Italy’s foreign policy and the search for a global role: south, East, and Up

The aim of this article is, therefore, to analyse the renewed global outlook of Italian foreign policy from the perspective of Italy’s evolving role conception and external projection. While the goal is to assess whether it is meaningful to speak of Italy’s pursuit of a global role, and how such a role should be conceptualized, we also explore a number of related issues, such as the domestic political context and the international systems within which Italian foreign policy is formulated. To address these questions, our article proceeds as follows. In Section 2 we argue that Italian political science developed through U.S.-influenced empirical research, yet FPA lagged behind because of Italy’s limited foreign policy dynamism and because of the deliberate political exclusion of sensitive topics from political debate. In Section 3 we take a step back by examining the three middle-range theories and, in particular, by foregrounding role contestation and nonrolebased political competition with implications for Italy’s role performance; our aim is to take two steps forward: firstly, capitalizing on these theories and, secondly, asking about the analytical validity of attributing a global role to Italy. Finally, in Section 4, we explore the conceptualization of Italian foreign policy using the theoretical framework of global roles, and discuss how this is simultaneously ingrained within a leaders-centred domestic system and a transforming global system.