Italy and international human rights: facing role contestation

ABSTRACT

Did the 2018–2019 Conte I Cabinet’s approach to human rights also mirror a deeper change in the established national conception of the role the country should play in the international human rights regime? Applying Role Theory to the analysis of Italian decision makers’ positions on the country’s foreign policy vis-à-vis human rights norms and institutions during this period, the article reveals the existence of a phase of ‘role contestation’ among Italian leaders. A new isolationist, uncooperative and delegitimising conception of both multilateralism and its human rights priorities clashed with a commitment to preserve the traditional conception of the country as a responsible multilateralist and principled actor, producing contradictory foreign policy behaviour and affecting the country’s international reputation and credibility.

KEYWORDS:

• Italian foreign policy
• human rights
• national role conceptions
• foreign policy analysis
• populism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Analysts tend to refer to both the M5s and the League as ‘populists’ (Moschella and Rhodes 2020; Newell 2020; Verbeek and Zaslove 2017). While this allows us to conceptualize the Conte I cabinet as ‘fully populist’, there are important differences to be highlighted, especially if, following Mudde (2004), populism is considered a ‘thin-centred ideology’, and the analysis focuses on multilateral HR cooperation. We thus consider the League to be a (populist) radical right party, one that shares with this ‘distinct political family’ in Europe (Chryssogelos 2017) a desire to exclude migrants and scepticism of international organizations (which are included among the ‘nefarious forces’ that the ‘real people’ must resist). In contrast, we consider the M5s to be a hybrid populist party, one that leans to the left on issues such as support of peacekeeping and humanitarianism (Coticchia and Vignoli 2020), but that oscillates between left and right on other crucial foreign policy and HR issues such as the management of human trafficking and migratory flows (Geddes and Pettrachin 2020).

2. The actual percentages for each leader were: Salvini, 42%; Conte, 25%; Moavero, 7%.

3. Elite survey conducted by the Laboratory for Political and Social Analysis (LAPS) of the University of Siena, 20 January-16 August 2016.

4. https://www.facebook.com/LuigiDiMaio/posts/1328205963882613/

5. Available at http://www.radioradicale.it/scheda/593756/allocuzione-del-segretario-generale-delle-nazioni-unite-antonio-guterres-ai-senatori-e.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pietro de Perini

Pietro de Perini holds a Ph.D in International Politics (City, University of London) and is research fellow in the Department of Political Science, Law and International Studies, University of Padova, where he teaches Human Rights in International Politics within the framework of the MA degree Programme ‘Human Rights and Multi-level Governance’. He is affiliated with the Human Rights Centre of the University, on whose behalf he acts as co-editor-in-chief of the Italian Yearbook of Human Rights. He is managing editor of the scientific journal, Peace Human Rights Governance (PHRG).