Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T05:43:03.985Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Making sense of a changing world: foreign policy ideas and Italy’s national role conceptions after 9/11

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2017

Anna Caffarena Open the ORCID record for Anna Caffarena [Opens in a new window]  and
Giuseppe Gabusi
Anna Caffarena*
Affiliation:
Department of Cultures, Politics and Society, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
Giuseppe Gabusi
Affiliation:
Department of Cultures, Politics and Society, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
*
*E-mail: Anna.caffarena@unito.it
Get access

Abstract

In a rapidly changing world, middle powers with no obvious role to play on the global stage have the difficult task to read the international environment in order to formulate and implement a coherent and possibly effective foreign policy. In order to do so, decision makers either reproduce old ideas or develop new ones. Considering the ideas put forward in their inaugural speeches by Prime Ministers and Foreign Affairs Ministers in office after 2001, we suggest that Italy’s institutional actors appear to be aware of the changes occurred in the international system after 1989, and in particular after 9/11. The national role conceptions sustaining Italy’s present foreign policy goals reflect such awareness, being quite different with respect to the picture offered by Holsti in his seminal work published in 1970. Ideas expressing foreign policy goals are also reasonably well grounded in ideas on how the world works or linked to operational ideas, yet the country’s foreign policy appears feebly focused, even though focus is explicitly very much sought for. Some explanations for such a lack of focus which makes Italy’s foreign policy design rather ineffective are offered.

Keywords

Italyforeign policymiddle powerideasnational role conceptionschange
Type
Research Article
Information
Italian Political Science Review / Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica , Volume 47 , Special Issue 2: Special issue: Italian Foreign Policy: To Take Arms against a Sea of Troubles? , July 2017 , pp. 125 - 147
Copyright
© Società Italiana di Scienza Politica 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andreatta, F. (2001), ‘Italy at the crossroads: the foreign policy of a medium power after the end of bipolarity’, Daedalus 130(2): 45–65.Google Scholar
Brighi, E. (2007), ‘Europe, the USA and the “policy of the pendulum”: the importance of foreign policy paradigms in the foreign policy of Italy (1989-2005)’, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans Online 9(2): 99–115.Google Scholar
Cofelice, A. (2017), ‘Italy and the universal periodic review of the UN Human Rights Council. Playing the Two-Level game’, Italian Political Science Review, this special issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, A.F. (1997), ‘Niche diplomacy: a conceptual overview’, in A.F. Cooper (ed.), Niche Diplomacy: Middle Powers After the Cold War, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–24.Google Scholar
Croci, O. (1994), ‘L’intervento italiano in Somalia: una nuova politica estera per il dopo «guerra fredda»?’, in C. Mershon and G. Pasquino (eds), Politica in Italia. I fatti dell’anno e le interpretazioni, Bologna: Il Mulino, pp. 187–210.Google Scholar
Croci, O. (2007), ‘Italian foreign policy after the end of the cold war: the issue of continuity and change in Italian-US relations’, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans Online 9(2): 117–131.Google Scholar
Croci, O. (2008), ‘The second Prodi government and Italian foreign policy: new and improved or the same wrapped up differently?’, Modern Italy 13(3): 291–303.Google Scholar
Dassù, M. and Massari, M. (eds) (2008), Rapporto 2020: Le scelte di politica estera, Rome: Ministero degli Affari Esteri.Google Scholar
Frattini, F. (2011), ‘La Diplomazia Economica: Nuove Sfide e Nuovo Approccio’, La Comunità Internazionale 2: 175–183.Google Scholar
George, A.L. (1980), Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy: The Effective Use of Information and Advice, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Giacomello, G. and Bertjan, V.. (eds) (2011), Italy’s Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century: The New Assertiveness of an Aspiring Middle Power?, Lanham, MD: Lexington Book.Google Scholar
Goldstein, J. and Keohane, R.O.. (1993), ‘Ideas and foreign policy: an analytical framework’, in J. Goldstein and R.O. Keohane (eds), Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change, Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, pp. 3–30.Google Scholar
Henrikson, A.K. (1997), ‘Middle powers as managers: international mediation within, across, and outside institutions’, in A.F. Cooper (eds) Niche Diplomacy: Middle Powers After the Cold War, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 46–72.Google Scholar
Higgott, R. (1997), ‘Issues, institutions and middle-power diplomacy: action and agendas in the post-cold war era’, in A.F. Cooper (eds), Niche Diplomacy: Middle Powers After the Cold War, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 24–45.Google Scholar
Holsti, K.J. (1970), ‘National role conceptions in the study of foreign policy’, International Studies Quarterly 14(3): 233–309.Google Scholar
ICISS (2001), The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, Ottawa: International Development Research Centre.Google Scholar
Isernia, P. (2017), ‘Of what is Italian foreign policy a case?’ Italian Political Science Review, this special issue.Google Scholar
Quaglia, L. (2007), ‘The role of Italy in the European Union: between continuity and change’, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans Online 9(2): 133–148.Google Scholar
Ravenhill, J. (1998), ‘Cycles of middle power activism: constraint and choice in Australian and Canadian foreign policies’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 52(3): 309–327.Google Scholar
Romero, F. (2016), ‘Rethinking Italy’s shrinking place in the international arena’, The International Spectator 51(1): 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosati, J.A. (2000), ‘The power of human cognition in the study of world politics’, International Studies Review 2(3): 45–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stephen, M.D. (2013), ‘Middle powers and contemporary power shifts’. Concept Paper prepared for Workshop the Role of Middle Powers in the 21st Century Global Arena, Munk School of Global Affairs/University of Toronto, Toronto, November 15–16 .Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Caffarena and Gabusi supplementary material

Caffarena and Gabusi supplementary material 1

Download Caffarena and Gabusi supplementary material(File)
File 13.8 KB