Italian politics and the European Union: A tale of two research designs

Abstract

Drawing on the conceptual framework of Europeanisation, we trace the influence of the European Union (EU) on Italian politics by combining top-down analysis (that is, how Italy has adapted to pressure coming from Brussels) with a bottom-up examination of how Italian policy makers have encountered the EU in their attempts to pursue domestic policy goals. We find that the foreign policy orientation and policy preferences of the governing coalition determine the posture, style and choice of institutional venues. Taken together, bottom-up and top-down assessments of Europeanisation suggest that, during the second Berlusconi government, the influence of the EU in Italian politics was limited – although not trivial. When the Berlusconi government (2001–06) faced high pressure, it tried to reduce it at source rather than adapting to EU policies. By contrast, the centre-left governments (1996–2001) used pressure as a lever for policy change, while the governments of the 1980s responded to pressure by delaying implementation.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Marina Falbo for her valuable research assistance. We also wish to thank the editors of this special edition, Martin Bull and Martin Rhodes, for their comments on the first draft of this article, as well as Bruno Dente, Alison Harcourt, David Natali, Francesco Stolfi and Luca Verzichelli for their comments. A draft of this article was delivered to the research seminars series of the Centre for European Studies, University of Bradford, on 1 February 2007. All errors and omissions are ours.

Notes

1. Available at http://www.alef-fvg.it/csa/txt/2005/legislazione-it-04.pdf.

2. Moreover, the European Commission also criticised Italian fiscal policy for the several one-off measures.

3. Panebianco (2006) observes that this did not reward the centre-right in 2006 – more public sector employees voted for the left than for the right.