Adapt, Improvise, Overcome? The Transformation of Italian Armed Forces in Comparative Perspective

The book aims to analyze the evolution of Italian armed forces in comparative perspective. European armed forces underwent deep changes in the past two decades. Extraordinary political transformations changed the landscape of global politics and the place played in that international scenario by European countries. Given the breadth of the debate and the size of transformations that took place, it is somewhat surprising that relatively few academic studies have directly dealt with changes in force structure of European militaries, and the Italian armed forces in particular. The focus of this book is the organizational dimension of the restructuring of armed forces through 3 different lenses: doctrine and strategic framework, budget and resource allocation, and force structure and deployment. The key issues we address relate to how these factors interact in shaping transformation. Of particular interest is the theme of learning, which is how armed forces endogenize change in the short and long run. The idea is to provide insights to assess the extent to which armed forces managed to adapt to the emerging strategic and operational challenges they have to face and to illustrate the weight of institutional legacies, parochial interests, and organizational cultures in shaping transformation. Empirically, the analysis is supported by an extensive use of primary sources, collecting data through interviews with experts, political leaders and military officers. The empirical chapters would be composed by a first part discussing Italy and a second section comparing and contrasting it with transformations occurring in other European countries (UK and France to begin with). The study would investigate the transformation of armed forces, going through the developments occurred in the decade between the operations in Afghanistan and Libya (2001-2011).