What is it about?

The electoral weight of the Italian overseas-based constituent had a remarkable effect on the 2006 election results. In the tightest vote in the Republic's history, the vote of overseas Italians, which was one of the decisive features of the election, helped provide the winning centre-left coalition with a slender majority in the Senate. Election results notwithstanding, the question of whether to grant the vote to Italians overseas has faced challenges of a procedural, normative and political nature. What may have been initially seen as a democratic right may well be cast aside as it poses challenges to overseas electoral relationships with the Italian national polity, Italian citizenship and multinational allegiances, diasporic identity, electoral participation and political representation in homeland political institutions. The overseas vote for Italians may be contested further in the near future, which could translate into a radical rethink of its validity and democratic global extension.

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Why is it important?

• Detailed history of the ‘question of the vote to Italian citizens overseas’ • Normative issues and political concerns • Challenges and dilemmas posed by the Italian model of external voting • The Italian general election of 2006

Perspectives

This article analyses a set challenges posed by the Italian model of external voting; a model of diasporic political engagement with homeland politics that is both unique and unprecedented in Italian history. Ultimately, the Italian model of external voting, as argued in this article, validates a traditional view of political community, namely one in which legal citizenship – and not physical attachment and ongoing engagement with the homeland polity, as is the case of non-citizen residents living in Italy – defines formal membership to the Italian community.

Dr Simone Battiston
Swinburne University of Technology

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: The challenges to democracy and citizenship surrounding the vote to Italians overseas, Modern Italy, August 2008, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1080/13532940802069572.
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