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From enthusiasm to retreat: Italy and military missions abroad after the Cold War

28 May 2020 by ViA Leave a Comment

If you are interested in Italian defense you should look at this paper, which provides an updated overview of the literature on Italian military missions abroad. The paper is titled: “From enthusiasm to retreat: Italy and military missions abroad after the Cold War” (by Fabrizio Coticchia and Francesco N. Moro), Italian Political Science, 15(1) 2020.

Here below the abstract:

Italy represents an important case of defense policy change after the Cold War. While during the bipo-lar era the country rarely intervened abroad and was deeply constrained in its defense policy by do-mestic as well as international factors, in the post-Cold War era, Italy has constantly intervened in major conflicts in the Balkans, the Middle East and Afghanistan. Yet, in the past decade, and especial-ly after the 2011 Libyan intervention, Italian activism has consistently diminished. The purpose of this article is to describe this trend and to review theories that have been put forward to explain Italian activism (and retrenchment). While several insights can emerge from multiple studies dedicated to the topic, we argue that some elements such as legacies and institutional constraints have been some-what overlooked and actually open promising avenues for research.

You can download the paper here

“Peaceful legislatures? Parliaments and military interventions after the Cold War: Insights from Germany and Italy”

3 February 2020 by ViA Leave a Comment

How do formal and informal constraints shape the opportunity structures faced by executives that are willing to undertake military interventions?

“Our” Fabrizio Coticchia and Francesco N. Moro aimed to answer this question with a paper that is just published online by “International Relations” (gated). The title of the manuscript is: “Peaceful legislatures? Parliaments and military interventions after the Cold War: Insights from Germany and Italy”. Here below the abstract.

The article contributes to the growing debate on parliamentary war powers and shows how parliaments matter in shaping both force deployment and force employment. Through original analysis of the Italian and German decision-making on military interventions after the Cold War, the article illustrates how formal and informal constraints shape the opportunity structures faced by executives that are willing to undertake military interventions. Revisiting, and building on, the great deal of research recently emerged on institutional constraints to the use of force, the article details the types of costs – namely, transaction and audience costs – linked to involvement of legislatives in the decision-making and provides empirical support for theories based on parliamentary war powers, adding new dimensions of analysis.

Difesa e missioni militari: necessario un dibattito pubblico nel Paese

3 February 2020 by ViA Leave a Comment

Nell’attesa della prossima discussione parlamentare sulle missioni militari all’estero la rivista Affari Internazionali ha avviato un interessante dibattito sul tema. Qui il link al contributo fornito dal “nostro” Fabrizio Coticchia.

Qui in calce l’abstract:

Alla fine del 2019 il Ministro della Difesa, Lorenzo Guerini, aveva annunciato l’imminente approvazione della delibera annuale riguardante le operazioni militari internazionali, confermando la presenza di truppe italiane nei principali teatri operativi. A gennaio, di fronte alle Commissioni Difesa di Senato e Camera, il Ministro ha ribadito tale impegno, evidenziando al contempo come la recente evoluzione dello scenario internazionale – dalla Libia all’Iraq – abbia influenzato il processo di ‘costruzione’ del decreto missioni.

In attesa che si svolga finalmente la discussione in Parlamento, alla luce del processo di trasformazione della politica di difesa italiana negli ultimi decenni, ed in seguito ai cambiamenti avvenuti nel contesto internazionale e in quello nazionale negli ultimi mesi, possiamo delineare alcuni pattern ricorrenti nella modalità con la quale i partiti italiani hanno affrontato il tema delle operazioni internazionali. Questa riflessione consente di collocare il prossimo dibattito sulle missioni militari all’interno di un quadro di analisi più ampio e strutturato, evidenziando fattori di continuità, possibili elementi novità e pressanti necessità che caratterizzano la politica di difesa italiana.

A new database: “The Parliamentary Deployment Votes Database (PDVD)”

15 May 2019 by ViA Leave a Comment

Have a look at this new terrific debates on parliamentary votes on the deployment of armed forces.

Here you’ll find all the info on this OPEN database. Here you’ll find all the data. And here some details on the international network that has built this database.

As stated in their website, since the end of the Cold War, democracies have been participating in military missions of various kinds, ranging from peacekeeping to war. These deployments have raised questions about their democratic legitimacy and parliamentary control in particular. In many democracies, deployments decisions are the exclusive competence of the government, and parliament is only informed. In a growing number of cases, however, such decisions have been put to a vote in parliament. PDVD documents and analyzes these votes. PDVD serves a dual purpose: As scholars of political science, we are interested in an analysis of deployment votes. By sharing the data we collected, we hope to stimulate further analyses. As citizens of countries that have participated in military missions, we consider the publication of deployment votes to be a contribution to the democratic control of security and defense policy. At the moment, in version 2 of the dataset, PDVP documents 514 votes in plenaries for the period between August 1990 and December 2017 in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

We believe that this database could be extremely useful for scholars interested in parties, military operations, and parliaments.

Book Launch: “The Handbook of European Defense Policies and Armed Forces”

6 May 2019 by ViA Leave a Comment

We are really happy to promote the forthcoming Book Launch: The Handbook of European Defense Policies and Armed Forces (Oxford University Press, 2018), edited by Hugo Meijer and Marco Wyss

On May 13, the European University Institute (EUI), Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, will host the book launch of Hugo Meijer and Marco Wyss’s The Handbook of European Defense Policies and Armed Forces (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Date and Location: 13 May, 2019, 16.00-18.00, Sala Triaria, Villa Schifanoia.

By gathering more than 60 leading and emerging scholars on European defense and international security from around the world, The Handbookprovides thefirst geographically and thematically comprehensive presentation and analysis of the evolution of defense policies and armed forces in Europe since the end of the Cold War.

Chair: Ulrich Krotz (European University Institute)

Speakers:

Hugo Meijer (Sciences Po) and Marco Wyss (Lancaster University): Illusions of Autonomy: Strategic Cacophony and the State of European Defense

Fabrizio Coticchia (University of Genoa): From Paradigm Change to Muddling Through: The Transformation of Italian Armed Forces

Discussant:

Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni (European University Institute and University of Cambridge)

See you soon in Fiesole

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.