Italy between Europeanization and Domestic Politics
in Italian PoliticsThere has been a continuous discussion since the second half of the
1980s on the transformation of the most important political, institutional,
and social structures within states, especially European
states. If a polity is defined as the various spheres—political, institutional
and social—that constitute states, then it may be argued that
changes on a European and global scale, along with transformations
that affect the sub-national level of government, have given rise to a
series of structural constraints and factors that shape political and
social life well beyond the borders of the national state. It is a discussion
that has not spared Italy, especially given the scale of change
experienced in the 1990s. This is not to say that internal factors no
longer exert an element of agency. Rather, endogenous forces need to
be placed within a broader context. The links between exogenous
influences and endogenous dynamics might help explain the continuity
and change of the structures of various national polities. The
events of 2003, presented in the chapters that follow, provide ample
material in this respect.