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Birth of a Nuclear Base: The US, Italy, and the Cold War Path to La Maddalena
Get PDFThis article reconstructs the path that in 1972 led the US and Italy to negotiate and eventually agree on the homeporting of a US submarine tender in La Maddalena, Sardinia, which became the de-facto main US nuclear submarine base in the Cold War Mediterranean. Unlike what has been claimed by anti-base authors, according to the records of the Department of State the opening of a US base in La Maddalena was not an achievement of a long-term US foreign policy goal, but a compromise. Indeed, the Department of Defense aimed to homeport a submarine tender in the much more strategical Augusta Bay, Sicily, while the remote La Maddalena was proposed by Italy, whose government (unsurprisingly) negotiated with the US pursuing its own national interest
Back to the Future. Socialism and Nationalism as Tools for Political Legitimization
Get PDFThis article analyzes how, in the past years, Russia's political discourse has concentrated on the Country's place and role in the modern world and how top-down political communication seems to have somewhat succeeded in affecting the population's political culture and reviving old ideologies. The armed conflict declared by Russia against Ukraine seems to have had the effect of strengthening – once again - the polarization between the West and the East. New geopolitical arrangements and new power relations are being reorganized, and, in this process, political cultures and ideologies seem to be reshaped. In particular, the data from Russian national surveys on the population's political values and the analysis of political discourses show that Russia seems to have dusted off its old socialist ideology, emphasizing its nationalistic and neo-imperial traits while deepening its neo-authoritarian turn. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and a short period of de-ideologization, the Russian government has repeatedly attempted to develop a nationwide general civil ideology, mainly using the concepts of the "Russian world" and of "neo-Eurasianism", considered as neo-imperial ideologies, that determined the content of public discourse in Russia. Nationalism is both an ideology and a political practice based on the value of the nation as the highest form of social unity. This kind of nationalism is widely used by states through official rhetoric, symbols and ideological institutions (education, social sciences, mass media) to assert civil loyalty and disseminate national legal norms and cultural values. (Tishkov, 2021). Nationalism and Neo-conservatism have become of particular importance to Russian society, and during the last decade, they have become the core of the Country's political actions and rhetoric. Neo-conservatism includes a set of different ideological patterns such as nationalism, imperial claims, orientations on special ways of Russia, the priority of traditional values, etc., which are accompanied by authoritarian tendencies in the political process (A. Panarin, 1994, Dugin 2000). In this way, it seems correct to affirm that the neo-conservative ideology becomes the sociocultural base of the whole process of power legitimization. In this context and in the frames of the actual political system, no political movement, party, or group of interests can act as a real competitor of the federal government, which has built its ethnopolitics not only on the idea of uniting different nations of the Russian Federation but also on ideas of irredentism. This is not totally new. If in the 90s, political discourse and public dialogue were dominated by the idea of democratization and of transition from an authoritarian to an open society, only a decade later, as early as Putin's first mandate, political discourse started to turn to the idea of "stability" and of "sustainability of the system and of the welfare state", coupled with the idea of a so-called "conservative modernization" that essentially implied the beginning of a new era of anti-reformism and a nostalgic call for the Socialist past. In this article, moving from a neo-Marxist perspective on the concept of Political Culture (Burlackij, 1970; Markiewicz, 1971; Wiatr, 1980), we will analyze how these political ideas and values have turned into a political culture that seems coherent with the above mentioned neo-imperial nationalist ideology, and, most importantly, that is inclined to support it. Whereas the Russians who do not support the regime, seem far from being capable of displaying a coherent and alternative political culture, let alone organizing a different political programme that could activate a counteroffensive. While taking into account public speeches from prominent political leaders, the empirical basis of the article derives from the data of the all-Russia annual sociological monitoring "How do you live, Russia" (1992-2023) carried out by the Institute of Socio-Political Research - Branch of the Federal Centre of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, through a survey on a sample of 1400-1800 respondents, representative of all the Russian population. As we will see, the data shows that new forms of civic nationalism are largely based on nostalgic sympathies for the Soviet past and a new civil identity, formed successfully during the post-soviet period, is increasingly affirming itself
Opposite Universes. A Focus on the Ideological Polarization of the Italian Electorate
Get PDFThe morphological character of ideologies is closely related to the context in which they manifest themselves (Freeden, 2008). Furthermore, political polarisation is the tendency for the concentration of political supply mainly around two opposing poles (McCarty, Poole, Rosenthal, 2006). These poles are characterised by high levels of ideological distance and high homogeneity within them, resulting in a lower propensity of voters to move from one side to the other (Fiorina, Abrams, 2008; Druckman, Peterson, Slothuus, 2013). This paper analyses the ideological polarisation in Italy, focusing on the results of the 2022 general elections. The research moves from a combined and comparative analysis of the structural contexts of the territories and the forms of electoral behaviour in the different territorial investigated contexts. The results show how the economic, demographic, and social structure influences voting choices, and it can be considered a valuable tool for identifying the forms of ideological polarisation in the current Italian political scene. The 2022 general election returns a picture of an Italy divided into two blocs characterised by different forms of electoral competition: the Centro-Nord, wherein the political clash is between the heirs of the traditional ideologies of right (Lega, FdI) and left (Democratic Party); the Mezzogiorno is the arena of the electoral competition between the so-called hybrid-tactical forces (5-Star Movement and FI), that stand outside the system of traditional political forces. These empirical findings allow us to reflect on the nature of the opposite universes of Italian ideological polarisation
A premium structure for a pandemic insurance policy
Get PDFThis paper aims to establish an actuarial model tailored for insurance companies offering contracts covering pandemic events. The corresponding premium is determined based on both the probability of contagion and subsequent outcomes for insured individuals. We assume a one-year insurance coverage period, during which policyholders are exposed to the risk of contracting the virus. A random variable for contagion is defined, following a theoretical geometric distribution. Variable benefits are provided depending on the insured individual's "status" resulting from infection outcomes, with a lump sum payment offered in case of death. The duration of each "status" is modeled by a Gamma distribution. Utilizing these assumptions, a fair premium for the policy is estimated.The risk analysis of the proposed policy involves quantifying benefit volatility, establishing a specified confidence level, and conducting threshold analysis using Markov's Inequality to determine the probability that benefits exceed a certain value. Additionally, we discuss the insurer's decision to customize the policy "prior" by applying a uniform premium to the entire population before applying a safety loading. Numerical applications are explored using weekly reports on the COVID-19 epidemic from the Istituto Superiore della Sanità (ISS)
Noun phrase complexity in film dialogue as input for second-language learning. A corpus-based study from a register-functional perspective
Get PDFSince audiovisual dialogue represents a common means of informal contact with English (Pavesi, Ghia 2020), it is important to understand its characteristics. Following a study on clausal complexity in film dialogue (Formentelli et al. forthcoming), the present work investigates phrasal complexity, thus contributing to the provision of a broader overview of grammatical complexity in film dialogue. The results provide insights into which phrasal structures second-language (L2) learners accessing English through films are likely to encounter notice and internalise after repeated exposure (Kerswill, Williams 2002). The study investigates nominal pre- and post-modification in a corpus of 34 anglophone film dialogues by examining adjectival and nominal pre-modifiers and prepositional phrases as post-modifiers. Further analysis of the types of the most frequently modified nominal heads is also conducted. The results of the analysis are interpreted by adopting a register-functional approach to complexity (Biber et al. 2022); they suggest a degree of phrasal complexity in film dialogue that approximates trends in natural conversation while also performing register-specific functions