Foreign Policy and the Ideology of Post-ideology: The Case of Matteo Renzi’s Partito Democratico

The post-communist Italian Left has experienced a long phase of ideational misalignment between ideas placed at different levels, as a qualified discursive institutionalist approach demonstrates. Background public philosophies have often clashed with post-communist political ideology, while foreign policy programmes have often contradicted specific policies. Under the leadership of Matteo Renzi, however, the PD is now experiencing a moment of remarkable ideational consistency. Rather than being founded on entirely new premises, this new consensus folds old elements into new ones and shows all the defining traits of post-ideology. Yet, by espousing post-ideology, Renzi is making an ultimately ideological move whose limitations may soon start to show

L'Orizzonte del mondo, Politica internazionale, sfide globali, nuove geografie del potere

Stiamo davvero tornando a un mondo multipolare? Come si rifletteranno sugli anni a venire i complessi sviluppi politico-diplomatici, economici e di sicurezza che hanno preso forma nell’arco degli ultimi due decenni? Come riusciranno Europa, Cina, Russia e Stati Uniti a raccogliere le note, sempre più urgenti, sfide globali? Competizione e cooperazione non verranno meno, ma dalle proporzioni della miscela dipendono le prospettive di successo della governance globale, ovvero la qualità delle nostre esistenze

Italian Politics and the European Union: A Tale of Two Research Designs

Drawing on the conceptual framework of Europeanisation, we trace the influence of the European Union (EU) on Italian politics by combining top-down analysis (that is, how Italy has adapted to pressure coming from Brussels) with a bottom-up examination of how Italian policy makers have encountered the EU in their attempts to pursue domestic policy goals. We find that the foreign policy orientation and policy preferences of the governing coalition determine the posture, style and choice of institutional venues. Taken together, bottom-up and top-down assessments of Europeanisation suggest that, during the second Berlusconi government, the influence of the EU in Italian politics was limited - although not trivial. When the Berlusconi government (2001-06) faced high pressure, it tried to reduce it at source rather than adapting to EU policies. By contrast, the centre-left governments (1996-2001) used pressure as a lever for policy change, while the governments of the 1980s responded to pressure by delaying implementation