Italy’s Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century: The New Assertiveness of an Aspiring Middle Power, edited by Giampiero Giacomello and Bertjan Verbeek, fills a gap in the middle powers literature in general because of its focus on Italy. Relying on insights from foreign policy analysis, it offers an innovative theoretical inroad into Italian foreign policy by linking European and international factors with domestic processes of status making. Finally, this volume focuses on actors, issues, and policy instruments in vital areas of Italy’s foreign policy rather than bilateral relations between Italy and other counties or regions.

Italy’s foreign policy has often been dismissed as too idiosyncratic, inconsistent and lacking ambition. This book offers new insights into the position Italy has attained in the international community in the 21st century. It explores how the country has sought to take advantage of its passage from a bipolar to a multipolar system and assesses the ways in which it has engaged internationally, its new responsibilities, and the manner in which it conducts its policies in the pursuit of its interests, whether political or commercial. It argues that although Italy is engaged internationally, there is a gap between its actions and what it actually delivers, and as long as this gap continues Italy is likely to remain a partial and unreliable foreign policy actor. Divided into three parts, this book explores: the context and processes which characterise Italy’s external action its relations with crucial countries and regions such as the US, the EU, and the BRICs its security and defence policies. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of European Politics, Foreign Policy analysis and Italian studies.

In the years since 9/11, followed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, public attention the world over has been on foreign policy. From the United States to Yemen, from China to Venezuela, the quality of the decisions taken by politicians and diplomats has been under the closest scrutiny. What is more, with the increased personal mobility created by globalization, many individuals and groups now focus as much on international events as on affairs within their own state. Diasporas, company managers, humanitarian volunteers and other non-state actors are aware of the necessity for effective diplomacy to secure the outcomes they hope for. This revised and retitled new edition of the author's acclaimed The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy provides the concepts and analysis needed to make sense of contemporary developments in this key site of political action. It provides a clear and engaging synthesis of what foreign policy means in the twenty-first century and shows how it can vary according to regime, level of development and geopolitical position. Stressing the interplay between context and shared dilemmas, it examines how actors – including the many non- and sub-state entities which have developed international strategies – engage, and attempt to manage their differences, within a network of complex multilateral relationships. Written by a leading scholar of international renown, this new edition has been updated throughout, with particular attention given to contemporary issues such as soft power, transnational security challenges and the role of regional actors such as the European Union. New to this Edition: - Substantially revised and updated new edition of an extremely influential, acclaimed and widely used foreign policy text - Updated coverage of events and theory

The issues raised by the Iraq War are symptomatic of larger phenomena that will continue to preoccupy American foreign policy makers well into the twenty-first century. The war on terror, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, humanitarian intervention, and a litany of other concerns on the foreign policy agenda pose complex dilemmas for which there are no simple answers. Through lucid, lively analysis, as well as multiple illustrations and case studies, US Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century explores the difficult choices that confront the United States today in a complicated and often dangerous post-Cold War environment. Author J. Martin Rochester engages students in an intelligent examination of American foreign policy past, present, and future, involving them in critical thinking about how foreign policy is made, what factors affect foreign policy decisions and behavior, and how one might go about not only describing and explaining foreign policy but also evaluating it and prescribing solutions.

This edited collection analyzes the innovative changes in Japan’s foreign policy. Pursuing new relationships with South Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, Japanese initiatives include regional peace-building and human security activities, Asian multilateralism, and the Indo-Pacific concept. This collection focuses on these evolving international relationships through Japan’s unique approach to political change and continuity.

This book offers a re-examination of foreign policy, in its relation with domestic politics and international relations (IR). Bringing together a vast body of literature from IR, foreign policy analysis, comparative politics and public policy, this book systematically reconceptualises foreign policy as a dialectic, produced by the interplay of context, strategy and discourse. It argues that foreign policy defies easy understandings and necessitates a complex framework of analysis, introducing the ‘Strategic-Relational Model’, as conceptualised in critical realism, for the first time to the field of foreign policy analysis. Combining a comprehensive investigation of the last century of Italian foreign policy with an exploration of a key theoretical issue within the field of foreign policy analysis and IR, this book analyses key episodes within Italian foreign policy, including Italy’s Cold War alliance politics, colonial interventions, fascist foreign policy and Italy’s participation in the wars of Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. It provides a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the long-term historical trajectory of Italian foreign policy, from the Liberal age to the ‘Second Republic’, including all four governments of Silvio Berlusconi. Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics and International Relations will be of interest to students and scholars of International Relations, Foreign Policy Analysis and Italian politics.

This book sets out to explain the foreign policy of Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (February 2014 to December 2016). It offers a unique analytical framework to make sense of Renzi’s foreign policy: the domestically-focused outsider. It argues that to untangle Renzi’s foreign policy one must first understand that his clear priority was enacting domestic economic and political reforms. Domestic focus means that Renzi made foreign policy decisions with a sensitivity to public opinion and party unity. The book also argues that Renzi’s status as an outsider in Italian politics—having previously served only as the mayor of Florence—provides critical insight into his foreign policy. Renzi was prone to skepticism of the establishment and dramatic, symbolic gestures rather than patient coalition building. The book applies this framework to the five most important foreign policy issues Renzi’s government faced: migration, finance and the EU, Russia, ISIL, and Libya. The book’s analysis of the cases benefits from over twenty elite interviews, including those with senior members of Renzi’s government.

Irregular migration is one of the most momentous phenomena of the 21st century. While it is a life‐changing process for migrants themselves, it also entails a number of significant challenges for destination countries and their local populations. Consequently, irregular migration is now a heavily debated and polarising issue in most receiving states. However, the multiple perspectives on this phenomenon are rarely assessed together, and states’ role in shaping national and international responses remains understudied, which hinders a comprehensive understanding of irregular migration governance. To address this issue, this innovative book investigates irregular migration by concurrently analysing the viewpoints of migrants, states, and their local populations. To that end, it builds on multidisciplinary insights from international relations, migration studies, political science, and other disciplines, and adopts Italy and Australia as two highly relevant yet rarely compared case studies, with a focus on their migratory foreign policies. In arguing for a multidisciplinary and holistic interpretation of irregular migration, it sheds new light on an influential and permanent feature of our times through key theory, security, and policy implications, as well as with relevant proposals. It also provides an assessment of unfolding trends, novel insights, and potential future outlooks based on the latest data and published research. This book is therefore a valuable resource for academics, migration and security professionals, policymakers, diplomats, journalists, and students.

This book analyzes how variations in the traditional pillars of Italian foreign policy (the US, the EU and multilateralism) can be related to changes in the US-led international hegemonic order and to the role that Italy plays within that order. To explore these variations, the book proposes an analysis of the Italian voting and sponsoring behavior at the UN in the period 2000-2017, in both the General Assembly and the Security Council, and emphasizes the importance of the latter forum to detect how Italian behavior reflects changes at the international system level. By focusing on the Italian coalition behavior, the book explores how Italy as a status seeking middle power has traditionally played the role of coalition facilitator, adapting its foreign policy to be part of a coalition of European states and building on this coalition to increase its contribution to the maintenance of the international system in support of the US-led order. Ultimately this behavior also contributed to its status. However, at a moment when traditional coalitions are reshuffling, and elements of uncertainty are present, elements of volatility are present in Italian foreign policy, especially in the choice of intra-European coalition partners. Italy still builds on a coalition of European states and still does so in support of the US and its authority in the international hegemonic order. But changes in the bargaining environment are making the facilitation of a coalition of European states more difficult and less rewarding. The book also highlights ongoing challenges at both the domestic and international level that might lead to more marked discontinuities in the traditional Italian foreign policy behavior

This book investigates counterterrorism responses from a strategic-culturalist perspective, focusing on France and Italy in the post-9/11 era. Terrorism occupies a predominant space within contemporary political debate across all European countries. Recent attacks in Europe have raised many questions about the status of counterterrorism structures within European countries, revealing a wide range of practical as well as discursive security implications. This work provides an original contribution to the understanding of counterterrorism by asking how values, norms, and a shared sense of identity matter in policy dynamics. It explores and assesses which cultural elements are relevant for the fight against terrorism and investigates the impact which these elements can have on practical approaches to terrorism. Despite the current attention to terrorist attacks in Europe, the cases of France and Italy in counterterrorism affairs are particularly overlooked by the existing literature; this book analyses, questions, and examines the strategy of these two countries through the instruments offered by the culturalist approaches to strategy. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, discourse analysis, European politics, security studies, and international relations in general.