Modern ItalyPub Date : 2025-01-22DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.50
Rosa Mulè, Stefano Toso
{"title":"The political drivers of antipoverty policy in Italy: persistence, change and reversals","authors":"Rosa Mulè, Stefano Toso","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.50","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.50","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article analyses the political determinants of antipoverty policy in Italy between 1948 and 2022, providing a long-term analysis of the Italian minimum income scheme. We look for an explanation of that evolution drawing on three theoretical perspectives: veto players, gradual institutional change, and party competition. Our methodology is process tracing which involves the examination of ‘diagnostic’ pieces of evidence for our broad political-historical analysis. We argue that the so called ‘neglect’ phase until 1992 can be explained by the veto players theory, the period after 1992 by gradual institutional change, whereas the final introduction of a minimum income scheme in 2018 is the result of competitive dynamics. The main lesson is that a case study analysis of the politics of anti-poverty policy offers fresh insights into a major challenge in capitalist systems, combating rising poverty trends.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"206 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142992730","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2025-01-22DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.61
Claudio Monopoli
{"title":"Shaped by censoring attitudes: pornography in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italy","authors":"Claudio Monopoli","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.61","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.61","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Through an analysis of the Italian context, this article illustrates how censoring attitudes shaped the modern meaning of pornography between the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the years of the Great War. The difference between the ideas of pornography and obscenity is pointed out through a concise examination of censorship archive documents from the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, the State of the Church, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, followed by an overview about how sexuality was intended by Italian sexologists and moralist intellectuals during the period of nation-building following the unification of 1861. In their writings, pornography is described as a source of corruption, especially for young people, and a social threat to be stopped. From 1891 onwards, mobilisations and struggles against pornography were organised by associations and politicians: these activities and debates, which led to the demand for specific legislation to address this phenomenon, are here reconstructed through newspaper articles and archive documents until the Great War period, when the use of the word pornography became even wider, as well as the debates around it and its social meaning.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"120 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142992733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2025-01-22DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.71
Giacomo Bonan
{"title":"Old woods, new rule: the annexation of Veneto to the Kingdom of Italy from a forest history perspective","authors":"Giacomo Bonan","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.71","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.71","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper analyses the period following the annexation of Veneto to the Kingdom of Italy in 1866 from the standpoint of forest history. Recent historiography has demonstrated that the development of scientific forestry was a crucial factor in the state-building process. Post-unification Veneto provides an opportunity to explore these dynamics from a decentralised perspective, focusing on two critical aspects, relevant in Italy as in many other countries at that time: (a) the administration's attempts to study and manage forest resources, and (b) the forest conflicts arising from economic and institutional transformations in rural areas.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142992729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2025-01-20DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.59
Carmine Pinto, Gian Luca Fruci
{"title":"‘Brigantaggio’ revisited: historiographical experiences and prospects for research","authors":"Carmine Pinto, Gian Luca Fruci","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.59","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.59","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article describes the results of the <span>Progetto di ricerca di interesse nazionale</span> (Research Project of National Interest [PRIN]) ‘<span>Il brigantaggio rivisitato</span>’ (‘“<span>Brigantaggio</span>” Revisited’), which investigated the practices and imagery of brigandage (and the fight against it) in modern and contemporary Italy from a Euro-Atlantic perspective. A large community of scholars, both within Italy and further afield, tackled numerous historiographical issues: forms of rural criminality in the modern age; the profile of the brigands (both male and female); their level of politicisation and relationship with the Legitimists and the Catholic Church; the reaction of the security forces and the unification movement; the evolving definition of the word ‘brigand’; the politics and military strategy of the post-unification anti-brigandry campaign; and the interaction between the local dimension and global view of banditry and irregular warfare. In-depth work was also conducted on the image of the bandits spread through visual and material culture by the media and on their performative consequences in different eras, through to their present-day reuse.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142989847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2025-01-20DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.60
Lucie Bargel, Carlo Caprioglio, Enrico Gargiulo, Daniela Trucco
{"title":"Migrations, citizenship and administrative borders: the Italian case","authors":"Lucie Bargel, Carlo Caprioglio, Enrico Gargiulo, Daniela Trucco","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.60","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.60","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This contribution summarises the scientific discussions that developed during a one-year cycle of international and interdisciplinary seminars focusing on the relationship between migration and citizenship in Italy. We considered human mobilities in their relation to the politico-administrative institutions of the state and observed the latter's attempt to define and govern them. The relative marginality of the Italian case in the literature about state building, nation building and citizenship is an opportunity to examine these processes with fresh eyes. The first section is a critical analysis of the policies regulating access to Italian citizenship. The second examines the entanglement between external and internal migrations and how they are governed, considering various administrative borders and statuses such as Italian municipal residency. The third section addresses the role of different field actors (from street-level bureaucrats to legal practitioners and activists) in shaping or negotiating the borders of citizenship while implementing the law.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142989852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-12-27DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.54
Virgile Cirefice
{"title":"Public space at stake: competing forms of territorialisation and the construction of a democratic public space in the first years of the Italian Republic","authors":"Virgile Cirefice","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.54","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.54","url":null,"abstract":"The end of the civil war, the fall of the Italian Social Republic, the allied occupation and the gradual transition to the new Italian Republic not only set Italy on the path to democracy, but also gradually gave Italians access to a new public space. This article proposes to revisit the classic question of the legacy of Fascism by looking at the question of space and the difficult construction of a genuine democratic space. During the <jats:italic>ventennio</jats:italic>, opponents were largely denied access to common spaces, both symbolically and physically. The article raises the question of violence and the exclusive appropriation of space, showing that the representations and practices inherited from Fascism did not disappear overnight. But these practices of space were not always violent: by looking at aspects that are often neglected (graffiti, manifestos, noises and singing), the aim is to show that the transition took time and was sometimes complicated, despite the political leaders of the Italian Republic claiming to have opened up a completely new era.","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142887422","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-12-27DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.58
Sean Christian Wyer
{"title":"Signposting the Meschita: Palermo's medieval Jewish quarter as a site of memory","authors":"Sean Christian Wyer","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.58","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.58","url":null,"abstract":"Street signs in Italian, Hebrew and Arabic, installed in the twenty-first century, mark Palermo's former Jewish quarter, over half a millennium since Sicily last had a substantial Jewish population. They recall a medieval Jewish minority, but also symbolise what some consider to be Palermo's essentially pluralistic character. What motivates this inchoate revival of ‘Jewish space’, and what does it mean for contemporary Palermo? ‘Rebranding’ Palermo as a crossroads of civilisations encourages tourism, but this alone does not explain the re-evaluation of its multi-religious heritage. Palermo is an often-overlooked case study for the contemporary emergence of Jewish ‘sites of memory’. Using a micro-scale ethnographic study to analyse a narrative rooted in history, I show how the ‘rediscovery’ of Jewish history can have multiple catalysts. In Palermo, these include a Europe-wide interest in ‘things Jewish’, and Sicily's increasing religious diversity in the present.","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142887423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-11-21DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.44
Anna Carola Freschi, Vittorio Mete
{"title":"Women candidates and mayors in Italy (1993–2021)","authors":"Anna Carola Freschi, Vittorio Mete","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.44","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.44","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article uses an original dataset to sketch a portrait of women mayoral candidates and women elected as mayors in Italy in the period 1993–2021. The analysis highlights several significant findings. Women must compensate for their political marginality by deploying other resources, such as higher levels of education. Nevertheless, women are penalised not only by the reluctance of parties to put them forward as candidates, but also by the elections themselves. More specifically, the electoral presence and strength of women decreases when the population size of the municipality grows, except for municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Moreover, women candidates are most disadvantaged in geographical areas where the socioeconomic condition of women is more marginal. However, women mayors running for a second mandate have the same chance of winning as men. Finally, it is the protest parties, rather than the left-wing parties, that are revealed as doing the most to promote women.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142678866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-11-14DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.37
Dario Tuorto, Vittorio Mete, Andrea Hajek
{"title":"A disaffected, right-wing, conflicted Italy: the general elections of 25 September 2022","authors":"Dario Tuorto, Vittorio Mete, Andrea Hajek","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.37","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.37","url":null,"abstract":"<p>You can never really get tired of Italian politics. Over the last 30 years, we have seen many turning points, the most memorable of which was undoubtedly Silvio Berlusconi's unexpected ‘descent into the field’ in 1994. Nor have we been deprived of colourful characters, such as Matteo Renzi or Matteo Salvini, who, as their careers took off, ended up burning their wings. And after many unsuccessful attempts, imagination has finally come to power (as they used to say in the 1960s), although the 1968 generation has nothing to do with it. Indeed, all the credit goes to the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S), whose activists were seen carrying their leader Beppe Grillo – sitting in a dinghy – through the streets of Bologna during a procession of sorts. The general elections of 25 September 2022 added an important chapter to recent Italian political history, which has sometimes taken on a dramatic tone but more often that of a comedy or even a farce. All in all, nothing out of the ordinary; in the society of the spectacle, this is how the Darwinian struggle for political survival can also be played out.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142610729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern ItalyPub Date : 2024-10-17DOI: 10.1017/mit.2024.38
Rosario Forlenza
{"title":"Rethinking the end of Christian Democracy","authors":"Rosario Forlenza","doi":"10.1017/mit.2024.38","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2024.38","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article is about the seminar held at Luiss University in Rome on 17 June 2024. The seminar focused on ‘The End of Christian Democracy: A New Direction for Research’ and was the first milestone and official launch of the PRIN research project ‘The End of Christian Democracy: The Collapse of a Political Dream – Voices from the Margins’, led by a consortium of four universities: Luiss, Roma Tre, Bologna and Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples.</p>","PeriodicalId":18688,"journal":{"name":"Modern Italy","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142444502","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}