Pub Date : 2006-12-01DOI: 10.1080/14613190601004855
Basil C. Gounaris
Irwin Sanders was one of the pioneer social anthropologists who performed fieldwork in the Balkans. In the 1930s he was stationed in the outskirts of Sofia. Four out of the eight teachers in the village school, he wrote, were not natives of Bulgaria. They originated either from Macedonia or Dobrudja, both recently lost to Bulgaria. In one classroom, on top of the blackboard, he saw a sign: [There will be no peace as long as the Treaty of Neuilly stands]. This sentence was the cornerstone of Bulgarian inter-war revisionism. Within 10 years both teachers and students would discover in the most unpleasant way the bitter surprises which the memory of vengeance holds in store. The case of inter-war Bulgaria is anything but exceptional. Refugee memories are a common trauma for all Balkan peoples. In fact the dislocation of populations was practised in the region as a most effective recipe to secure the existence of nation-states. However, dislocation and ethnic cleansing were only one side of building ethnic nations. In recent years this particular side has been discussed and explored mostly within the context of a worldwide polemic launched against ethnic nationalism by the proponents of civic nationalism. By exposing the refugee drama as a proof of ethnic nations’ inability to handle minority issues, they point out the dangerous side effects that the quest for homogeneity and historicity has. In short, the objective of this tactic is to make such ideological concerns look ‘imagined’, to the extent that any relevant political
{"title":"Victims and avengers of the nation: the politics of refugee legacy in the Southern Balkans","authors":"Basil C. Gounaris","doi":"10.1080/14613190601004855","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190601004855","url":null,"abstract":"Irwin Sanders was one of the pioneer social anthropologists who performed fieldwork in the Balkans. In the 1930s he was stationed in the outskirts of Sofia. Four out of the eight teachers in the village school, he wrote, were not natives of Bulgaria. They originated either from Macedonia or Dobrudja, both recently lost to Bulgaria. In one classroom, on top of the blackboard, he saw a sign: [There will be no peace as long as the Treaty of Neuilly stands]. This sentence was the cornerstone of Bulgarian inter-war revisionism. Within 10 years both teachers and students would discover in the most unpleasant way the bitter surprises which the memory of vengeance holds in store. The case of inter-war Bulgaria is anything but exceptional. Refugee memories are a common trauma for all Balkan peoples. In fact the dislocation of populations was practised in the region as a most effective recipe to secure the existence of nation-states. However, dislocation and ethnic cleansing were only one side of building ethnic nations. In recent years this particular side has been discussed and explored mostly within the context of a worldwide polemic launched against ethnic nationalism by the proponents of civic nationalism. By exposing the refugee drama as a proof of ethnic nations’ inability to handle minority issues, they point out the dangerous side effects that the quest for homogeneity and historicity has. In short, the objective of this tactic is to make such ideological concerns look ‘imagined’, to the extent that any relevant political","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125097167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-12-01DOI: 10.1080/14613190601004913
Assia Hadjit, E. Moxon-Browne
By the end of 2007, two more countries, Bulgaria and Romania, are now confidently expected to become full members of the European Union (EU). This further extension of the Union into southeastern Europe represents a consolidation of the integration process in the region and lays the foundations for future enlargement to, firstly, Croatia, and then the rest of thewestern Balkans. The internal economic and political development of these latter countries is now anchored in the prospect of EUmembership and there is a real sense in which we can observe the ‘political conditionality’ imposed by Brussels acting as a magnet for democratic reform processes in the region. Bulgaria and Romania have acted as rolemodels and the fragility of their reformprocesses offers both an inspiration and a warning to the rest of the region in its bid to integrate itself more closely to the EU. The warning lies in the fact that the Commission can still delay Romanian or Bulgarian accession if the momentum falters or fades, and the inspiration lies in the encouragement and flexibility displayed by Brussels towards these two applicants. Even after they join, much will depend on how their economies and political systems actually adapt to the challenges of the single market. While it may be true that membership will itself solve some of the problems that remain, this cannot be taken for granted. In particular, the competitiveness of these two economies will be rigorously tested as much by other Central and East European member states as by the more well-established but high-cost economies of western Europe. In this context, the ability of Bulgaria and Romania to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) will be the real litmus test of their integration into EU25. The capacity of any economy to absorb FDI reflects a broad spectrum of political and economic attributes: infrastructure, skill levels in the workforce, the banking system, administrative and legal systems, and an atmosphere of political ‘trust’ between donor and recipient countries. Bearing such hypotheses in mind, this paper explores the specific factors that have inhibited FDI in Bulgaria in recent years; and assesses the implications for Bulgarian membership of the EU. We do this in the belief that any country’s propensity to attract FDI is reflective of its broader acceptance of the norms and values that guide externally sourced investment decisions. This aspect of Bulgaria’s relationship with the EU has been relatively neglected in the academic
{"title":"Determinants of foreign direct investment in Bulgaria","authors":"Assia Hadjit, E. Moxon-Browne","doi":"10.1080/14613190601004913","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190601004913","url":null,"abstract":"By the end of 2007, two more countries, Bulgaria and Romania, are now confidently expected to become full members of the European Union (EU). This further extension of the Union into southeastern Europe represents a consolidation of the integration process in the region and lays the foundations for future enlargement to, firstly, Croatia, and then the rest of thewestern Balkans. The internal economic and political development of these latter countries is now anchored in the prospect of EUmembership and there is a real sense in which we can observe the ‘political conditionality’ imposed by Brussels acting as a magnet for democratic reform processes in the region. Bulgaria and Romania have acted as rolemodels and the fragility of their reformprocesses offers both an inspiration and a warning to the rest of the region in its bid to integrate itself more closely to the EU. The warning lies in the fact that the Commission can still delay Romanian or Bulgarian accession if the momentum falters or fades, and the inspiration lies in the encouragement and flexibility displayed by Brussels towards these two applicants. Even after they join, much will depend on how their economies and political systems actually adapt to the challenges of the single market. While it may be true that membership will itself solve some of the problems that remain, this cannot be taken for granted. In particular, the competitiveness of these two economies will be rigorously tested as much by other Central and East European member states as by the more well-established but high-cost economies of western Europe. In this context, the ability of Bulgaria and Romania to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) will be the real litmus test of their integration into EU25. The capacity of any economy to absorb FDI reflects a broad spectrum of political and economic attributes: infrastructure, skill levels in the workforce, the banking system, administrative and legal systems, and an atmosphere of political ‘trust’ between donor and recipient countries. Bearing such hypotheses in mind, this paper explores the specific factors that have inhibited FDI in Bulgaria in recent years; and assesses the implications for Bulgarian membership of the EU. We do this in the belief that any country’s propensity to attract FDI is reflective of its broader acceptance of the norms and values that guide externally sourced investment decisions. This aspect of Bulgaria’s relationship with the EU has been relatively neglected in the academic","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116869285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-08-01DOI: 10.1080/14613190600787344
Stefano Fella, C. Ruzza
The transition to a new party system in Italy in the 1990s was characterised by a shift to a new form of bipolar politics in which a rather heterogeneous collection of political formations—some new and some re-invented—generally grouped themselves around either of the two poles (of centre-left and centre-right) that emerged to dispute the new predominantly majoritarian electoral system adopted in 1993. The voluntary self-location of a number of political parties within the centre-right pole was particularly noteworthy given that the rightwing label had been eschewed by mainstream parties during the course of the post-war republic. Indeed, the political force that dominated the period—the Christian Democratic (DC) party—despite occupying the political space generally occupied by centre-right parties in other advanced Western democracies—defined itself as a centrist party. The right-wing label was, for historical reasons, associated with extremism and anti-democratic sentiment and regarded as a ‘taboo’ in Italian politics. It is noteworthy that the only party that unashamedly adopted the right-wing label was the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), previously viewed as outside the arc of legitimate constitutional actors, now re-invented as the National Alliance (AN), presenting itself as a democratic party of the right and distancing itself from its fascist antecedents. This re-invented political force sat alongside two new political forces of a more populist bent—Forza Italia and the Lega Nord (Northern League, LN)—as well as conservative offshoots from the former DC, within the centre-right coalition that governed Italy briefly in 1994 and then returned to government in 2001 under Silvio Berlusconi’s leadership. This paper will examine the ideological development of the LN and AN, highlighting divergences and common trends particularly in relation to the various political and electoral strategies and policy frames utilised by them. An analysis of the programmatic documents of these two parties in various distinct phases since the beginning of the 1990s will illustrate the continuous process of ideological re-invention they have undertaken in the quest to carve out distinct political identities and in order to seek out and occupy differing political
{"title":"Changing political opportunities and the re-invention of the Italian right","authors":"Stefano Fella, C. Ruzza","doi":"10.1080/14613190600787344","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190600787344","url":null,"abstract":"The transition to a new party system in Italy in the 1990s was characterised by a shift to a new form of bipolar politics in which a rather heterogeneous collection of political formations—some new and some re-invented—generally grouped themselves around either of the two poles (of centre-left and centre-right) that emerged to dispute the new predominantly majoritarian electoral system adopted in 1993. The voluntary self-location of a number of political parties within the centre-right pole was particularly noteworthy given that the rightwing label had been eschewed by mainstream parties during the course of the post-war republic. Indeed, the political force that dominated the period—the Christian Democratic (DC) party—despite occupying the political space generally occupied by centre-right parties in other advanced Western democracies—defined itself as a centrist party. The right-wing label was, for historical reasons, associated with extremism and anti-democratic sentiment and regarded as a ‘taboo’ in Italian politics. It is noteworthy that the only party that unashamedly adopted the right-wing label was the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), previously viewed as outside the arc of legitimate constitutional actors, now re-invented as the National Alliance (AN), presenting itself as a democratic party of the right and distancing itself from its fascist antecedents. This re-invented political force sat alongside two new political forces of a more populist bent—Forza Italia and the Lega Nord (Northern League, LN)—as well as conservative offshoots from the former DC, within the centre-right coalition that governed Italy briefly in 1994 and then returned to government in 2001 under Silvio Berlusconi’s leadership. This paper will examine the ideological development of the LN and AN, highlighting divergences and common trends particularly in relation to the various political and electoral strategies and policy frames utilised by them. An analysis of the programmatic documents of these two parties in various distinct phases since the beginning of the 1990s will illustrate the continuous process of ideological re-invention they have undertaken in the quest to carve out distinct political identities and in order to seek out and occupy differing political","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123449277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-08-01DOI: 10.1080/14613190600787468
S. Parker
In large parts of the media and even within certain sections of the academic community a perception has grown that the pressure for devolution in Italy has been very much a bottom-up process, fed by a grass-roots resentment at the domination of local and regional politics by ‘Rome’ and articulated by a new generation of localist politicians predominantly, but not exclusively on the right who see an opportunity to renegotiate the division of power between centre and periphery in favour of greater regional autonomy. However, if we take Fabbrini and Brunazzo’s distinction between regionalisation (‘a process of decentralisation supported by the central states to rationalise their activities’) and regionalism (‘a process of devolution requested by local electorates and leaders to increase regional autonomy’) we can determine that the process of regionalisation has been more in evidence and has been more sustained because it enjoys both national and supranational institutional support. On the other hand, regionalism represents a highly contested set of values and policy goals, few of which, it will be argued, correspond to the aspirations of most local voters, but rather are configured by Italy’s local and regional elites in order to lend legitimacy to what are often non-territorially specific political agendas. Regionalisation has its origins in the early years of the Italian Republic when four autonomous regions—the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, and the border regions and provinces of Trentino-Alto Adige, Val d’Aosta (and later Friuli Venezia-Giulia) were created. The so-called 15 ‘ordinary regions’ covering the remainder of the national territory were not established until 1970, and remained largely devoid of effective powers and finance until the latter half of the 1970s. The delay in instituting regional government except in the special regions where the national leftist parties have very little presence has often been attributed to the cynical determination of the Christian Democrats to exclude their political
{"title":"Managing the political field: Italian regions and the territorialisation of politics in the second republic","authors":"S. Parker","doi":"10.1080/14613190600787468","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190600787468","url":null,"abstract":"In large parts of the media and even within certain sections of the academic community a perception has grown that the pressure for devolution in Italy has been very much a bottom-up process, fed by a grass-roots resentment at the domination of local and regional politics by ‘Rome’ and articulated by a new generation of localist politicians predominantly, but not exclusively on the right who see an opportunity to renegotiate the division of power between centre and periphery in favour of greater regional autonomy. However, if we take Fabbrini and Brunazzo’s distinction between regionalisation (‘a process of decentralisation supported by the central states to rationalise their activities’) and regionalism (‘a process of devolution requested by local electorates and leaders to increase regional autonomy’) we can determine that the process of regionalisation has been more in evidence and has been more sustained because it enjoys both national and supranational institutional support. On the other hand, regionalism represents a highly contested set of values and policy goals, few of which, it will be argued, correspond to the aspirations of most local voters, but rather are configured by Italy’s local and regional elites in order to lend legitimacy to what are often non-territorially specific political agendas. Regionalisation has its origins in the early years of the Italian Republic when four autonomous regions—the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, and the border regions and provinces of Trentino-Alto Adige, Val d’Aosta (and later Friuli Venezia-Giulia) were created. The so-called 15 ‘ordinary regions’ covering the remainder of the national territory were not established until 1970, and remained largely devoid of effective powers and finance until the latter half of the 1970s. The delay in instituting regional government except in the special regions where the national leftist parties have very little presence has often been attributed to the cynical determination of the Christian Democrats to exclude their political","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125065827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-08-01DOI: 10.1080/14613190600787260
C. Paolucci
As the chief political actor of the last decade, Silvio Berlusconi has seemingly introduced fundamental innovations in many fields of politics: new campaign methods, a new leadership style and language, new coalition strategies and ideological contents. All of these innovations have had a considerable impact on the party and the political system, political communication, party platforms and governmental programmes, the contents of legislative output and, arguably, also the quality of Italian democracy. Among these innovations, one in particular will be the focus of this analysis, namely, the creation of a political party exhibiting a new organisational model. Traces of this model began emerging in Italy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but it displayed itself fully with Forza Italia, the party founded by Berlusconi in 1993. The study of party change has been largely inspired by the groundbreaking work of Otto Kirchheimer, who highlighted the reasons, dynamics and consequences of the transition from the mass party to a new type of party, the catch-all party, which has indeed characterised post-war 20th-century party politics in Europe. It is probable that most mainstream parties today would fit at least to some degree into Kirchheimer’s party model, also thanks to the fact that it has been defined with rather broad, comprehensive categories. In a nutshell, the catch-all party arises because of unprecedented affluence, mass education and the scope of the media. Its main organisational characteristics, as elaborated also by later authors, include distancing from ideology; leadership centrality; organisational centralisation; lack of bureaucratic structures; fewer members and activists; financing through external sources; use of the media to reach out to the electorate and greater professionalism of party functions. The consequences of the predominance of this party type are unanimously considered to be quite negative. Parties present themselves as catch-all organisations, which concentrate mainly on winning as many votes as possible, rather than performing traditional party functions. The party system, previously stabilised by the presence of permanent, entrenched parties with enduring electoral linkages, as a result becomes a disordered arena, characterised by
{"title":"The nature of Forza Italia and the Italian transition","authors":"C. Paolucci","doi":"10.1080/14613190600787260","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190600787260","url":null,"abstract":"As the chief political actor of the last decade, Silvio Berlusconi has seemingly introduced fundamental innovations in many fields of politics: new campaign methods, a new leadership style and language, new coalition strategies and ideological contents. All of these innovations have had a considerable impact on the party and the political system, political communication, party platforms and governmental programmes, the contents of legislative output and, arguably, also the quality of Italian democracy. Among these innovations, one in particular will be the focus of this analysis, namely, the creation of a political party exhibiting a new organisational model. Traces of this model began emerging in Italy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but it displayed itself fully with Forza Italia, the party founded by Berlusconi in 1993. The study of party change has been largely inspired by the groundbreaking work of Otto Kirchheimer, who highlighted the reasons, dynamics and consequences of the transition from the mass party to a new type of party, the catch-all party, which has indeed characterised post-war 20th-century party politics in Europe. It is probable that most mainstream parties today would fit at least to some degree into Kirchheimer’s party model, also thanks to the fact that it has been defined with rather broad, comprehensive categories. In a nutshell, the catch-all party arises because of unprecedented affluence, mass education and the scope of the media. Its main organisational characteristics, as elaborated also by later authors, include distancing from ideology; leadership centrality; organisational centralisation; lack of bureaucratic structures; fewer members and activists; financing through external sources; use of the media to reach out to the electorate and greater professionalism of party functions. The consequences of the predominance of this party type are unanimously considered to be quite negative. Parties present themselves as catch-all organisations, which concentrate mainly on winning as many votes as possible, rather than performing traditional party functions. The party system, previously stabilised by the presence of permanent, entrenched parties with enduring electoral linkages, as a result becomes a disordered arena, characterised by","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134175512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-08-01DOI: 10.1080/14613190600801665
Stefano Fella
A great deal of academic literature on Italy since the early 1990s has addressed the themes of change and transition in the Italian political system, focusing in particular on the repercussions of the tangentopoli (kickback city) scandal and the political crisis of 1992–1994, the switch to a majoritarian electoral system, the collapse of the post-war party system and shift towards a bipolar party system based on centre-right and centre-left poles formed around a number of new and reinvented political formations, and the prospects of further constitutional change. The 2006 general election provided the latest turning point in what has seemed like an endless transition, resulting in defeat for Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right government elected in 2001. Indeed, despite the relative stability provided by the unprecedented length of the term of office served by the Berlusconi government, the legacy of the 2001–2006 parliamentary term was one of greater uncertainty as to the outcome of the transition, given the further changes to the electoral law introduced and the constitutional reforms adopted by the centre-right administration. Moreover, the election result of 2006 left uncertainty over the future of the main political formations within both the centre-right and centre-left pole. The aim of this special issue is to shed further light on aspects of the Italian transition, focusing both on institutional processes and change in the party system and within the main political alignments, assessing developments since the 1990s. Given the general unpredictability of political actors in Italy, idle speculation would be foolish. However, the contributions—drafted in the main prior to the 2006 election—provide insights that not only help explain the developments of the last decade and a half but also help us to understand the journey that Italian politics is continuing on.
{"title":"Introduction: One step forward or two steps back?—assessing the Italian transition","authors":"Stefano Fella","doi":"10.1080/14613190600801665","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190600801665","url":null,"abstract":"A great deal of academic literature on Italy since the early 1990s has addressed the themes of change and transition in the Italian political system, focusing in particular on the repercussions of the tangentopoli (kickback city) scandal and the political crisis of 1992–1994, the switch to a majoritarian electoral system, the collapse of the post-war party system and shift towards a bipolar party system based on centre-right and centre-left poles formed around a number of new and reinvented political formations, and the prospects of further constitutional change. The 2006 general election provided the latest turning point in what has seemed like an endless transition, resulting in defeat for Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right government elected in 2001. Indeed, despite the relative stability provided by the unprecedented length of the term of office served by the Berlusconi government, the legacy of the 2001–2006 parliamentary term was one of greater uncertainty as to the outcome of the transition, given the further changes to the electoral law introduced and the constitutional reforms adopted by the centre-right administration. Moreover, the election result of 2006 left uncertainty over the future of the main political formations within both the centre-right and centre-left pole. The aim of this special issue is to shed further light on aspects of the Italian transition, focusing both on institutional processes and change in the party system and within the main political alignments, assessing developments since the 1990s. Given the general unpredictability of political actors in Italy, idle speculation would be foolish. However, the contributions—drafted in the main prior to the 2006 election—provide insights that not only help explain the developments of the last decade and a half but also help us to understand the journey that Italian politics is continuing on.","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114910887","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-08-01DOI: 10.1080/14613190600787245
Sergio Fabbrini
Notwithstanding the vast literature available, there is no consensus on the interpretation of both the crisis of the Italian party system in the first half of the 1990s and the political events that followed it, events that brought about an alternation in government between two opposing coalitions between 1996 and 2001 and 2006. Indeed, there is such a level of uncertainty over how to interpret the last 15 years that it remains difficult even to give a name to the various phases Italian democracy has undergone. While some refer to the post-war period as a ‘first republic’ and the years following the crisis of the 1990s as a ‘second republic’ without specifying when the passage from one to the other occurred, others maintain that the second republic never happened, and still others contend that, following the success of Berlusconi in 2001, Italy entered directly into a ‘third republic’. This confusion is due to the difficulty in conceptualising political change in an established democracy such as Italy. It is my contention that the Italian ‘crisis’ of the first half of the 1990s has to be considered as a crisis of the formal and informal institutional rules aroundwhich Italian democracy was organised in the post-war era and that that the process which followed has to be understood in the context of the old and new institutional constraints within which it developed. If political change may follow different routes in accordance with contingency factors or specific power relations among the main political actors, that change is inevitably to be bound by the institutional structure within which it takes place. An institutional crisis may be solved through a redefinition of the rules of the game. Such redefinition may take the form of new rules (institutional transformation) or of functional adaptation of the old ones to the new needs (institutional re-ordering). If a transition concerns the search for these rules, then Italian democracy can be said to be still in a state of transition. Italy has moved away from the equilibrium of the post-war period, although a new agreed equilibrium has not yet taken its place. Although the very concept of ‘transition’ has to be treated with care, in that it might imply a teleological perspective on political change which is misleading, it may become an effective analytical tool if used in a larger comparative framework, one concerning models of democracy. The aims of this paper are both to explain the post-1992 Italian political change in the context of models of democracy and to conceptualise it on the basis of the historical and theoretical literature.
{"title":"The Italian case of a transition within democracy","authors":"Sergio Fabbrini","doi":"10.1080/14613190600787245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190600787245","url":null,"abstract":"Notwithstanding the vast literature available, there is no consensus on the interpretation of both the crisis of the Italian party system in the first half of the 1990s and the political events that followed it, events that brought about an alternation in government between two opposing coalitions between 1996 and 2001 and 2006. Indeed, there is such a level of uncertainty over how to interpret the last 15 years that it remains difficult even to give a name to the various phases Italian democracy has undergone. While some refer to the post-war period as a ‘first republic’ and the years following the crisis of the 1990s as a ‘second republic’ without specifying when the passage from one to the other occurred, others maintain that the second republic never happened, and still others contend that, following the success of Berlusconi in 2001, Italy entered directly into a ‘third republic’. This confusion is due to the difficulty in conceptualising political change in an established democracy such as Italy. It is my contention that the Italian ‘crisis’ of the first half of the 1990s has to be considered as a crisis of the formal and informal institutional rules aroundwhich Italian democracy was organised in the post-war era and that that the process which followed has to be understood in the context of the old and new institutional constraints within which it developed. If political change may follow different routes in accordance with contingency factors or specific power relations among the main political actors, that change is inevitably to be bound by the institutional structure within which it takes place. An institutional crisis may be solved through a redefinition of the rules of the game. Such redefinition may take the form of new rules (institutional transformation) or of functional adaptation of the old ones to the new needs (institutional re-ordering). If a transition concerns the search for these rules, then Italian democracy can be said to be still in a state of transition. Italy has moved away from the equilibrium of the post-war period, although a new agreed equilibrium has not yet taken its place. Although the very concept of ‘transition’ has to be treated with care, in that it might imply a teleological perspective on political change which is misleading, it may become an effective analytical tool if used in a larger comparative framework, one concerning models of democracy. The aims of this paper are both to explain the post-1992 Italian political change in the context of models of democracy and to conceptualise it on the basis of the historical and theoretical literature.","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123499180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-08-01DOI: 10.1080/14613190600787401
B. Mascitelli, E. Zucchi
In 1991 the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) embraced social democracy in an unambiguous fashion with its transformation from the Italian Communist Party (PCI). This represented a break with the communist tradition and ideology, and allowed the PDS to wholeheartedly dedicate itself to developing its social democratic strategies. The origins of this political change can be traced back to the mid-1970s when the PCI embarked on a political trajectory which would see it change name to the PDS after the geo-political convulsions which shook Europe following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. As a result of this endeavour, the leadership of the PDS expected large sections of the Italian population to embrace the new social democratic party, one with a progressive image and platform. However, this expectation failed to materialise. Although the PDS remained the largest party of the left, and of the political area loosely defined as centre-left, it failed to obtain the electoral support its predecessor, the PCI, achieved in the 1970s and 1980s. Hence the PDS failed to achieve and consolidate stable representation in government, and become the progressive party of the Italians.
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Pub Date : 2006-08-01DOI: 10.1080/14613190600906118
{"title":"MSc in International Conflict and Cooperation, University of Stirling","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/14613190600906118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190600906118","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114575966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-08-01DOI: 10.1080/14613190600787435
N. Conti
The problem of party attitudes towards the process of European integration is one of growing interest in the literature on European studies, as well as that on party politics. Until recently, the two literatures developed without intersecting, until a number of contributions started to focus on the relevance of party orientations towards the EU for the development of European integration as well as for developments in party politics. In this context, Italy has long been associated with a tendency of diffuse party-based Europhilia following a process of slow re-alignment on the issue of European integration lasting more than 30 years. If at the beginning of the 1950s, on the question of the integration of West European democracies there was a deep polarisation—one that reflected the broader polarisation of the party system—at the end of the first republic in the early 1990s, the situation was one of convergence. All parties, excluding the extreme ones, shared not only a broad support for the integration process, but also a specific support for its trajectory as represented by the EC/EU. A widespread expectation at that time was that since the Italian party system had been penetrated by Europhilia, this sentiment would persist even after an important systemic change. This enthusiastic party attitude towards European integration developed alongside a traditional loyal attitude of domestic elites towards the EC. Indeed, it has been argued that among the various attitudes Italian negotiators adopted within the European arena, theirs was always one of loyalty. The instability of domestic governments, characterised by frequent change and ministerial turnover, alongside the frequent change in the government representatives acting in the European arena, might explain the flawed and rather submissive presence of Italy in EC/EU negotiations. The principle-based support for the process of European integration of the leading party of every government coalition, the Christian Democrats (Democrazia Cristiana, DC), and its ability to keep government foreign policy as its privileged domain for almost 50 years contributed to this loyalty on the part of Italian governments. Overall, ideological commitment, a lack of sophisticated tools of foreign policy and a deep embedding of the DC in domestic problems, contributed to the rather submissive attitude of the Italian government in the European arena.
{"title":"Party conflict over European integration in Italy: a new dimension of party competition?","authors":"N. Conti","doi":"10.1080/14613190600787435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14613190600787435","url":null,"abstract":"The problem of party attitudes towards the process of European integration is one of growing interest in the literature on European studies, as well as that on party politics. Until recently, the two literatures developed without intersecting, until a number of contributions started to focus on the relevance of party orientations towards the EU for the development of European integration as well as for developments in party politics. In this context, Italy has long been associated with a tendency of diffuse party-based Europhilia following a process of slow re-alignment on the issue of European integration lasting more than 30 years. If at the beginning of the 1950s, on the question of the integration of West European democracies there was a deep polarisation—one that reflected the broader polarisation of the party system—at the end of the first republic in the early 1990s, the situation was one of convergence. All parties, excluding the extreme ones, shared not only a broad support for the integration process, but also a specific support for its trajectory as represented by the EC/EU. A widespread expectation at that time was that since the Italian party system had been penetrated by Europhilia, this sentiment would persist even after an important systemic change. This enthusiastic party attitude towards European integration developed alongside a traditional loyal attitude of domestic elites towards the EC. Indeed, it has been argued that among the various attitudes Italian negotiators adopted within the European arena, theirs was always one of loyalty. The instability of domestic governments, characterised by frequent change and ministerial turnover, alongside the frequent change in the government representatives acting in the European arena, might explain the flawed and rather submissive presence of Italy in EC/EU negotiations. The principle-based support for the process of European integration of the leading party of every government coalition, the Christian Democrats (Democrazia Cristiana, DC), and its ability to keep government foreign policy as its privileged domain for almost 50 years contributed to this loyalty on the part of Italian governments. Overall, ideological commitment, a lack of sophisticated tools of foreign policy and a deep embedding of the DC in domestic problems, contributed to the rather submissive attitude of the Italian government in the European arena.","PeriodicalId":313717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121088064","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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