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In this chapter, I examine the populism of the Northern League and Berlusconi. I attempt to provide an institutional explanation as to why Italy, more so than other Western European democracies, has experienced such diverse forms of populism. Stated in full, the thesis advanced is that the rise and persistence populism in Western European democracies, such as Italy, is an indication of an institutional crisis of representation.

This chapter provides a list and a brief description of files and documents where the name of Piero Sraffa is mentioned and are currently kept at the Archivio Centrale dello Stato and at the Archivio Storico Diplomatico. For each file or document we provide indication of the reference number where it is conserved and a transcription of one or two of the relevant documents out of more than 500 which have been located. The purpose of the chapter is to illustrate the results of archival research of the last decade, including more recent findings, and furnish a groundwork for further research, which may throw further light on documents already known to us, and lead to the discovery of new documents or information, so as to provide a better basis for the reconstruction of the biography of Piero Sraffa and of people whose lives entwined with his – Antonio Gramsci certainly ranking high among them.

The chapter analyzes the characteristics of a new political subject, the Five Star Movement, which arose in Italy in 2005 (as local civil lists), was officially constituted in 2009, and became the most voted-for party in the 2013 general election, when the country was hit by a strong surge of populism. This party was founded by the Italian comedian Beppe Grillo and launched via his Internet blog. The chapter will be divided into five parts: a brief introduction about the general context and a description of the Italian political framework and the general crisis of traditional parties, setting the scene from which the discussion will develop. Then, in Section “‘People against the Parties’: The Five Star Movement’s Populist Messages,” I will describe the global characteristics of the Five Star Movement, with an analysis of Grillo’s party communication style, especially its use of social media, its people call (with its enemies), and its mobilization strategies. In Section “Inside the Movement: The Party’s Structural Characteristics,” I will describe the party’s internal organization, in order to underline some controversial elements. In the conclusion I will hazard some hypotheses about the party’s destiny, compared to other populist examples.

Drawing on ethnographic research among far-right youth movements, this chapter discusses the view of a “new Europe” as manifested in young activists' discourses and practices. In arguing that it is necessary to better understand local contexts of political mobilization, it simultaneously foregrounds the transnational orientation of young far-right militants and the interplay of local and translocal factors in shaping their activism. In so doing, this chapter seeks to shed light on the background and the main rationale for their alternative conceptualizing of Europe and to situate it in a long tradition of thinking about Europe, recognizing similarities with the developments in the early twentieth century.

Resurgent interest in the life and work of the Italian Cambridge economist Piero Sraffa is leading to New Directions in Sraffa Scholarship. This chapter introduces readers to some of these developments. First and perhaps foremost is the fact that as of September 2016 Sraffa’s archival material has been uploaded onto the website of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University, as digital colour images; this chapter introduces readers to the history of these events. This history provides sharp relief on the extant debates over the role of the archival material in leading to the final publication of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, and readers are provided a brief sketch of these matters. The varied nature of Sraffa scholarship is demonstrated by the different aspects of Sraffa’s intellectual legacy which are developed and discussed in the various entries of our Symposium. The conclusion is reached that we are on the cusp of an exciting phase change of tremendous potential in Sraffa scholarship.

The article reviews the contribution of Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty (EVL) to research in political science. The argument is the framework of exit and voice offers greater understanding of a range trade-offs that exist in politics, in particular over collective action and citizen responses to dissatisfaction, which have implications for institutional design as well as for the functioning of democratic processes. The paper summarizes the EVL model and discusses how it may be elaborated. The main part of the article reviews applications to research literatures on political participation, responses to oppressive regimes, political party and interest group membership, and reports a number of formal treatments. The applications have been useful and illuminated a number of research problems, but overall they are modest in their impact in political science. The article suggests that the potential range of impacts could be much greater as EVL can show how individual choices are made in politics and are constrained by its institutions.

Post-war Italy faced a transition from industrial reconstruction to a phase of mature capitalism characterised by massive internal migrations towards the north of the country. A rapid urbanisation process created large dysfunctional areas at the periphery of the main re-industrialising cities like Milan, Genoa and Turin. In particular Milan has been defined as the capital of the Italian economic miracle (Foot, 2001). But during the 1950s Milan's extended industrial areas were subjected to main socio-spatial transformations: from being a mix of industrial and rural communities just after the war, the peripheries of Milan turned into deprived areas lacking basic services and infrastructure during the 1970s, when social conflicts were increasingly rising. From 1968 to 1977 Milan was also one of the main stages of a cultural revolution that in Italy uniquely assumed deep political implications by undermining the fundamental institutions of the state (Balestrini & Moroni, 1988).

This paper explores questions of value and the just price for two groups of farming families in southern Tuscany. As sharecroppers or small-holders they experienced the slow shift from subsistence farming to creating most of their livelihoods by selling the products or their labour. This created a complicated legacy in their views about the relationship between use-value and monetary value since the interaction of different spheres of the economy (what Gudeman calls mutuality and the market) continued to impact significantly on their material well-being and cultural values. This emerges in many contexts, from decisions to continue producing food for home consumption, to abandoning the investments of previous generations. In each case the quantitative questions (what does it cost? what is it worth?) play out alongside qualitative questions about use-values, values which are embedded in issues about the continuation of social and cultural relations. Two main points then emerge from this ethnography. First that in many circumstances local views about the just price cannot be understood by restricting the account to the market sphere. Even the innovative farming households who have moved to the production of high-quality foodstuffs find themselves in a market which eulogizes non-commercial values. Second, views about the just price mostly arise as part of a critique of the powerful forces shaping markets, and often draw on older political traditions concerned with social justice.