Europeanization and Italy: A bottom-up process?

This article offers a synthetic review of the domestic effects of the EU integration process on Italian politics and policy. Although Italy has recently undergone a process of rapid transformations, the overall account of these changes is far from clear. It is argued that the Europeanization process passed through the window of opportunity opened by the crisis of the entire party system, but it affected the internal arena by changing the attitudes of domestic policy actors rather than by imposing reforms on the political structures. The dynamism of certain policy arenas may even alter specific institutional relationships, but it cannot be assumed that some peculiar features of the present Italian political system will clash against the EU's potential evolution towards a power-sharing configuration.