Party Politics And Italy's Preference For Foreign Policy

For a long time,Italy's structural economic problems and political instability have hindered its implementation of proactive and sustainable foreign policy.The difficulty of maintaining political stability in Italy lies in that the short-lived and relatively weak government should face the long-standing and powerful interest groups and lobby groups.On the other hand,international politics also has an important influence on domestic politics.Foreign policy is not the most popular election issue,but the failure of foreign policy will have a negative impact on the reputation of the government.Especially in the debt crisis and refugee issues,Italy's EU obligations(austerity policy and admission of refugees)have been politicized to a large extent,which has become the reason why the ruling left central alliance has been attacked at home.In response to the external crisis,the current government,like the former left central government led by Prodi and Dalaima,is still trying to actively participate in the Middle East and North Africa affairs under the framework of the EU,NATO and the United Nations through multilateralism.Especially in Libya,Italy is likely to lead a multinational peacekeeping operation after the situation on the ground is slightly stable.On the Ukraine issue,Italy will be a catalyst for the detente between the West and Russia.For southern European countries such as Italy,it is more in their national interests for the EU and NATO to focus their foreign policy on the Mediterranean region.Italy's foreign policy has always been the result of the interaction of geopolitics and party politics.After the cold war,due to the development trend of single polarization and two polarization in the international system structure and the political structure of Italian political parties,the importance of geopolitical logic in Italian foreign policy-making declined significantly,while the influence of political logic of political parties rose rapidly.Accordingly,replacing security with economy has become the primary issue in Italy China relations.Since the Kong Te administration came into operation,the importance of Geopolitics in Italy's foreign policy formulation has been highlighted once more along with the Belt and Road initiative.Therefore,the author believes that the change of Italian party politics is an important window to observe the trend of Italian foreign policy in the future.The "One And Road" initiative is an example of Italy's political system,which explores the political motives of Italy's foreign policy preferences and provides inspiration from the perspective of party politics for the development of Sino foreign relations in the future,taking Italy's political system as an example.After a systematic analysis and research,the author concludes that in the future,when China deals with other European countries represented by Italy,we should pay attention to three special factors that distinguish European countries,especially European Union countries,from other regional countries First,the special geopolitics of Europe has led to the political instability of political parties in the countries of the region.Europe occupies an important geopolitical and strategic political and economic position both in history and at present.In the future,any economic cooperation between China and countries in sensitive regions of Europe must fully consider the adverse factors and obstacles that special geopolitics will lead to political instability of political parties.Second,the protectionist factors in the party politics of European countries.This kind of protectionism is deeply rooted in the level of public opinion and the psychological level of exclusion.Sometimes the social contradictions and radical remarks caused by it are used by some marginal political parties,which leads to the political pressure measures taken against the ruling party and forces it to make the adjustment of its foreign policy preference.Third,the dual structure of Europe has a very important influence on party politics.It is reflected in the following three aspects:first,the two-level decision-making mechanism between the EU and its member states.The second is the difference between old and new Europe.The third is the structural contradiction of "dual leader" between France and Germany.Therefore,China's future diplomacy and cooperation with European countries should pay attention to the prevention of protectionism and take advantage of the political characteristics of political party competition in European countries.