Italy in comparative perspective

This chapter offers an exploratory assessment of the external validity of the hypotheses presented in the volume by comparing Italy with five advanced European democracies that have recently faced internal security challenges: France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Germany. The exploratory evidence suggests the model’s hypotheses hold across cases. France and Belgium are positive cases and appear to confirm the hypotheses regarding the sufficient conditions that lead governing parties to deploy the armed forces and to maintain those deployments. The UK case, by contrast, underscores the hypothesis that the armed forces’ stance towards these roles is crucial and can deter parties from turning to the armed forces for domestic policing. Spain illustrates how negative historical experiences can prevent parties from deploying the military even under conditions of high internal threat salience. Germany demonstrates how an institutional veto makes military deployment extremely challenging. This chapter also contributes to showing how unusual the Italian case is in the European context.