Description
This paper aims at unpacking and explaining patterns of continuity and change in the Italian narrative vis-à-vis Russia and China, during the years 2020-2024. In such timeframe, three governments (Conte II, Draghi, Meloni) have succeeded each other – navigating a turbulent international environment, wherein Russia and China have occupied central stage. The COVID pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the XX Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the Taiwanese presidential campaign, as well as rising tensions in the South China Sea are some of the pivotal events that forced Western elites, including Italy’s, to devote their attention to Moscow and Beijing. By means of thematic analysis, we will investigate a corpus of elite-level sources (e.g., programmatic documents, official statements), as well as the public intellectual debate, to identify patterns of continuity and change in the Italian views on Russia and China. How and why change happened will be explained, if need be. Our analysis will result in a nuanced understanding of the most recent Italian foreign policy attitudes towards Russia and China, in a comparative perspective. This will also provide the ground for an empirical and theoretical exploration of foreign policy ruptures, as well as Rome’s game in the context of great power competition.
