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Using the fine arts exhibition of the Venice Biennale as a case study, this article considers the role of the Italian national government's cultural policy in pursuing its key domestic and foreign concerns between 1948 and 1958. These were, respectively, suppressing communism at home, and promoting Western European unification and Italy's role within it. By scrutinising their involvement at the Biennale, it aims to show the importance placed not only by the Italian Christian Democrats but also by their European counterparts on constructing the idea of a culturally integrated Western Europe as a vital complement to analogous economic and political initiatives. A travers les expositions des Beaux-Arts de la Biennale de Venise, cet article s'interesse a la place tenue par la politique culturelle dans la poursuite des objectifs domestiques et internationaux des gouvernements italiens entre 1948 et 1958. A l'interieur, il s'agissait d'eradiquer le comnmnisme en Italie. Vers l'exterieur, de travailler a l'unification de l'Europe Occidentale et a l'integration de l'Italie dans ce nouvel ensemble. En etudiant la Biennale, on peut percevoir l'importance que les chretiens democrates italiens et leurs homologues europeens attachaient a l'idee d'une Europe Occidentale culturellement homogene, complement indispensable aux initiatives politiques et economiques. Dieser Beitrag diskutiert die Rolle der Kulturpolitik der italienischen Regierung in der Verfolgung ihrer wichtigsten innen- und aussenpolitischen Ziele zwischen 1948 und 1958. Die Biennale-Kunstausstellung in Venedig dient hierbei als Fallstudie. Die Ziele der Regierung waren die Unterdruckung des Kommunismus im Inland und die Forderung der westeuropaischen Integration sowie der italienischen Rolle in diesem Prozess. Die Untersuchung der Beteiligung der italienischen Christdemokraten an der Biennale zielt darauf ab, die Bedeutung aufzuzeigen, die nicht nur sie, sondern auch ihre Schwesterparteien in Europa der Idee eines kulturell integrierten Europas als unverzichtbare Erganzung zu den gleichzeitigen wirtschaftlichen und politischen Initiativen beimassen.

Italian-Turkish relations in the inter-war years oscillated between antagonism and friendship. In 1935, Turkish Foreign Minister Tevfik Ru tu Aras described the evaluation of Italian-Turkish relations in stages of `warmth', [...]

Former Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini once said that Italy never had financial or military resources commensurate with its foreign policy ambitions, and that its efforts to maintain friendship with all [...]

This paper develops a particular technique for extracting market expectations from asset prices. We use the term structure of interest rates to estimate the probability the market attaches to the event that a country, Italy, joins the European Monetary Union at a given date. The case of Italy is interesting because in the survey regularly conducted by Reuters, the probability that Italy joins EMU in 1999 has fluctuated, in the first months of 1997, between 0.07 and 0.15, while, during the same period, the measures computed by financial houses - which are based on the term structure of interest rates - ranged between 0.5 and 0.8. The paper proposes a new method for computing these probabilities, and shows that the discrepancies between survey and market-based measures are not the result of market inefficiencies, but depend on an incorrect use of the term structure to compute probabilities. The technique proposed in the paper can also be used to distinguish between convergence of probabilities and convergence of fundamentals, that is to find out whether an observed reduction in interest rate spreads signals a higher probability of joining EMU at a given date, or simply reflects improved fundamentals. It could also be applied, more generally, to extract from assets prices, information on imminent changes in an exchange rate regime.

This article examines the relationship between Anthony Eden, British minister for League of Nations' affairs (1935) and foreign secretary (1935-8), and Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime within the context of Italian foreign policy in the later 1930s. It outlines the precise aims and objectives of Mussolini's expansionist policies over the period 1935-8, assesses the accuracy of Eden's interpretation of them and, in turn, discusses official Italian diplomatic perceptions of Eden. It specifically challenges Renzo De Felice's view that for Mussolini, the Italian conquest of Ethiopia (1935-6) marked the limit of Fascist expansionism. Furthermore, it contests his theory that the dictator did not pursue an Italo-German alliance that would drive an Italian imperialist war against Britain and France in the Mediterranean and Red Sea. Anthony Eden had been fully aware of such an intention, and had been targeted by the regime as Italy's 'public enemy number one', precisely because he fully comprehended what lay at the heart of Mussolini's brand of Fascism.

In his latest book, the Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years, Bernard Lewis has rekindled the debate over the Arabs' relations with the Axis powers during [...]

The failure of British and French decision-makers to take a decisive action on a Mediterranean war strategy in 1937-39 resulted in the appeasement of Italy. Britain opposed an early Mediterranean offensive because of ambiguous Italian policy which in turn prevented France from pursuing its plan to attack Italy. The French Navy's well-planned war strategy against Italy is explored.

There are various reasons why foreign policy has played and still continues to play such an important and in some cases dominant part in Italian democracy. It is bound up […]

Italy has failed to use the quincentenary to explore the history and current lives of native North and South Americans. North American Indians, in particular, have long evoked interest among Italians, but official events have focused almost exclusively on Italian exploration and explorers. Protesters against this situation, while small in number, have been vocal and gained some media attention.

INTRODUCTION AN INTENSE DEBATE AMONG ANALYSTS of international relations revolves around the question of the relative role of domestic politics and international incentives in the formation of a country's foreign [...]

INTRODUCTION IN THE 1990s ITALY CONTRIBUTED DECISIVELY to the advent of a single European currency, even as its debt and budget deficits rose to unprecedented and potentially disastrous levels. The [...]

ITALY, THE BEL PAESE THE WAY THAT CITIZENS of different countries see each other is almost inevitably affected by cultural stereotypes. Although they certainly contain some truth, these icons often [...]

Issues are presented concerning the lack of understanding of the social structure and clan system which existed in Somalia in the 1950s by the Italian authorities who sought to establish an inappropriate state system.