La politica estera dell'Italia. Edizione 2010

With the 2010 edition, we begin the new series of yearbooks of IAI-ISPI, published by Mulino. The main difference from the past, which is already evident in the title, is the goal: La politica estera dell'Italia [Italy’s foreign policy], no longer L'Italia e la politica internazionale [Italy and international politics]. The heart of the analysis shifts, therefore, to Italian action in the main areas of foreign policy, from the previous focus on the double evaluation and analysis of international events on the one hand and of Italian ones on the other. Obviously the changes of the international scene remain in the background, and the regard they are paid is measured by the level of effectiveness of Italian foreign policy in the year that it was resolved. The second novelty is that the yearbook opens with a broad Introductive Report [in Italian] on the principal aspects of relations between Italy and the rest of the world. The report, complete with figures and tables, develops some of the analysis continued in the ten subject-specific chapters contained in the second part of the volume and concludes with the suggestion of six strategic scenarios of possible developments of Italy’s foreign policy.
From the substantial point of view, the yearbook starts with the realisation that 2009 was an important year for Italian foreign policy: apart from the presidency of what will be remembered as perhaps the last "great" G8, Italy had to participate in the management of the financial and economic crisis, it was faced with the problem of the possible disruption of energy resources, it confronted the crisis of the European institutions after the Irish referendum, the resulting changes to the Obama presidency in the United States, the problem of illegal immigration, and the precise environmental crisis. In the course of 2009, moreover, the crisis matured and the revival of the Treaty of Lisbon, thus starting its implementation from 1 December 2009. The biggest problem therefore concerns the position and function that Italy can perform in the new international order, which is hardly outlined. The ended illusion of the "uni-polar world" also seems in the view of disappearance of the theory of the "flat world" and the "non-polar" world. Opposite to such a changing scenario, in 2009 the foreign policy of the country was primarily employed to manage the contingent issues and to close, as in the case of Libya, dossiers that had been long open. It is clear, however, that the task that awaits in the future is to determine a different strategy in terms of priority commitments.

Presentations: Rome 18 March 2010, Milan 5 May 2010, Rome 18 May 2010, Turin 15 June 2010.