Many authors agree that the President of the Italian Republic is the head of state with the widest powers among parliamentary governments in Europe. Although several studies have sought to explain Why the President's power may increase or decrease, a quantitative measurement of the phenomenon-able to answer questions also about the Who (the actors), How (the modalities) and How much (the consistency) of the phenomenon itself-has seldom been carried out by scholars. This paper seeks to answer these unanswered substantive questions by measuring the potential power of the Italian head of state in a crucial case-the first Presidency of Giorgio Napolitano (2006Napolitano ( -2013-by means of a quantitative narrative analysis (QNA) and a social network analysis of his Diary. This is done in a semiautomated way by using natural language processing (NLP) techniques, including regular expressions and named-entity recognition. As regards the methodological contribution of the paper, its aim is to demonstrate that QNA with NLP tools for semi-automated analysis of textual data can be considered an effective and reliable methodology for the empirical investigation of potential power, enabling a more widespread application of this technique in the quantitative analysis of topics related to the power approach-that some scholars consider otherwise obsolete-also at the comparative level.

In this paper, we address the topic of policy actorness in Italian foreign policy to characterize the understudied role of the President of the Italian Republic (PoR). We apply quantitative narrative analysis (QNA) as the methodological tool of our study, answering two research questions to which the academic literature has so far produced limited responses: (a) whether the PoR can be considered a relevant actor in Italian foreign policy and (b) which factors can affect the Italian PoR’s relevance in foreign policy. Considering the Italian PoR’s Diary as the unit of analysis and source of data, we study the two crucial cases of Ciampi’s presidency (1999–2006) and Napolitano’s first presidency (2006–2013). QNA allows us to quantify and compare, while maintaining an actor-centred approach, the relations of the two PoRs with the most relevant actors in foreign policy. The results of our analyses highlight the relevance of the Italian PoR figure, identifying the main areas of influence of the Italian head of state and their changes over time. We conclude providing a few hypotheses to interpret the outcomes of our analyses on the PoR’s role in Italian foreign policy.

This paper explores the territorial dimension of local security policies, with reference to the "Security Pacts" signed in Italy between 2007 and 2009. These Security Pacts are an innovative instrument introduced by the central government, aimed at changing the model of security governance at the local level. After describing how Security Pacts have spread, and which institutional actors have participated in them, this study aims at deepening the analysis of their territorial dimension. More specifically, the research question at the basis of this study focuses on the identification of factors that can explain why the pacts feature variations in numbers and types of public administration at different levels, and why they tend to acquire particular spatial configurations rather than others. Three hypotheses are tested based on empirical data (obtained using a Quantitative Narrative Analysis with the aid of Geographic Information Systems and other statistical tools) used to identify which variable may best explain the propensity to use such pacts to solve security-related issues in different areas of the country.

Almost 50 years ago Robert Dahl maintained "we can […] reasonably hope 1 day to achieve great democratic cities. As the optimum unit for democracy in the 21st century, the city has a greater claim, I think, than any other alternative" (Am Polit Sci Rev 61: 953-970, 1967). This article intends to ascertain whether the words of one of the greatest scholars of democracy have had a concrete outcome along the pathways taken by democratic theory and whether, therefore, as was the case in classical theory, real superiority has therefore been restored to the city compared with the other territorial institutions of democracy. In this article we begin with two assumptions, each concerning the theoretical status of democratic theory. The first maintains that a realistic and an idealistic dimension coexist in variable dimensions in theoretical democratic models. According to the second assumption, it can be stated that democratic theory envisages the presence of a local territorial dimension, the importance of which is nevertheless variable in the different theoretical models. The thesis we intend to demonstrate here is that the variable nature of the importance of the local-urban territorial dimension depends on the type of balance created between the idealistic and realistic dimensions of the different models of democracy. Concluding, we aim to theoretically demonstrate why (and at which conditions) the city can become, more and better than any other institutional place, the ultimate arena within which the best results may be achieved for democracy in 21st century.

No abstract