This essay analyses the evolution of Italian foreign policy in the fields of both security and economy over recent decades. The first part presents a five-rank typology of Western states’ foreign policy, constructed on ten different variables, which specify the crucial factors for each different rank. According to this framework, after 1994 Italy’s ‘second republic’ is characterised as a small power, while during the Cold War the first republic adopted a ‘low profile’ foreign policy. The second section seeks to attribute this low profile to the anti-system (anti-market and anti-NATO) stance of the Italian Communist Party, rather than to the constraints of the bipolar international system. The third part describes post-1994 foreign policies of the two coalitions (broadly, the right and the left) as consistent with either neo-conservative ideology or the convergence between conservative and ‘constructivist’ political cultures.
