Italy's national calendar has undergone a marked transformation in the last 10 years, with the inclusion of new holidays and the assignment of new meanings and celebratory practices to the old ones. This article analyses these changes by focusing on the recent debates about a shared past, involving state leaders as well as intellectuals. After an analysis of the forms of symbolic conflict concerning memory and the relevance of cultural constraints in shaping this conflict, and a brief assessment of the new form of the Republic's calendar, the article examines three major days that deal with the State's treatment of the past: 25 April (Liberation Day); 2 June, seen as the birthday of the Republic; and the recently introduced national Remembrance Day (10 February), which remembers the foibe or killings and emigration of Italian people on Italy's eastern frontier with former Yugoslavia. The article concludes by identifying the major trends in the public management of memory in the context of Italy's Second Republic.

The success of Italian movements opposing the war in Iraq during the period 2003–2005 has awakened historians’ interest in the historical features of left-wing pacifism in Italy. Some particularly noteworthy contributions have focused on the campaigns orchestrated around 1950 by the Italian Committee of the Partisans of Peace (the international movement financed and supported by the USSR and international communism against Western anti-Soviet rearmaments). After describing the principal features of existing research, this article focuses on the lexical and communicative aspect characterising left-wing pacifism in Italy in the years immediately following the Atlantic Treaty. It highlights the way in which communist and socialist language gravitated towards the classist and anti-capitalist definitions of ‘war’ and ‘peace’, in line with the position developed in Lenin's reflections in Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. However, in the same context, there were images and symbolic references imbued with a rebuttal of the violence of war but with fewer ideological connotations, which reflected an attempt to attract the interest and support of groups and individuals ideologically distant from Marxism. This interweaving of choices of expression contributed to the deep-rooted influence of left-wing pacifism within Italian cultural politics.

The word antipolitica (‘anti-politics’) is widely used in contemporary Italian political debate. The concept of ‘anti-politics’ is also frequently used by social scientists in explaining the Italian political transition that took place during the 1990s and analysing the current political situation. In spite of this wide use, sociopolitical literature does not provide a consensual definition of the term. As result, the semantic field of the concept as yet appears poorly defined. This article provides a detailed look at the use of the term ‘anti-politics’ in the sociopolitical literature. Structuring the analysis around some basic conceptual distinctions, the article proposes a taxonomy of the meanings related to the term ‘anti-politics’, highlighting four different meanings of the concept. Referring in particular to the Italian political system, the article provides examples of the meanings of the concept of ‘anti-politics’ using phenomena occurring in the peninsula during the 1990s – phenomena which were central to the increasing use of the term in Italy during that decade.

As a consequence of Italy's integration in the EMU in 1998, the Lega Nord shifted from a pro-European to a Eurosceptic position. The Lega's Eurosceptic vision combines a strong identification with Europe with a hostile attitude towards the institutions of the EU. Identification with Europe expresses in the first place the party's geopolitical view of Padania as a European and hence modern and entrepreneurial region. Its critique of the EU incorporates numerous, sometimes contradicting influences such as the neo-liberal vision of a free-trade based Europe with minimal rules and regulations, and a protectionist defence of northern Italian economic interests. It is in particular the party's institutional vision that attributes centrality to the right of Padania to autonomy and self-government which leads to its rejection of the centralism and dirigism of the European Union.

The Italian political crisis of 1993–1994 and the new political dynamics to which it gave rise, and which persist today, have strongly shaped both public debate and historiographical reflection on the Italian Republic. This article assesses the impact of the political changes of the post-1994 period (and notably Berlusconi's entry into politics) on the debate over the so-called First Republic, with regard to: Italian national identity in the post-Fascist period; the functioning of the political system, especially in relation to the role of the political parties; anti-Fascism and its internal divisions; communism and anti-communism.