Italy and its international relations: Getting real on relative positions

What is the position of Italy in contemporary international politics? How does Italy compare with its neighbors or with the so-called great powers in terms of power? What are the most influential factors to be considered when evaluating Italian foreign policy? Contemporary international politics is multidi-mensional and multifaceted and positioning a country in the international system involves looking at various and diverse domains. These domains and trajectories have experienced substantive changes and, in turn, the role and relative position of Italy have dramatically changed. This article aims to pro-vide empirical trends in Italy’s positioning in international relations, showing the existence of some unsolved issues and the reasons for specific underlying tensions in Italian foreign policy

The long-term electoral legacies of civil war in young democracies: Evidence from Italy 1946-1968

Are there long-term legacies of civil wars on the electoral geography of post-conflict democracies? We argue that parties derived from armed bands enjoy an organizational advantage in areas where they fought and won the war. Former combatants can create a strong local party organization that serves as a crucial mobilization tool for elections. Parties have strong incentives to institutionalize this organizational advantage and retain electoral strongholds over time. We test our theory on the case of Italy (1946-1968). Our findings indicate that, on average, the communist party managed to create a stronger organization in areas where its bands fought the resistance war against Nazi-fascist forces—and leftwing parties had a better electoral performance in those areas insubsequent elections. A stronger party organization is correlated with a positive electoral performance for many years, while the direct effect of civil war on electoral patterns decays after few years

The long-term electoral legacies of civil war in young democracies: Evidence from Italy 1946-1968

Are there long-term legacies of civil wars on the electoral geography of post-conflict democracies? We argue that parties derived from armed bands enjoy an organizational advantage in areas where they fought and won the war. Former combatants can create a strong local party organization that serves as a crucial mobilization tool for elections. Parties have strong incentives to institutionalize this organizational advantage and retain electoral strongholds over time. We test our theory on the case of Italy (1946-1968). Our findings indicate that, on average, the communist party managed to create a stronger organization in areas where its bands fought the resistance war against Nazi-fascist forces—and leftwing parties had a better electoral performance in those areas insubsequent elections. A stronger party organization is correlated with a positive electoral performance for many years, while the direct effect of civil war on electoral patterns decays after few years

La violenza in un conflitto \u2018etnico\u2019: la guerra in Bosnia-Erzegovina, 1992-1995

Non present

Indignation, ideologies, and armed mobilization: civil war in Italy, 1943–45

This paper theorizes and provides empirical evidence on the role of indignation and radical ideologies in the process of armed mobilization. We argue that these non-material factors play a crucial role – in addition to that played by material factors – in the chain that leads to armed collective action. Indignation is a push-factor that moves individuals away from accepting the status of the incumbent power. Ideology acts as a pull-factor that provides a new set of strategies against the incumbent. Our empirical analysis focuses on the Italian civil war (1943–45). First, we provide a national statistical analysis where the Italian provinces are the analytical units. Secondly, we offer a within-province analysis focusing on just two of them, using municipalities as the units of analysis. Finally, we provide a qualitative analysis based on historical micro-narratives and interviews with ex-partisans. The empirical data support our theoretical arguments

The Economic Costs of Civil War: Synthetic Counterfactual Evidence and the Effects of Ethnic Fractionalization

Abstract: There is a consensus that civil wars entail enormous economic costs, but we lack reliable estimates, due to the endogenous relationship between violence and socio-economic conditions. This paper measures the economic consequences of civil wars with the synthetic control method. This allows us to identify appropriate counterfactuals for assessing the national-level economic impact of civil war in a sample of 20 countries. We find that the average annual loss of GDP per capita is 17.5 percent. Moreover, we use our estimates of annual losses to study the determinants of war destructiveness, focusing on the effects of ethnic heterogeneity. Building on an emerging literature on the relationships between ethnicity, trust, economic outcomes, and conflict, we argue that civil war erodes interethnic trust and highly fractionalized societies pay an especially high “price”, as they rely heavily on interethnic business relations. We find a consistent positive effect of ethnic fractionalization economic war-induced loss