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Italian Foreign Policy during Matteo Renzi’s Government. A Domestically Focused Outsider and the World

12 March 2019 by ViA Leave a Comment

If your are interested in Foreign Policy Analysis, and especially you are working on Italian Foreign Policy, you should look at this new book by “our” Fabrizio Coticchia (along with Jason W. Davidson: “Italian Foreign Policy during Matteo Renzi’s Government A Domestically Focused Outsider and the World” (Lexington 2019)

This book sets out to explain the foreign policy of Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (February 2014 to December 2016). It offers a unique analytical framework to make sense of Renzi’s foreign policy: the domestically-focused outsider. It argues that to untangle Renzi’s foreign policy one must first understand that his clear priority was enacting domestic economic and political reforms. Domestic focus means that Renzi made foreign policy decisions with a sensitivity to public opinion and party unity. The book also argues that Renzi’s status as an outsider in Italian politics—having previously served only as the mayor of Florence—provides critical insight into his foreign policy. Renzi was prone to skepticism of the establishment and dramatic, symbolic gestures rather than patient coalition building. The book applies this framework to the five most important foreign policy issues Renzi’s government faced: migration, finance and the EU, Russia, ISIL, and Libya. The book’s analysis of the cases benefits from over twenty elite interviews, including those with senior members of Renzi’s government

According to Sonia Lucarelli (University of Bologna):

Italian Foreign Policy during Matteo Renzi’s Government: A Domestically Focused Outsider and the World is a fascinating introduction to Renzi’s foreign policy. Fabrizio Coticchia and Jason W. Davidson offer a provocative key to understand the domestically-driven policy of an outsider eager to present himself as a “dynamic scrapper of the status quo”.The elegant analysis of Renzi’s management of migration, the economic crisis, Russia sanctions, the fight of ISIL and the Libya war, not only serves to understand the uneven foreign policy of a middle power, but provides a first application of a theory of foreign policy by ever more domestically-focused (when not populist) Western governments. An excellent read for scholars, students and interested public alike.

As stressed by Matt Evangelista (Cornell): Italy’s coalition of the populist Five Star Movement and the xenophobic (formerly Northern) League shocked the world with its reorientation of Italian foreign policy. The new government rejected the European Union’s economic austerity, cozied up to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and sounded the alarm about an influx of migrants and refugees. Yet, as the authors of this trenchant study argue, the building blocks for the new policy were put in place already during Matteo Renzi’s term as prime minister. Promoting personality above party and running as an anti-establishment outsider preoccupied with domestic politics, Renzi unintentionally contributed to the destruction of the mainstream parties and opened the way to populist challengers who pursued many of the same foreign policies. Drawing on a wealth of evidence, including informative interviews with high-level Italian and international officials and experts, the authors make a convincing case that Renzi’s model of a “domestically focused outsider”applies not only to his successors but to politicians as otherwise different as Yanis Varoufakis and Donald Trump.

Here you’ll find other reviews.

Some interesting conferences….

12 March 2019 by ViA Leave a Comment

We are pleased to recommend some upcoming interesting conferences in political science and IR. You’ll find below also the details regarding the call for papers.

Starting from Italy we suggest the upcoming annual conference of the Italian Political Science Association (SISP), which will take place in Lecce (12-14 September 2019). Here all the info on the conference.

For IR scholars we also highlight the next SGRI(Standing Group International Relations) 2019 Conference “Global Politics in the Era of Disruptive Technologies New Scenarios in an Old World?” (Trento, 13-15 June 2019).

The annual Conference of the Italian Standing Group on International Relations is a two-day session that brings together scholars, researchers and PhD students from Italian academia to discuss issues related to global politics, European Studies, foreign policy, regional dynamics and international theory.

Here the call for papers and panels.

We also recommend checking this promising panel on multinational military interventions at the next annual conference of the Association Française de Science Politique(2-4 July 2019, Bordeaux).

This thematic panel aims to contribute to the interdisciplinary debate on multinational military interventions. Therefore, we invite submissions from international relations, peace and conflict studies, (Comparative) Foreign Policy Analysis and Comparative Politics. We particularly encourage papers that focus on one of the following topics:

– motivations for joining multinational military interventions;

– effects of domestic politics on multinational military coalitions;

– leadership effects in multinational military interventions.

In light of methodological pluralism, we welcome quantitative, qualitative and mixed-method papers, as well as papers which offer a theoretical or conceptual discussion of multinational military interventions.

Here below the detailed programme:

Allied contributions to multinational military operations

Présidence et commentaire: Yf Reykers (Maastricht University)

Margit Bussmann (University of Greifswald), France’s Military Interventions: Diversion from Domestic Problems?

Rasmus Brun Pedersen (Aarhus University), Status Seeking and the Nordic Countries Use of Atlanticism in their Foreign and Security Policy

Tim Haesebrouck (Ghent University), Yf Reykers (Maastricht University) & Daan Fonck (University of Leuven), Party-Politics and Military Intervention: Insights from Parliamentary Debates in Belgium on the Libya Intervention and the Coalition against IS

Justin Massie (UQAM), Why Canada Goes to War: Explaining Combat Participation in U.S.-led Coalitions

Institutional architecture of multinational military coalitions

Présidence et commentaire : Justin Massie (UQAM)

Olivier Schmitt (University of Southern Denmark), NATO, Emerging Technologies, and Future Warfare: Overcoming the Alliance Strategic Dilemma

Alice Pannier (Johns Hopkins University ), Lesson Learning from and for Coalition Warfare: The Role of Minilateral Initiatives

Fabrizio Coticchia (University of Genoa) & Francesco N. Moro (University of Bologna), Dimensions and Drivers: Military Transformation in Italy and Germany

John Karlsrud (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs) & Yf Reykers (Maastricht University), Institutions are What You Make of Them: Ad Hocism and Military Interventions

Finally, here you’ll find info on the annual conference for the PSA (Political Science Association) Italian Politics specialist group, which will take place in Genoa, Italy (4-15 June 2019). The title of the conference is: “The crisis of European social democracy: causes and consequences in an age of political uncertainty”. As stressed in the webpage of the conference:

The aim of this conference is to shed light not only on the circumstances that have contributed to the crisis of social-democratic parties over the last ten years but also on the impact that such crisis has on democratic processes and public policy. We welcome contributions in three key areas. The first area focuses on internal characteristics of social democratic parties, that is, their organisation/membership, leadership and their political platforms/ideologies. The second one looks at the social and political environment in which social democratic parties compete. One may consider transformations in socio-economic conditions and voters’ attitudes and preferences (demand-side) or changing patterns of inter-party competition, with the emerge of new challengers (supply-side). Lastly the third area focuses on the implications of the social democratic crisis for Western European democracies and for relevant policy areas. Of course, the three areas identified here should not necessarily be analysed in isolation and we also welcome contributions that aim to establish links between them.

Here additional info for the call for papers (deadlineMarch 17^th)

Call for Papers: European Initiative on Security Studies Annual Conference

25 November 2018 by ViA Leave a Comment

Also this year we are pleased to highlight the European Initiative on Security Studies (EISS) Annual Conference. Here you’ll find all the details of the Call for Papers.

The European Initiative on Security Studies is a Europe-wide multidisciplinary network of scholars from over eighty universities that share the goal of consolidating security studies in Europe.

The third annual conference of the European Initiative on Security Studies will be held at Sciences Po, in Paris, on 27-28 June 2019. It is organized by the EISS board, within the framework of the French Association for the Study of War and Strategy (AEGES) and in collaboration with the Center for International Studies (CERI) of Sciences Po.

There are “open” and “closed” panels (which focus on themes decided by the EISS, see again the program of the conference)

15 January 2019 is the deadline for sending paper proposals to the panel chairs (cf. emails below) and panel proposals to the EISS (eissnetwork@gmail.com).

Among amazing panels, we point out:

Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism (Chair: Peter Neumann)

Military Interventions (Chair: Chiara Ruffa)

Defense Cooperation and Military Assistance (Chair: Adrian Hyde-Price)

Concluding Keynote Panel (Chair: Thierry Balzacq) Speakers: Stephen Brooks (Dartmouth College) & Barry Posen (MIT)

See you soon in Paris!!

Italian political parties and Military Operations: an Empirical Analysis on Voting Patterns

9 November 2018 by ViA Leave a Comment

by Valerio Vignoli* and Fabrizio Coticchia**

Despite the recent delays, the new Italian government is called to take a decision on military deployments abroad soon. Which operations to renew? Which to initiate? Which to terminate? While we know little about how the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) positioned on this issue, a comprehensive analysis on the voting patterns in parliament of Lega Nord and all the other major parties between 1994 and 2016 is finally available.

Our article “Italian political parties and Military Operations: an Empirical Analysis on Voting Patterns”, which has been recently published (here the link) on Government and Opposition, focuses specifically on this issue, providing the first detailed dataset on parliamentary votes on missions in Italy.

Here below the abstract of the paper:

Since the end of the bipolar era, the military activism of several Western powers has raised questions about parliamentary control, fostering growing research and analyses on the features, drivers and consequences of the different kinds of oversight exercised by legislative assemblies. Within this scholarly debate, this article focuses on the under-studied case of Italy. How did Italian parties vote on military operations abroad in the post-Cold War era? In order to answer this question, the article presents the first detailed and comprehensive set of data on parliamentary votes over the deployment of the Italian armed forces in the post-Cold War era (i.e. from the beginning of the 1990s to the recent operation against ISIL). Thanks to this extensive new empirical material, the article assesses selected arguments developed by the literature on political parties and foreign policy, paving the way for further research.

What are the main findings of the paper?

First, in line with the existing literature, the paper confirms a rather solid bipartisan consensus between centre-left (e.g., Partito Democratico) and centre right (e.g., Forza Italia) parties on military operations. In contrast, it indicates much more volatility for parties at the extremes such as Lega Nord and Rifondazione Comunista, depending on their presence in the governing coalitions. Second, and relatedly, the dynamics of government–opposition are very relevant in the case of Italy. Finally, in line with the argument of a supposed ‘instrumentality’ of voting on Italian foreign and defence policy, the findings illustrate how main opposition parties, despite an overall consensus on the missions expressed several times in the parliament, aimed to defeat the government before the assembly, exploiting divisions in the majority coalitions during ‘crucial votes’, when the government had a slim margin of support. Third, the curvilinear model of partisan support for military operations seems to better illustrate the case of Italy than the ‘traditional left–right’ model. Finally, “the procedural features” seem to affect the behaviour of political parties towards the MOAs. In fact, opposition parties, when confronted with a ‘package’ of several missions to refund, tend to vote in favour even though they are against one of them.

Given these findings, what to expect regarding the next votes on troops deployments abroad? A never-ending bipartisan consensus on missions? Is there a possibility to see again the instrumental use of the votes by opposition parties, even if they (e.g., PD, Forza Italia) are the most vocal supporters of military missions abroad? We should wait and see. The road to a deal between the two coalition partners, Lega Nord and Movimento 5 Stelle, is apparently still long and bumpy. For sure, the delays in the legislative debates, paradoxically confirms the limited saliency most parties attribute to the issue of military operations in the public debate.

The paper is connected to a broader research agenda that focuses on parliamentary votes and military operations (here some further details if you are interested in…)

Valerio Vignoli is PhD candidate at NASP. His thesis is titled:“’At the Water’s Edge?’: Italian Political Parties and Military Operations Abroad”

Fabrizio Coticchia is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Genova.

“The brave new world of IR?” – SGRI Conference 2018

29 September 2018 by ViA Leave a Comment

The annual Conference of the Italian Standing Group on International Relations (SGRI) is coming. Here you’ll find all the info on the 2018 edition (Bologna, 12-13 October).

The SGRI conference is a two-day session that brings together scholars, researchers and PhD students from Italian academia to discuss issues related to global politics, European Studies, foreign policy, regional dynamics and international theory. The 2018 Conference will be held for the second time in Bologna.

The event is sponsored by the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Bologna, within the framework of the MIUR Progetto di Eccellenza 2018-2022, and co-organized by IP Lab with the support of the School of International Studies (SIS) of the University of Trento and of the Fondazione Bruno Kessler.

This year’s topic is about technology and geopolitics.

Here you’ll find the program. And here the really interesting plenary sessions (how to study defense in Europe, a debate on latest book by Angelo Panebianco, and a lecture by Joe Grieco)

We suggest especially these two (“Venus”) panels, on Italian defense and on international interventions.

See you soon in Bologna

“Change in Security Organisations Between Internal and External Dynamics”

11 September 2018 by ViA Leave a Comment

We are really pleased to shed light on an upcoming panel at the EISA (European International Studies Association Annual Conference) 12^thPan-European Conference on International Relations: “A New Hope: Back to the Future of International Relations”. The conference will be held in Prague (12-15 Settembre).

The panel is titled “Change in Security Organisations Between Internal and External Dynamics“. “Our” Francesco Moro will partecipate with a paper (along with the other “VIA” Fabrizio Coticchia, and Andrea Locatelli).

Here and below the detail of the panel:

Session title:Change in Security Organisations Between Internal and External Dynamics

Track:S49: The Transformation of Security Institutions

Chair: Olivier Schmitt, Denmark

Discussant: Matthew Ford, United Kingdom

Rejecting Liberalism in Post-Genocide Rwanda: Failures in “Best-Practices (K. Carlson, University of Southern Denmark)

The Italian Defence Policy after the Cold War. Europeanisation, American Influence, or Strategic Adjustment? (A. Locatelli, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano; F.N. Moro, University of Bologna, F. Coticchia, University of Genoa)

From Spiritual Defense to Robust Resilience: A Genealogy of the Finnish Comprehensive Security Model (A.E. Hyvönen, University of Tampere, and T. Juntunen).

The Dictator’s Learning Curve: Softening Authoritarianism in Repressive Post-Soviet Regimes. The Case of Kazakhstan within Regional Security Organisations (A. Marin, Collegium Civitas- Warsaw,

The US-Japan Alliance as an Institution for Security: the Changing Rationales, Scope, and Dynamics (Y. Sato, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, and E. Atanassova-Cornelis, University of Antwerp)

See you in Prague

The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces

4 July 2018 by ViA Leave a Comment

We are really pleased to announce that “The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces” (Meijer and Wyss, Oxford University Press, 2018) has been published.

Here you’ll find all the contents and details of the Handbook, which is the first geographically and thematically comprehensive presentation and analysis of the evolution of defence policies and armed forces in Europe since the end of the Cold War.

“Our”Fabrizio Coticchia wrote the chapter on Italy.

Here below the abstract:

The armed forces of Europe have undergone a dramatic transformation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces provides the first comprehensive analysis of national security and defence policies, strategies, doctrines, capabilities, and military operations, as well as the alliances and partnerships of European armed forces in response to the security challenges Europe has faced since the end of the cold war. A truly cross-European comparison of the evolution of national defence policies and armed forces remains a notable blind spot in the existing literature. The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces aims to fill this gap with fifty-one contributions on European defence and international security from around the world. The six parts focus on: country-based assessments of the evolution of the national defence policies of Europe’s major, medium, and lesser powers since the end of the cold war; the alliances and security partnerships developed by European states to cooperate in the provision of national security; the security challenges faced by European states and their armed forces, ranging from interstate through intra-state and transnational; the national security strategies and doctrines developed in response to these challenges; the military capabilities, and the underlying defence and technological industrial base, brought to bear to support national strategies and doctrines; and, finally, the national or multilateral military operations by European armed forces. The contributions to The Handbook collectively demonstrate the fruitfulness of giving analytical precedence back to the comparative study of national defence policies and armed forces across Europe.

Conflicts and Institutions…

27 May 2018 by ViA Leave a Comment

As already stated (here), we are pleased to announce the 3rd NASP “International Workshop on Conflicts and Institutions”, Genova, 26 June 2018.

Here you’ll find all the info on this terrific workshop, which is open to everyone.

If you are interested in conflicts and institutions you should be there! You’ll find scholars such as Fearon, Snidal, Ruggeri, Bove, Lucarelli, Moro, Costalli, and many others.

In the last two years the University of Genova hosted the leading scholars on conflicts, such as Kalyvas, Cederman, Carey, Hegre, Dorussen, Colombo, Bakke, Clayton, Daxecker, Belloni, and many others.

Here below the description of the event and the detailed agenda of the workshop:

The last two years the University of Genova organized the conference “Conflicts & Institutions: Research, Projects and Workshops”. In continuity with those events also this year we have invited leading scholars in conflicts studies, democratization, peacebuilding and international security. The main goal of the workshop is still to specify the links and the connections between the ongoing crisis and the current conflicts to examine the relation between institutions and conflicts. At the same time, the Project “Conflicts & Institutions” aims at creating a network of scholars able to elaborate common research projects and proposals. The current project has been designed and coordinated by Giampiero Cama (University of Genova), Andrea Ruggeri (University of Oxford), and Fabrizio Coticchia (University of Genova).

The workshop is co-funded by the University of Genoa, the Department of Political Science (DISPO) and by NASP (Network for Advancement of Social and Political Studies).

The conference will be held at the University of Genova (DISPO – Department of Political Science).

Agenda of the event.

26 June 2018, Aula Mazzini, 3^rdFloor, Via Balbi 5, Genova

9.00Registration

9.15Welcome address – Giampiero Cama(University of Genova)

9.30Keynote speech

Sonia Lucarelli(University of Bologna), “The EU as an actor of collective securitization? exploring the concept, testing the Case”

10.30 Keynote speech

James Fearon(Stanford University), “The arms trade, international alignments, and international conflict”

11.30Coffee Break

11.45 First Panel – Conflicts and Institutions. Chair: Fabrizio Coticchia (University of Genova)

Tine Gade(EUI) “In-group policing and the non-occurrence of civil war: Lebanon and Jordan after 2011”

Discussant: Silvia D’Amato (University of Florence),

Gloria Gennaroand Jessica Miranda(Bocconi, Milan), “Democratization and conflict: the role of uncertainty”

Discussant: Vincenzo Bove (University of Warwick),

Matteo Colombo(University of Milan), “Warlords on Twitter: Competing with the state among pro-government militias in Syria”

Discussant: Andrea Ruggeri (University of Oxford),

Natalia Tellidou(EUI), “Neoclassical realism and proxy wars. The cases of Syria and Yemen”.

Discussant: Stefano Costalli (University of Florence).

13.30Lunch Buffet

14.30 Second Panel – Conflicts and Institutions. Chair: Mara Morini (University of Genova)

Akisato Suzuki(EUI), “Why Citizens Let Their Leaders Engage in Armed Conflict: A Rationalist Explanation”

Discussant: James Fearon (Stanford University)

Vanessa Meier(Oxford University), “For better or worse? Third-party intervention and civilian victimisation”

Discussant: Francesco N. Moro (University of Bologna)

Francesca Cerutti(University of Milan), “Measuring the Effectiveness of Security Institutions and Tracing its Determinants:The Biological Weapons Non-Proliferation Regime”

Discussant: Duncan Snidal (University of Oxford)

Marina Petrova(Essex University), “Water or Gasoline? Civil Society in Contentious Scenarios”

Discussant: Sonia Lucarelli (University of Bologna )

15.45 Coffee Break

16.00 Keynote speech

Duncan Snidal(University of Oxford), “The Supply of Informal International Governance with an Application to the Proliferation Security Initiative”

17.00 Concluding Remarks

“Through military lenses”. New research on officers’ perceptions of military transformation

19 April 2018 by ViA Leave a Comment

What do military officers think about force transformation? While the latter has been the object of a great deal of important research in the past decade (and more), the opinions and perceptions of servicemen have rarely been explored. To dig into what Italian Air Force officers think is the objective of latest fatigue of Fabrizio Coticchia and Francesco Moro, who, with their invaluable co-author Lorenzo Cicchi, just published an article on Defence Studies on the topic. The article, “Through military lenses. Perception of security threats and jointness in the Italian Air Force”, used data from an original survey conducted among ITAF captains with two major objectives. First, the article focuses on servicemen’s attitudes towards the transformations of the global security environment and the changes occurring (and needed) within the Italian Air Force. Second, the article provides preliminary statistical evidence on the links between individual experiences, views, and change. The article shows that officers’ views of technology have a significant impact on their views about military transformation. To the extent to which it is possible, enjoy!