This book offers a history of contemporary Italy from the collapse of
Mussolini to the present, placing this major Euro-Mediterranean country
in a wider geo-political perspective. It examines how Italian history
and politics developed in relation to - and were shaped by - the
international context, from the Cold War and NATO to the European
integration process and the global challenges of 1989. Umberto Gentiloni
Silveri highlights all major events, structural limits, contradictions
and conflicts influencing Italian democracy and the political system
until today. He explores the continuous tension between 'stabilization'
and 'conflict', between the promise of an innovative and evolutionary
representative democracy on the one hand and the constraints of a
political system conditioned by structural limits and old contradictions
on the other.