This article examines French–Italian relations focusing in particular on economic exchanges and French perceptions of Italy as revealed in parliamentary debates and in the French press. The analysis suggests that in the eyes of the French, Italy is a two-faced Janus, rich in both defects and positive qualities. Except perhaps for the shrewdest observers, it is difficult for the French to come to terms with all the subtleties and complexities of the real Italy.

The Italian political crisis of 1993–1994 and the new political dynamics to which it gave rise, and which persist today, have strongly shaped both public debate and historiographical reflection on the Italian Republic. This article assesses the impact of the political changes of the post-1994 period (and notably Berlusconi's entry into politics) on the debate over the so-called First Republic, with regard to: Italian national identity in the post-Fascist period; the functioning of the political system, especially in relation to the role of the political parties; anti-Fascism and its internal divisions; communism and anti-communism.

This essay examines the presence of Garibaldi in the politics of contemporary Italy by focusing in particular on the publications released on or around the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the hero in the milieux that oppose the Italian state and contest the idea of an Italian nation. After a brief review of previous political appropriations (and rejections) of Garibaldi in the course of modern Italian history, the essay examines the ideological ingredients and rhetorical strategies of the representations of Garibaldi produced by Northern League and neo-Bourbon ideologues, which also surface in extreme neo-fascist and ultra-Catholic groups. It shows that while some ‘anti-myth’ ingredients are shared across this politically diverse constellation, others are more specific to their individual components. In particular Northern League ideologues use some of the clichés of the discourse of Italian character (in the negative) to claim their own difference (in the positive). The essay also points out that the visibility enjoyed by these versions of Italian history is greatly enhanced by the availability of new media technologies such as the internet (with the related effect of ‘group polarisation’), as well as by the presence of the Northern League in the ruling right-wing coalition led by media mogul Berlusconi, who has an inordinate degree of control over the national media.

Italian security policy literature reveals, usually implicitly rather than explicitly, two distinct strains of analysis. One set of explanations, rooted in realist theory, views Italian foreign policy behaviour by reference to its power position. A second set of arguments, rooted in liberalism, assumes that policy-makers are ultimately influenced by domestic institutional factors in deciding foreign policy issues. The purpose of this article is to offer a theoretical contribution to the ongoing debate on continuity and change in Italian foreign policy. While neorealist and liberal theories have been widely used to explain the development of Italian international behaviour, neither approach has yet provided a full explanation of Italian security policy since the end of the Cold War. In contrast to these theories, it is argued that Italy has built its foreign policy on the basis of cultural considerations involving conflicting strategies of action.

The article analyses how Spanish perceptions of Italian domestic politics and its international role have changed over the last decade. The first part of the article presents an overview of the most significant fields of cooperation between the two countries and of the images of Italy in Spanish politics. There follows the reconstruction of non-institutional perceptions through an analysis of articles concerning Italy published by two major Spanish newspapers. The article concludes that the traditional image of Italy as a positive model to imitate has faded away and a more competitive attitude has emerged.

At the end of 2009, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced that 2010 would be the year of reforms in Italy (Il Sole 24 Ore, 26 December 2009). Indeed Mr Berlusconi and the question of institutional reforms have been the crucial elements of Italian political discourse and debate in recent years. However, while much has been said and written about the former, a number of key questions still beg to be answered about the latter. First of all, what reforms are we talking about? Are these a specific package of institutional engineering or are they, rather, an eye-catching and consensus-building yet still diffused set of aspirations? In either case, what vision of twenty-first-century Italy do they reflect or propose? Is there consensus enough – within and across parliamentary coalitions – on what the priorities ought to be and how they should be tackled?

There have been many reflections on the relations between the judge and the historian which have concentrated on the differences between these two figures: but what happens in cases where an historian collaborates openly with a judge as an expert consultant? What happens when an investigative office, or a court, asks an historian to reconstruct an event which is subject to a judicial procedure, or when he or she has to pronounce the ‘last word’ on an event or a document? Or, in another possible scenario, what happens when a community asks an historian to pronounce on what happened in the past, in order to ascertain which, between two contesting memories of the representation of an event, is the one which corresponds to what ‘really happened’? In these cases historians are sought out to establish the truth–their professional skills as ‘truth experts’ are called upon. And there is an extraordinary faith that the truth will be discovered. The author reflects on these issues, using as a starting point his own personal experiences as a consultant in some recent Italian war-crimes trials.