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FEDERALISMO E MOVIMENTI SOCIALI
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2018
Extract
L'idea di un'Italia federale è entrata nel dibattito pubblico nel corso degli ultimi anni. Una delle cause principali di questa avanzata è certamente l'ascesa della Lega, che del federalismo ha fatto il suo credo fondamentale. Recentemente, l'idea di trasformare l'Italia da paese centralizzato e unitario (non dimentichiamo comunque il relativo decentramento avvenuto a partire dagli anni settanta attraverso il rafforzamento delle regioni) a stato federale si è fatta strada in seno a molti partiti, tanto che nessuna forza politica sembra oggi opporsi in modo deciso a tale progetto di decentralizzazione territoriale e amministrativa del paese.
Federalism can be conceived as part of the political opportunity structure affecting social movements. According to the political process model, a decentralized institutional structure provides favourable opportunities for movement mobilization, whereas a centralized structure offers less room for political protest. This article explores this general hypothesis with the help of quantitative data on protest events carried out by new social movements in two federal countries (Switzerland and Germany) and in two unitarian countries (France and the Netherlands), as well as qualitative data on these countries and on the United States. Results show that a federal institutional structure has several consequences on social movements. First, movements in federal states tend to address their claims on different levels, while in unitarian states they focus on a national level. Furthermore, the movements' organizational structure reflects the decentralization of the country. Second, federalism, when combined with prevailing inclusive strategies of the political authorities, contributes to moderate the movements' action repertoires. Finally, movements in federal states can quite easily obtain reactive effects. They find more difficult to provoke proactive effects, however, due to the weakness of the state. They may provoke both types of effects in unitarian states when the authorities share the movements' goals. These results have relevant implications for Italy, which seems to be tending toward federalism.
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- Information
- Italian Political Science Review / Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , April 1996 , pp. 147 - 170
- Copyright
- Copyright © Societ Italiana di Scienza Politica