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The barking dogs: junior coalition partners and military operations abroad in Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Valerio Vignoli Open the ORCID record for Valerio Vignoli [Opens in a new window]
Valerio Vignoli*
Affiliation:
Department of Social and Political Science, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: valerio.vignoli@unimi.it
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Abstract

Various studies explored under which conditions junior coalition partners are able to have an impact on foreign policy outcomes. However, these parties do not always manage to get what they want. In this situation, they face a dilemma: defecting or staying? In the Italian context, as far as Military Operations Abroad (MOA) are concerned, the latter option has invariably prevailed. In particular, Italy's involvement in Operation Allied Force in Kosovo (1999) and Operation Unified Protector in Libya (2011) raised considerable contestation from junior partners that did not result in the termination of the respective cabinets. Employing extensive qualitative data, including a set of original interviews with relevant policymakers, this article aims to understand why junior partners did not defect in these two cases. The empirical findings highlight a variation in parties' motivations according to their ideological leaning: while extreme-left parties were afraid of being punished by their own voters for leaving the cabinet because of the participation in the operation in Kosovo, the far-right and autonomist Lega Nord did not consider opposition to the military intervention in Libya as a salient issue. Therefore, the article has considerable implications for the research agendas on the party politics of military interventions and government termination.

Keywords

Italyjunior partnersKosovoLibyamilitary operationspolitical parties
Type
Research Article
Information
Italian Political Science Review / Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 25 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Società Italiana di Scienza Politica 2020

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