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Abstract
There is a need for a reassessment of the Italian contribution to international affairs. If a more comprehensive and pluralist reading of Italian action at the international level is developed, an image of normative power Italy may emerge. Italian input has been crucial in a number of transnational campaigns that have had significant impact at the international level. The cases of the peace in Mozambique, the International Criminal Court, the Moratorium on the Death Penalty and, more recently, the Ban on Female Genital Mutilation all illustrate Italy’s contribution to international affairs, especially the politics of norm change. These cases are all characterised by the presence of intense civil society-government synergy. In order to advance the understanding of the processes and impact of transnational mobilisations, this analysis examines the domestic conditions that facilitated such synergy, intended as key conditions for the empowerment of transnational activism itself.
Notes
1 Slaughter, A New World Order.
2 Alfieri, La politica estera delle regioni.
3 Bonanni, Politica estera della Repubblica Italiana.
4 Respectively, Renda and Ricciuti, Tra economia e politica; Varsori, “Il movimento sindacale”; Pilati, “Political Parties and Italian Foreign Policy”; Lucarelli and Radaelli, “Italy: Think Tanks”; Cugliandro, “New Actors on the Horizon”.
5 Pianta, “Imagination Without Power”; Marcon, Le ambiguità degli aiuti umanitari; Moro and Vannini, Società civile tra eredità e sfide.
6 Pianta, Globalizzazione dal basso; Andretta et al., Global, noglobal, new global; Reiter et al., “The Global Justice Movement in Italy”.
7 Lodi, Uniti e diversi; Ilari, “Storia politica del movimento pacifista”; Giacomini, “I movimenti per la pace”.
8 Marcon and Pianta, “La dinamica del pacifismo”; Marcon, Dopo il Kosovo.
9 Ruzza, “Institutionalization of the Italian Peace Movement”; Della Porta, “No to the War”.
10 Marchetti, “The Politics of Transnational Campaigning”; Nessuno tocchi Caino, “La campagna del Partito Radicale”; Marchetti and Marino, “La campagna per la moratoria”.
11 Giro, “The Community of Sant’Egidio”; Morozzo della Rocca, Fare pace; Gentili, Lessons from Mozambican Peace Process.
12 Rosi, “Etica e pratica”.
13 See, for instance, the otherwise sophisticated study by Brighi, Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics.
14 See, for instance, the comprehensive study by Reiter et al., “The Global Justice Movement in Italy”.
15 McCarthy and Zald, “Resources Mobilization and Social Movements”.
16 Goffman, Frame Analysis.
17 McAdam et al., Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements.
18 Keane, Civil Society and the State.
19 Price, “Transnational Civil Society and Advocacy”, 592.
20 Busby, Moral Movements and Foreign Policy.
21 An exception is constituted by those studies concentrating on the inclusion of CSOs in official national negotiation delegations (Glasius, The International Criminal Court).
22 Uvin, “From Local Organizations to Global Governance” Utting et al., Global Justice Activism.
23 Risse-Kappen, Bringing Transnational Relations Back In; Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders; Risse et al., The Power of Human Rights; Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism.
24 Ragin, The Comparative Method.
25 A more exhaustive analysis will be provided in Marchetti, “L’Italia che cambia il mondo”.
26 The Community of Sant’Egidio, founded in Rome in 1968, is a Catholic movement aiming at disseminating the Gospel, interfaith dialogue and assistance to the poor. It has 50,000 collaborators and works in 70 countries. It has a long tradition of peace mediation, especially in Africa.
27 Gianturco, “La pace in Mozambico”.
28 An informal gathering of mainly private citizens intended to raise awareness and collect funding for the Mozambican cause.
29 Mediation was attempted by, among others, Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Malawi.
30 Gentili, Lessons from the Mozambican Peace Process.
31 Giro, “The Community of Sant’Egidio”.
32 NPWJ is an international non-profit organisation founded by Emma Bonino as the result of a 1993 Radical Party campaign that works for the protection and promotion of human rights, democracy, the rule of law and international justice. It works on three main issues: international criminal justice, female genital mutilation; and MENA democracy. The Nonviolent Radical Party, Transnational and Transparty is a political association of citizens, parliamentarians and members of government of various national and political backgrounds who use nonviolent means to promote human rights and democracy. It has consultative status at the ECOSOC.
33 Glasius, The International Criminal Court.
34 Cakmak, “Transnational Activism in World Politics”, 387.
35 In 1764, the Italian criminologist, Cesare Beccaria, published a cornerstone pamphlet on the issue of the death penalty, On Crimes and Punishments. The first political entity to abolish the death penalty was allegedly the Grand Duchy of Florence. In 1787, the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo of Tuscany passed a law to this end.
36 HOC is an organisation of the Radical Party, founded in 1994 and based in Brussels. HOC is predominantly committed to the issue of abolishing the death penalty and, beyond lobbying, mainly monitors capital punishment in the world, awarding the “Abolitionist Prize”.
37 Nessuno tocchi Caino, “La campagna del Partito Radicale”; Zamparutti, La pena di morte nel mondo; Marazzitti, “Diplomazia umanitaria”.
38 Sculier, Towards a Universal Moratorium.
39 UN General Assembly, Resolution on the Moratorium.
40 United Nations General Assembly, Intensifying Global Efforts.
41 United Nations, Ending Female Genital Mutilation.
42 Just a few examples of this kind of interchange include Emma Bonino, leader of NPWJ and currently Minister of Foreign Affairs; Andrea Riccardi, leader of the Community and former Minister of International Cooperation and Integration in the Monti government; and Mario Giro, key member of the Community and currently Under-secretary for Foreign Affairs. The difference between the degree of viability of civil society-government synergy at the international and domestic levels should be noted here. According to Moro and Vannini, at the national level such synergy tends to be less productive (Moro and Vannini, La società civile tra eredità e sfide, 109–13).
43 In 1999, 33.3 percent of Italian citizens were members of a CSO (IREF, L’impronta civica, 253).
44 Moro and Vannini, La società civile tra eredità e sfide, 170.
45 Ibid., 79–82.
46 Tarrow, “Transnational Politics”, 15.
An earlier version of this article was presented at the seminar of the Groupe d’études pluridisciplinaires sur l’Italie contemporaine (GREPIC), Sciences Po, Paris, and at a panel of the Standing Group di Relazioni Internazionali (SGRI) of the Società Italiana di Scienze Politiche (SISP), Trent. The author would like to thank all the participants for their comments, in particular Giampiero Giacomello, who acted as discussant; later, the comments of two anonymous reviewers were also extremely helpful. Special thanks go to Federica Mogherini and Sidney Tarrow for urging the author to reflect on the issue of CSO-government synergy, and to Jim Caporaso, Marco Perduca and Mario Marazziti for commenting on a previous draft.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Raffaele Marchetti
Raffaele Marchetti is Assistant Professor of International Relations at LUISS, Rome. Email: [email protected].
