This award will support a workshop on Italian culture and politics from the years 1948-1988. The workshop has been jointly organized by Prof. Samuel H. Barnes of the University of Michigan and Prof. Marzio Barbagli and Prof. Gianfranco Pasquino, both of the University of Bologna, Italy. Few countries have changed as dramatically as Italy over the past forty years. Migration and economic growth have altered demographic patterns and created a vastly changed society. Membership in the European Community and increased secularization and education have brought about important changes too. This workshop will focus on the evaluation of the continuity and change in Italian culture over the period, as they have had an impact on the political system. The participants will examine the relationship between cultural patterns and the functioning of the political system. They will address the question of how continuity and change in Italian culture and subcultures relate to changes in the political orientations of mass publics and of elites and non-elites in politically relevant institutions. Numerous national surveys as well as unobtrusive methodologies such as content-analysis, interpretation of representative documents and proceedings, personal observations, the historical record itself, and the like will be used in gathering data for position papers. The organizers are distinguished scholars who have contributed much to the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological underpinnings of the proposed workshop. The workshop has the potential to increase our understanding of the relationship between broad cultural and more narrow political concerns and to reassess the way we look at complex political systems and processes.
