Introduction: Italy in the eyes of others

Abstract

The international role and status of Italy among international powers has been an issue of debate in both the political and the academic context. What has never been systematically investigated is the way in which other powers with which Italy interacts in institutional contexts perceive Italy and its international role. It is the aim of this special issue to provide an overview of how Italy is perceived abroad. This introduction explains why it is worth looking at international images of Italy, and sums up the findings of the research project.

Keywords:

• Italy
• foreign policy
• identity
• images
• perceptions

Notes

Notes

1. This special issue is part of a broader research project on Italian Foreign Policy: Role Conceptions, Alliances and International Performance, financed by the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research as PRIN 2005, in which a unit coordinated by Luciano Bardi of the University of Pisa dealt with the external image of Italy. The contributions in this special issue drawn from this research project are those by Pizzimenti, Chelotti, Croci and Tossutti; the others were commissioned for the purposes of this special issue. We are grateful to Luciano Bardi and the other participants in the project for their contributions, comments and insights. We are equally grateful to the colleagues who anonymously reviewed the articles of this Special issue for their constructive criticism.

2. See, for instance, Foradori and Rosa (2007) as well as Coticchia and Giacomello (2008). For a comparative analysis of Italy and other European states’ involvement in EU peacekeeping operations as part of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), see Attinà (2010).

3. Indeed all Italians seem to share such a preoccupation. Every time one of the two authors (Croci) returns to Italy, the first question he is invariably asked by old acquaintances sitting in the café he used to patronize as a teenager is: ‘Che si dice di noi all’estero? (What do people say about us abroad?).

4. Indeed, there are very few systematic studies on external images. The only two systematic research projects that we are aware of regarded the external image of the European Union, one coordinated by Sonia Lucarelli (and Lorenzo Fioramonti in Phase Two) in the framework of the Network of Excellence GARNET (http://www.garnet-eu.org/fileadmin/documents/Activities/Flyer_survey_External_Image.pdf), and the other coordinated by Martin Holland (<http://www.europe.canterbury.ac.nz/appp/project_description/>). Among the publications of these two projects: Lucarelli (2007), Lucarelli and Fioramonti (2009) and Holland and Chaban (2008).