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All Aboard the Bandwagon? Structural Realism and Italy's International Role

Italy's foreign and security policy since the end of the Cold War is best accounted for by a structural realist framework rather than by liberal and constructivist accounts. More specifically, since unification and also in the post–Cold War period, the main feature of Italy's international collocation has been a dialectical interaction between a structural tendency to “bandwagon” with the hegemonic Power, which can guarantee the protection of Italian interests and forestall the risk of exclusion, and the search for regional autonomy. Italy's structural, dialectical interaction between “bandwagoning” and the search for autonomy is a response to opposite systemic incentives: Italy “bandwagons” every time the international status quo unravels or when a new order is being imposed; it endeavours to assert a more independent role in periods of international stability. During the Cold War, Italy bandwagoned with the United States, whilst European integration and a limited number of initiatives in the Mediterranean saw it attempt to preserve a degree of regional autonomy. The end of the East-West division, replacing scenarios of a nuclear attack or of conventional warfare along the East-West border with the unpleasant prospect of “entrapment” in neighbouring local crises, rekindled the tension between Italy's structural tendency to side with the hegemonic Power and its aspiration to regional autonomy.