Italy's role in the UNIFIL mission in Lebanon: analytical eclecticism in action

After the short 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, the UN launched the peacekeeping mission UNIFIL II. Italian Forces, already deployed in the country, initially took the responsibility to lead the operations. Ten years later, Italy is still carrying the burden of the mission with a 1400-strong force. Italy’s involvement and enduring commitment to UNIFIL II represents an empirical puzzle. Why did Italian policymakers decide to embark on such a demanding task? Why did Italy find Lebanon so critical for regional security? In order to answer this question, we will draw hypotheses from three main theoretical schools: realism, institutionalism, and constructivism. All of them provide helpful insights on the mechanisms leading to such troubled choice. None of them, however, is sufficiently convincing as to rule out the others. For this reason, we will argue that the best analytical approach is theoretical eclecticism. In particular, through process tracing we will highlight the main mechanisms at stake and the relative contribution of each paradigm.