https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3251-5693
![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The article accounts for the puzzling stability of citizenship regimes in Italy and Spain relying on the explanatory power of ideas. This is done by drawing upon a methodology combining process tracing methods with qualitative content analysis. In both countries ideational factors prove to be crucial in driving the evolution of nationality laws; however, according to distinct logic. In Spain it is the agreement, the sharing of a dominant citizenship conception across parties, that ensures policy continuity. When the Spanish legislator wonders about state’s intergenerational continuity, it does so by looking at the diaspora and its progenies, overlooking foreigners settled in the country. Contrariwise, in Italy it is the lack of agreement that ensures institutional stability. Beneath the Italian citizenship debate lies a heterogeneous political imaginary where different views quarrel over the way to adapt the actual system to the new immigration reality. These evidences speak to the broader debate in Political Science on the role of ideas in public policymaking.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Notwithstanding the variety of meanings and uses of the terms ‘citizenship’ and ‘nationality’, this research treats them as synonyms and in the narrow sense of a legal status linking the individual to the state.
2 Depending on the specific level of analysis and the concrete operationalisation procedures undertaken, scholars have either emphasised similarities shared by the Spanish and Italian citizenship regimes (e.g. Doomernik and Bruquetas-Callejo Citation2016; Zincone Citation2010) or pointed out their differences (e.g. Cinalli and Giugni Citation2011; Finotelli, La Barbera, and Echeverría Citation2018). Among the latter it tends to be highlighted the less restrictive character of the Spanish regime due to its easier residence-based naturalisation requirements (especially those applying to children born in the country of foreign parents - 1 year - and to Latin-American citizens - 2 years). For the aim of this study, it is worth noticing that the explanandum does not regard the normative affinities of such regimes, but it concerns their similar stability over time.
3 The most relevant changes regarded the acquisition of nationality ‘through’ marriage, which was restricted in both countries (Spanish Law 18/1990, Italian Law 94/2009), and the introduction ofcivic and language tests in Spain (Law 19/2015).
4 This is not to say that the policy area of citizenship is exempt from transnational dynamics of policy transfer and learning. The 21st century’s convergence in the use of similar ‘civic tools’ (Goodman Citation2010; Joppke Citation2007) speaks for itself with this regard.
5 This term is used as a common label embracing the most common ones of discursive institutionalism, by Schmidt (Citation2008, Citation2010), and constructivist institutionalism by Hay (Citation2007) and Béland and Cox (Citation2015). It is worth noticing that, while pursing theoretical clarity, the juxtaposition of ideational institutionalism versus older institutionalisms does not do justice to the contributions mentioned, which often embrace distinct approaches.
6 It is hard to move forward in such theoretical speculation on the content of frames marking each country, which is ultimately an empirical matter. What should be added is that one cannot rule out the possibility that countries’ dominant frames differ in terms of content, but they anyway produce analogous effects on the policymaking process.
7 Laws proposals not debated in at least one of the Chambers have been excluded.
8 These include: the Law 18/1990, the Law 29/1995, the Law 32/2002, the Law 40/2006, the Law 52/2007, and the Law 20/2011. Apart from these measures, it should be reminded the Law 12/2015 addressing Sephardic Jews.
9 This is particularly the case of Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV, Basque Nationalist Party), Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG, Galician Nationalist Bloc, BNG) and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC, Republican Left of Catalonia).
10 For instance, the need to honour the Sephardic Jews for the injustices suffered during the Reconquista finds response in the Law 12/2015 ensuring them a favourable naturalisation procedure and backed by most of the Parliament.
11 In the 1990s, when the Socialists were an opposition party have indeed put forward several bill-proposals aimed at liberalising naturalisation, all of which were rejected by the centre-right ruling majorities.
12 The diaspora-nationality nexus is not absent from the Italian political discourse and, as in Spain, finds favourable stances by all parties (as testified by the approval of the aws 396/2000 and 124/2006 recognising the right to Italian citizenship to descendants of the Italians who had resided in former Austro-Hungarian Empire and Yugoslavia). That being said, it remains a marginal issue of the political debate analysed.
13 That of citizenship has been one of the burning issues of the party’s internal crisis in 2010. This ended up with the scission of Alleanza Nazionale and the formation of a new political actor Futuro e Libertà per l'Italia (FLI, Future and Freedom for Italy), led by Gianfranco Fini and made up by former AN and FI’s members.
14 In this regard, the amount of of reform proposals on the matter is revealing if compared to the Spanish context.
