Search

Supplemental Material, JCR_Transferring_violence_Appendix for Transferring Violence? Mafia Killings in Nontraditional Areas: Evidence from Italy by Francesco N. Moro, and Salvatore Sberna in Journal of Conflict Resolution

European armed forces have undergone deep changes in the past two decades. Given the breadth of the debate and the size of transformations that took place, it is somewhat surprising that relatively few academic studies have directly dealt with changes in force structure of European militaries, and the Italian armed forces in particular. The focus of this book is the organizational dimension of the restructuring of armed forces through 3 different lenses: doctrine and strategic framework, budget and resource allocation, and force structure and deployment. The key issues addressed relate to how these factors interact in shaping transformation. Of particular interest is the theme of learning, which is how armed forces endogenize change in the short and long run. This study provides valuable insights into the extent to which armed forces manage to adapt to the emerging strategic and operational challenges they have to face and to illustrate the weight of institutional legacies, resource constraints and inter-organizational learning in shaping transformation. Focusing on the Italian case in comparative perspective and based on a large variety of military operations from airstrikes to peacekeeping and counterinsurgency, the book provides an innovative viewpoint on military transformation and significantly contributes to our understanding of contemporary security that is deeply shaped by the lessons learnt in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq and Libya. -- Introduction -- Military transformation: the quest for coherence and adjustment -- Force transformation: Italy in comparative perspective -- Force deployment and field experience from Afghanistan to Libya -- Patterns of learning and change -- Conclusions -- References -- Appendix -- Index

N/A

none 2 no Every actor who commands coercive resources plays a relevant role in the complex processes of state restructuring following regime change. The role of armies in the 2010–2011 Arab uprisings has been widely explored, but limited attention has been devoted to how different agents with coercive power have been involved in the restructuring of political order. This contribution presents the theoretical framework within which the remaining empirical contributions are situated. The central insight is that better understanding of the emerging political orders requires moving away from binary notions of hierarchy and anarchy as ordering principles and look at how, within heterarchical political orders, coercive agents behave within fluid state–society relations. none Hanau Santini, Ruth; Moro, Francesco N. Hanau Santini, Ruth; Moro, Francesco N.

Available online 18 April 2018 The article explores Italian Air Force (ITAF) officers’ perceptions of military transformation and of changes in the global security environment. While several studies have addressed the challenges faced by European armed forces in the last two decades, the methods used have been rather uniform, mostly relying on in-depth case studies through qualitative interviews and analysis of strategic documents and budgets. Using data from an original, and unique, survey conducted among ITAF captains (N = 286), this article focuses on servicemen’s attitudes towards the transformations of the global security environment and the changes occurring (and needed) within the Italian Air Force. After describing the “military view” on these topics, the article provides preliminary statistical evidence on the links between individual experiences, views, and change. The research aims to contribute to the broader debate on military transformation by adding a novel dimension of analysis and providing new insights on the micro-level aspects of learning.

Homicides of politicians, prosecutors and judges perpetrated by Mafiosi often make the media headlines, but they are rarely considered in the social science literature. This essay focuses on the three most prominent mafia groups in Italy – i.e., Cosa Nostra, Camorra and ‘Ndrangheta – and investigates the rationale(s) underpinning their use of high-profile homicides. The chapter critically reviews the major theories that can explain the use of violence in organized crime, adapting them to the study of high-profile homicides, and focusing on four dimensions: (a) the criminal groups’ organizational features, (b) the type of markets penetrated by mafia groups, (c) the structure of political opportunities, and (d) the law enforcement strategies of the state. Through the empirical analysis of an original dataset of mafia homicides carried out since the late 19th Century in Italy, the essay demonstrates that only groups with higher levels of coordination have the capacity to seriously challenge the national government, and engage in high-profile murders. The chapter finally provides preliminary evidence that the structure of economic and political opportunities available to mafia organizations and the choices made by governments to adopt repressive strategies vis-à-vis more appeasing ones are also important to understand mafias’ strategies.

The discipline of International Relations (IR) for a long time of its history has developed in the form of Great Debates that involved competing paradigms and schools. More recently, it has been described as a cacophony of voices unable to communicate among themselves, but also incapable to provide keys to understand an ever more complex reality. This collection aims at evaluating the heuristic value of a selection of traditional paradigms (realism and liberalism), schools (constructivism), and subdisciplines (security studies and international political economy) so as to assess the challenges before IR theory today and the ability of the discipline to provide tools to make the changed world still intelligible.

The article analyses the boards of Italian listed companies and applies Social Network Analysis (SNA) to the members of board of directors of the former public enterprises in the Italian stock market. The description of these networks is a useful tool to envisage what relational resources public enterprises hold through their members, compare them within-country and cross-sector, assess individual resources, and describe the differences between companies owned by local and national governments. The overall aim is to provide a more complete picture of the patterns of state intervention in the economy and to develop measures and hypothesis for future studies.