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The struggle in projects, ideas and symbols between the strongest Communist Party in the West and an anti-Communist and pro-Western government coalition was the most peculiar founding element of the Italian democratic political system after the Second World War.
Until now, most historians have focused their attention on political parties as the only players in the competition for the making of political orientations and civic identities in Italian public opinion. Others have considered Italian political struggle in the 1940s and 1950s in terms of the polarisation between Communism and organised Catholicism, due to the undoubted importance of the Church in Italian culture and social relations.
This book enlarges the view, looking at new aspects and players of the anti-Communist ‘front’. It takes into account the role of cultural associations, newspapers and the popular press in the selection and diffusion of critical judgements and images of Communism, highlighting a dimension that explains the force of anti-Communist opinions in Italy after 1989 and the crisis of traditional parties. The author also places the case of Italian Cold War anti-Communism in an international context for the first time.
overarching raison d’être , enabling it to have a truly distinctive voice in the European Parliament for a decade. According to ECR, the EU ‘needs new policies to modernise the economy so its industries and business can be competitive in the global marketplace. It needs reform so it is able to generate jobs and prosperity in the century ahead’ (European Conservatives and Reformists 2018a ). Moreover, the differences between ‘Anglosphere’ or ‘Atlanticist’ conservatism and Western European Christian democracy in everyday party politics have been significantly magnified by
Christian Democracy through the Church and political parties in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands ( Esping-Andersen 1990 ), provided that adequate funding is available, the evolution of social enterprise as a delivery vehicle in continental Europe has been more consensual than in the US or UK. ALMP “In many ways, Active Labour Market Policies (ALMP) are
pragmatically, while the latter represents a much more fundamental raison d’être for a political movement – or in this case, a group in the European Parliament. There can be subsequent differences between a party having some sort of deep-rooted political ideology and it belonging to a wider and long-established European party family such as conservatism, nationalism or Christian democracy. Party families are a method of grouping together ideologically similar parties into a broader category, and have often defined the comparative study of European political systems in the
German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has written extensively on the European Union.
This is the only in-depth account of his project. Published now in a second
edition to coincide with the celebration of his ninetieth birthday, a new
preface considers Habermas’s writings on the eurozone and refugee crises,
populism and Brexit, and the presidency of Emmanuel Macron.
Placing an
emphasis on the conception of the EU that informs Habermas’s political
prescriptions, the book is divided into two main parts. The first considers the
unfolding of 'social modernity' at the level of the EU. Among the
subjects covered are Habermas's concept of juridification, the
latter's affinities with integration theories such as neofunctionalism, and
the application of Habermas's democratic theory to the EU. The second part
addresses 'cultural modernity' in Europe – 'Europessimism'
is argued to be a subset of the broader cultural pessimism that assailed the
project of modernity in the late twentieth century, and with renewed intensity
in the years since 9/11.
Interdisciplinary in approach, this book engages
with European/EU studies, critical theory, political theory, international
relations, intellectual history, comparative literature, and philosophy. Concise
and clearly written, it will be of interest to students, scholars and
professionals with an interest in these disciplines, as well as to a broader
readership concerned with the future of Europe
Anglophobia in Fascist Italy traces the roots of Fascist Anglophobia from the Great War and through the subsequent peace treaties and its development during the twenty years of Mussolini’s regime. Initially, Britain was seen by many Italians as a ‘false friend’ who was also the main obstacle to Italy’s foreign policy aspirations, a view embraced by Mussolini and his movement. While at times dormant, this Anglophobic sentiment did not disappear in the years that followed, and was later rekindled during the Ethiopian War. The peculiarly Fascist contribution to the assessment of Britain was ideological. From the mid-1920s, the regime’s intellectuals saw Fascism as the answer to a crisis in the Western world and as irredeemably opposed to Western civilisation of the sort exemplified by Britain. Britain was described as having failed the ‘problem of labour’, and Fascism framed as a salvation ideology, which nations would either embrace or face decay. The perception of Britain as a decaying and feeble nation increased after the Great Depression. The consequence of this was a consistent underrating of British power and resolve to resist Italian ambitions. An analysis of popular reception of the Fascist discourse shows that the tendency to underrate Britain had permeated large sectors of the Italian people, and that public opinion was more hostile to Britain than previously thought. Indeed, in some quarters hatred towards the British lasted until the end of the Second World War, in both occupied and liberated Italy.
its core values – reforming the European Union using practical common-sense ideas (European Conservatives and Reformists 2018a ) – but that is underpinned by a quintessentially British political economic model that promotes trade, enterprise and business activities. Moreover, that Euro-realist approach clearly constitutes a variant of British Conservatism which can be contrasted with both Western European Christian democracy and nationalist or populist Euroscepticism. It has been well-documented that the political relationship between the United
successor who will preserve her legacy. In France, Europe's other big important state, Gaullism has dominated the Right of politics in a broadly comparable way to Christian democracy, but President Emmanuel Macron shows a determination to upset the Christian democratic political establishment in Berlin and Brussels with his En Marche movement and associated reform proposals. Even so, Macron himself finds under pressure from movements such as National Rally which outflank his own populist gestures. In Italy, a populist/nationalist coalition government presently poses the
than the social democracies, Europe’s 4147 Inglis–Are the Irish different_BB_Layout 1 29/07/2014 09:26 Page 28 28 Seán Ó Riain Christian democracies also comfortably balance their books. The liberal economies of Ireland and the UK appear to do better, on the basis of their actual balance, but this masked a significant bubble as their large underlying deficits became obvious in the economic crisis that followed. The Mediterranean economies also had significant difficulties with budget deficits, which were already present in the early 2000s. The countries with the
liberation’, and which was described as ‘a genuine dictatorship by the most reactionary members of Christian Democracy and by the bosses’.35 Shortly afterwards, in the news pages of L’Unità, the riot police were described as ‘sturm-batalionen’ and the protesters arrested as ‘rastrellati’ (rounded up), in reference to life under the Fascist Italian Social Republic.36 By February 1948 the police had become a DC ‘militia’.37 Finally, one of the Democratic Popular Front’s first official communications concluded by accusing the DC of ‘betraying the trust of its popular base