Academic literature on the topic 'Regionalism – Italy – Sardinia'

This article analyzes the political transformation polysyllabic societies in the era of modernism in the Second example of institutional reforms in Italy and Spain. The territorial structure of Italy in its present form was constituted in 1970 (special status regions, including Sardinia, Sicily, South Tyrol, were identified earlier). Each region has a population of regional assembly, which in turn elects the executive (government) headed by the president of the region. Regionalization of the Italian political and social life in general took place. This that the «region» replaced «province» of the political hierarchy of the country. The process of reaching a consensus at the regional level was much softer and adjusted, aimed at a compromise. Concern «radical social renewal» changed worry about administrative efficiency and professional level – a change institutional priorities. In general, population and community leaders satisfied with the availability and much greater openness regional administrations versus national. Regional governments have become laboratories of policy innovation, largely determined the «new way of doing politics». Also analyzes the Spanish experience of institutional reforms. New model of territorial organization of Spain called State autonomy. The article notes that the Spanish Constitution does not specify either the number or the name of the autonomous communities, but merely indicates ways to individual provinces or their associations can create such communities (this right was implemented by all provinces and is now in Spain composed of 17 autonomous communities). In Spain, always in one way or another existing political and cultural regionalism, there is always special historical area. The history of the country is in this respect the history of vibrations, movements between centralism and regionalism.

This paper is a review of Italy's stuttering progress towards regional autonomy. At the unification of Italy in 1860, a centralised administrative structure was adopted, as prescribed by the Piedmontese Constitution of 1848. Centralisation of political power reached its apogee during the Fascist period. Regionalist sentiment resurfaced strongly after the last war and gained formal expression in the 1948 Republican Constitution, which provided for the creation of five ‘special’ and fourteen (later fifteen) ‘ordinary’ regions. The special regions—regions of special linguistic or political sensitivity (Valle d'Aosta, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Sicily and Sardinia)—were established between 1948 and 1963, but delays orchestrated by the Christian Democrat-dominated central government, reluctant to relinquish its power, postponed the establishment of the ordinary regions until the 1970s, when pressure from the Socialist Party prevailed. The legislative powers of the regions are of three forms: Exclusive (available only to the special regions), complementary, and integrative, the order representing progressively diminishing elements of decisionmaking autonomy. Several regions in central Italy have elected Communist regional governments. However, hopes that the regional governments would be instrumental in ending corrupt and inept government and eradicating regional disequilibria, have mostly been misplaced, although some progress has been made, especially in the northern regions, in the fields of administrative reform, social service organisation, and regional economic planning. The principal reason for lack of progress is the continuing central government control over regional government funds. In many regions considerable amounts of unspent funds have accumulated owing to a combination of political stalemate at the regional level and central government veto. Special attention is given in this paper to the relationship between regional autonomy and (1) local government, and (2) regional planning. To conclude, the present state of play represents an uneasy compromise between the two contradictory historical forces of centralism and regionalism, present since unification. Although there has been a significant departure from the rigid centralisation of the past, the retention of most of the important powers by the central government frustrates the ambitions of the regions to really organise their own affairs.

AbstractThe Italian peninsula offers an excellent case study within which to investigate long-term regional demographic trends and their response to climate fluctuations, especially given its diverse landscapes, latitudinal range and varied elevations. In the past two decades, summed probability distributions of calibrated radiocarbon dates have become an important method for inferring population dynamics in prehistory. Recent advances in this approach also allow for statistical assessment of spatio-temporal patterning in demographic trends. In this paper we reconstruct population change for the whole Italian peninsula from the Late Mesolithic to the Early Iron Age (10,000–2800 cal yr BP). How did population patterns vary across time and space? Were fluctuations in human population related to climate change? In order to answer these questions, we have collated a large list of published radiocarbon dates (n = 4010) and use this list firstly to infer the demographic trends for the Italian peninsula as a whole, before addressing each of five sub-regions in turn (northern, central, and southern Italy, Sicily, Sardinia). We also compare population fluctuations with local paleoclimate proxies (cave, lake, marine records). At a pan-regional scale, the results show a general rapid and substantial increase in population in the Early Neolithic with the introduction of farming at around 8000 cal yr BP and further dramatic increases during the Bronze and Iron Age (~ 3800–2800 cal yr BP). However, different regional demographic trajectories exist across different regions of Italy, suggesting a variety of localised human responses to climate shifts. Population and climate appear to have been more closely correlated during the early–mid Holocene (Mesolithic–Neolithic), while later in the Holocene (Bronze–Iron Ages) they decouple. Overall, across the Holocene the population dynamics varied by region and depended on the long-term socio-ecological dynamics prevailing in a given area. Finally, we include a brief response to the paper ‘Radiocarbon dated trends and central Mediterranean prehistory’ by Parkinson et al. (J Word Prehist 34(3), 2021)—synchronously published by Journal of World Prehistory but wholly independently developed—indicating how our conclusions accord with or differ from one another.

Defence date: 22 April 2005
Examining Board: Prof. Martin Rhodes (EUI, supervisor) ; Prof. Yves Mény (EUI, co-supervisor) ; Prof. John Loughlin (University of Cardiff) ; Prof. Simona Piattoni (University of Trento)
First made available online on 31 January 2017.