Italian Foreign Policy: Still the Days Seem the Same?

This chapter examines change in Italian foreign policy since the end of the Cold War and its drivers. The most fundamental alteration during this period concerns the area of security and defense. Italy abandoned its reluctance to send its troops abroad and participated to a remarkable number of military interventions, including those in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In our opinion, shifts in both international and domestic politics are the crucial explanatory factors. The alternation between center-left and center-right cabinets is instead at the basis of a tension between multilateralism and bilateralism. While the center-left showed stronger commitment to integration in the European Union (EU), center-right cabinets privileged relationships with the United States and other key partners outside the continent. The 2011 debt crisis had major repercussions on Italian foreign policy. Budget cuts forced security policy to focus mainly on the strategic area of the Mediterranean. Furthermore, political parties followed public opinion in expressing growing discontent toward the EU institutions.