This paper presents 56 AMS radiocarbon dates from three early medieval sites in Italy: nine from the Roman Villa of Vacone in Vacone (RI), Lazio, 29 from the Roman Villa of Selvicciola in Ischia di Castro (VT), Lazio, and 18 from the necropolis of Povegliano Veronese (VR), Veneto. These results more than double the number of previously published radiocarbon dates from early medieval Italy and are therefore a substantial contribution to the absolute chronology of early medieval cemeteries of Italy. These dates have implications for the relative dating of grave goods, grave reuse, and explaining the presence of graves with multiple individuals.

Italy’s active labour market policy (ALMP) regime is marked by a paradox: despite limited investment in training, job placement services, and direct job creation, the country allocates above-average resources to employment subsidies. While this subsidy-heavy approach is often explained by the structure of Italy’s low-skill, low-productivity economy, this article proposes a complementary explanation grounded in political economy. We argue that the dominance of employment subsidies reflects the influence of a powerful discourse promoted by business interests, which frames excessive labour costs as the core challenge of the Italian labour market. This narrative has steered policy decisions towards cost-reduction strategies, crowding out more transformative measures aimed at human capital development. To unpack these dynamics, we employ a mixed-method research design combining qualitative and quantitative text analysis. We map stakeholder narratives in national media using Natural Language Processing techniques (BERTopic) and analyse parliamentary debates to identify ideational drivers. Our findings reveal how business-driven narratives have driven policy preferences towards employment subsidies. The article makes three main contributions. First, it situates employment subsidies within Italian ALMP. Second, it demonstrates how ideas structure labour market interventions. Third, it introduces an innovative methodological approach that integrates computational text analysis with traditional qualitative methods.

This article investigates the global history of the population control movement through the case of the relationship between the Italian Association for Demographic Education (AIED) and American philanthropist Clarence J. Gamble. Drawing on archival sources from Italy and the United States, this study examines how international debates on modernization and demographic control intersected with national anxieties surrounding southern Italy’s underdevelopment. Italian activists engaged with international discourses linking population control to modernization, promoting family planning initiatives despite their illegality. Through its collaboration with Gamble, AIED was introduced in a global circulation of cheap contraceptives, an experiment targeting poor and southern women. The article argues that AIED’s persistent connection with Gamble contributed to its growing isolation within international networks by the mid-1960s, as the priorities of Western family planners shifted decisively towards the Global South. By situating the Italian case within these international dynamics, this study offers a new perspective on how national contexts were shaped by the global politics of family planning.

Incense burners are frequently excavated at Roman period sites, attesting to acts of combustion within domestic ritual practices, but what was burnt is still uncertain. Here, the authors use microscopy and spectrometry to analyse burnt residues contained within two censers from domestic contexts in Pompeii and a nearby villa. Their results indicate that woody plants were burnt in both censers, either as fuel or offerings, alongside stone fruit or laurel plants and possibly wine or grapes, while traces of Burseraceae resins, originating from Asia or sub-Saharan Africa, provide the first archaeological evidence of incense offerings in the Pompeian domestic cult.

In 2018, human rights organizations filed a criminal complaint in Italy against the directors of the Italian armaments export licensing authority (UAMA) and the CEO of the arms manufacturer RWM Italia, following the discovery of bomb remnants on the site of an airstrike in Yemen that killed six civilians. The criminal complaint was dismissed in March 2023, despite the judge ruling that UAMA’s directors had violated the Arms Trade Treaty. In July 2023, the victims filed an application to the European Court of Human Rights against Italy, alleging a violation of the right to life. Drawing on an analysis of the criminal investigation files, this piece assesses the failures of the Italian state and RWM Italia to comply with their international human rights obligations regarding arms transfers. It considers the potential for improving accountability within the arms trade via domestic and European courts.

Depending on what levels of government and actors in a political system one focuses upon, democratic innovations might seem thriving or waning. This emerges clearly when looking at the main trajectories of democratic innovation in Italy. Compared to other liberal democracies, at the national level, Italy is a laggard; yet, a more dynamic landscape of democratic innovations exists at the local level. Some regions have drafted pioneering legislation institutionalising participatory and deliberative practices and numerous councils have adopted participatory innovations, early and consistently over time. Going beyond institutions, social movements have also been very influential with activists developing their own democratic innovation repertoires, which was especially clear in the movement for the commons. Positive and negative trajectories of democratic innovation may coexist across different actors (e.g., governments and civil society.) and levels of government in Italy. However, when these actors enter in contact with each other, state institutions might use democratic innovations against democratic engagement. We reflect on the implications of this situation for future trajectories of democratic innovation in Italy.

Numerous experts and activists placed hope in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer to reignite the conversation of nuclear disarmament and arms control. However, evidence on the persuasive effects on popular media is mixed, and studies estimating such causal effects are scarce. We draw on narrative persuasion literature to underpin the disarmament and arms control communities’ expectations of the Oppenheimer movie's impact with regards to various dimensions of nuclear disarmament and arms control. Leveraging nationally representative survey data from Italy both before and after the movie's release, we first show that younger respondents, men, and those with higher education were more likely to see the movie. Using inverse probability weighting, propensity score matching, and difference-in-difference methods, we then correct for these biases and find qualified evidence that watching the movie increased support for nuclear arms control. At the same time, the movie did not move attitudes towards unilateral nuclear disarmament, opposition to proliferation, or opposition to nuclear weapons use. Beyond sparking the conversation about the dangers of nuclear weapons, the movie did not appear to have shifted public attitudes in the direction of broader disarmament goals. Our findings not only shed light on the persuasive effects of the Oppenheimer movie and popular media more broadly, but further contribute to our understanding of public views regarding nuclear disarmament and arms control.

Italy has long been a textbook case of government instability. Against this backdrop, the exceptional longevity of the Meloni government marks a clear reversal. However, the cabinet is ruling under the same institutional constraints that once made Italian governments short-lived and fragile. In this study, I seek to make sense of this exceptional stability tracing how potential stabilizing mechanisms have jointly operated across all the stages of the coalition life-cycle framework. Stability, I argue, has resulted from the convergence of multiple stabilizing mechanisms that have seldom aligned simultaneously in the Italian context. The main lesson from this deviant case lies in a paradox: Italy's most durable government in decades is promoting a constitutional reform intended to enhance stability, even though cohesive and disciplined coalitions can already achieve it without altering institutional rules.

This paper analyses whether the confiscation of real estate assets from organised crime affects citizens’ trust in government institutions and the legal system. The case of Italy is considered, where confiscation constitutes a distinctive policy tool against mafia-type organisations. The empirical analysis combines individual-level trust data from the Italian National Institute of Statistics’ Aspects of Daily Life survey with regional data on confiscations from the National Agency for Seized and Confiscated Assets for the period 2014–2022. Using linear and non-linear regression models, along with an instrumental variables approach, we find heterogeneous results. The confiscation of real estate assets from mafia organisations increases trust in government institutions and the legal system in the Southern regions, where organised crime is generally stronger. In Central and Northern regions, the positive effect is weaker and confined to the local tiers of government. Here, confiscations reduce trust in the legal system.