{"title":"Fratelli d’Italia in the European Parliament: between radicalism and conservatism","authors":"Edoardo Bressanelli, M. de Candia","doi":"10.1080/23248823.2023.2285545","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article studies the behaviour of Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) in the European Parliament (EP). Analysing a large sample of roll-call votes in the ninth EP (2019–2022), together with a selected sample of highly significant votes on COVID-19 and post-pandemic recovery, it shows that FdI has the strongest voting agreement with its allies in the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group and votes more often with the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) than with the more extreme Identity and Democracy (ID) group. FdI is often part of the winning coalition, shaping legislation or seeking to influence the policy agenda of the EU. On COVID-19 and post-pandemic votes, FdI often took a moderate approach on key issues, and did so even when it was the only party in opposition to the Draghi executive in Rome. At the same time, FdI has not renounced its ideological battles on specific policies, such as those having to do with socio-cultural issues and, to some extent, EU institutional issues. Yet, notwithstanding the evidence of more moderate and cooperative behaviour at the EU level, FdI may find it challenging to fully recast itself as a conservative, rather than a radical-right party, at the national level.","PeriodicalId":37572,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Italian Politics","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Contemporary Italian Politics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2023.2285545","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article studies the behaviour of Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) in the European Parliament (EP). Analysing a large sample of roll-call votes in the ninth EP (2019–2022), together with a selected sample of highly significant votes on COVID-19 and post-pandemic recovery, it shows that FdI has the strongest voting agreement with its allies in the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group and votes more often with the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) than with the more extreme Identity and Democracy (ID) group. FdI is often part of the winning coalition, shaping legislation or seeking to influence the policy agenda of the EU. On COVID-19 and post-pandemic votes, FdI often took a moderate approach on key issues, and did so even when it was the only party in opposition to the Draghi executive in Rome. At the same time, FdI has not renounced its ideological battles on specific policies, such as those having to do with socio-cultural issues and, to some extent, EU institutional issues. Yet, notwithstanding the evidence of more moderate and cooperative behaviour at the EU level, FdI may find it challenging to fully recast itself as a conservative, rather than a radical-right party, at the national level.
期刊介绍:
Contemporary Italian Politics, formerly Bulletin of Italian Politics, is a political science journal aimed at academics and policy makers as well as others with a professional or intellectual interest in the politics of Italy. The journal has two main aims: Firstly, to provide rigorous analysis, in the English language, about the politics of what is one of the European Union’s four largest states in terms of population and Gross Domestic Product. We seek to do this aware that too often those in the English-speaking world looking for incisive analysis and insight into the latest trends and developments in Italian politics are likely to be stymied by two contrasting difficulties. On the one hand, they can turn to the daily and weekly print media. Here they will find information on the latest developments, sure enough; but much of it is likely to lack the incisiveness of academic writing and may even be straightforwardly inaccurate. On the other hand, readers can turn either to general political science journals – but here they will have to face the issue of fragmented information – or to specific journals on Italy – in which case they will find that politics is considered only insofar as it is part of the broader field of modern Italian studies[...] The second aim follows from the first insofar as, in seeking to achieve it, we hope thereby to provide analysis that readers will find genuinely useful. With research funding bodies of all kinds giving increasing emphasis to knowledge transfer and increasingly demanding of applicants that they demonstrate the relevance of what they are doing to non-academic ‘end users’, political scientists have a self-interested motive for attempting a closer engagement with outside practitioners.