about the kind of mnemonic discourses that may arise in other (Western) European countries, given the increasingly polarised and populist European landscape. Our study of discourses put forwarded by the post-fascist party Fratelli d'Italia reveals a set of mnemonic tools with which they successfully banalise fascism and chip at Italian public discourse slowly but surely. The comparison between this discourse and that of VOX and AfD in Spain and Germany, respectively, shows that these tools, ranging from nativism to policy (de)legitimation linked to fascist imagery, has started to transfer to other countries' political strategies.

Pope Francis has been very active in the public debate on several key social and political issues, gaining a role that foregoes the sphere of religiosity and morality. Overall, he has been perceived by the media and the general public as a leftist figure and even a modernizer. Nonetheless, little is known about the influence of Pope Francis' positions on public opinion, especially beyond the climate change issue and outside the US context. In this regard, this paper contributes to the analysis of the Francis effect on public support for poverty alleviation measures. By employing a survey experiment carried out in Italy, we therefore tested whether the papal endorsement of an anti-poverty measure during the COVID-19 pandemic affected people's support for it. The results highlighted a generalized Francis effect among the Italian public. In addition, trust in the Pope and leftist political orientation substantially enhanced this effect, while the same only partially applies to individual religiosity.

This Article uses various concepts of Husserlian phenomenology to explain the disparate opinion between the North American and Italian public in response to the prosecution and ultimate acquittal of Amanda Knox. This Article argues that the comparative difference in public opinion is due to an extensive shift in culture that is necessarily accompanied by a shift in spatial-temporal location. In this Article, the Husserlian concepts of intentionality, the Self, the Other-I, and empathy overlay the judicial opinions and media releases critical to shaping North American and Italian public perceptions of Amanda Knox. As applied, these Husserlian concepts function as interpretive lenses, providing the reader with a novel framework for analyzing the cause of interpretive difference across cultures.

The mountain communities of late-first millennium bc Italy have been regarded as non-urban societies that reverted to city life mainly owing to Roman intervention. A growing body of archaeological evidence is uncovering the diversity of settlement forms and dynamics in the region's pre-Roman past, which included sites encompassing a range of functions and social agents. This article presents an in-depth, microscale analysis of one such site, Monte Vairano in Samnium, drawing on perspectives from comparative urbanism. Monte Vairano developed urban characteristics such as a complex socioeconomic profile and political cohesion, as well as potentially more unique features such as an apparently balanced distribution of wealth. These results can shed further light on the diversity of ancient urbanization and its sociopolitical implications in late-first millennium bc Italy and the Mediterranean.